Today's Question: what do you love about Harry Potter?

I guess you've probably heard by now that the new Harry Potter will be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

And that got me to thinking that this might be an excellent time say publicly and for the record that I'm in awe of JK Rowling. And here's why: the woman is a master storyteller.

I read those books first as a fan and second as a writer, and I appreciate her genius more all the time because...

--she makes each story different from the beginning. In book 1 it was very exciting for Harry to get onto a secret platform and board a big scarlet train to wizard school.

But how interesting would that be for book 2? Not so much. So she blocks the train entrance and lets us (and by us, I mean Harry) arrive at school via a flying car. In book 3 there are dementors on the train...etc...etc.


--she gives us a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher every year, so there’s always a new character and a new potential source of conflict. Can you imagine the HP series if that position didn't turn over? I can't.


--The characters always have a goal—a mystery. I bet you never thought of the Harry Potter books as mysteries, did you? But in my book, they are.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione almost always have a case that they're trying to solve: what is the sorcerer's stone and who's trying to steal it? Who has opened the Chamber of Secrets? How and why did Sirius Black break out of Azkaban? (Even though they spend a lot of the book thinking they know—they don’t!) Who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire and why? What's at the end of that corridor in Harry's dream?

In fact, the only one that doesn't really have a clear-cut mystery is the Half-Blood Prince, and that's probably why it's my personal least favorite.


--she doesn't just take us inside the wizard school--she takes us inside the wizard world! One of my favorite scenes is in Order of the Phoenix when Harry visits the Ministry of Magic for his hearing. (I just love it that wizards have bureaucracy too.) But the brilliance of this, from a story-teller’s perspective, is that Harry (and again, that means the reader) is constantly seeing new places and things. If it fascinates Harry, it’ll probably fascinate us. If Harry’s used to it—we are too.



--Harry is usually facing conflict/threats from an immediate source. Take Order of the Phoenix for example: Voldermort is the big bad--there's no denying that. But the main source of conflict in that book is Professor Umbridge. Could the overall story be told without Umbridge? Yes, I think it could because Umbridge doesn’t tie in with Voldermort’s plot. But think how the book would lag if Harry didn't face a real threat every day. Same thing with the dementors in book three and the challenges in book four. I could even make the arguement that Dobby serves that function in book 2.


--she made Harry's best friend his polar opposite. Where Harry is an only child, Ron's the youngest son of a huge family. Where Harry is famous, Ron is anonymous in many ways. This sets up a lot of natural conflict and possibilities for Harry to see/experience the life he never had.


--she didn't let Harry grow up in a wizarding house. Now, I know this was probably the right decision for her to make for Harry's character (he came to Hogwarts humble, after all). But it was even more brilliant from a storytelling perspective because now we, the readers, learn about stuff as Harry learns about it. We see things for the first time when Harry sees them for the first time.

The story could have been told if Harry had grown up getting his mail via an owl and traveling by floo powder, but it's a lot more interesting this way, isn't it?


--she made Hermione very, very bright, so even though there's a lot Harry doesn't know, it's pretty believable that Hermione would have read about it and explain it to Harry (and us.)


--she is a master at manipulating point of view. There are many things that Harry can't or shouldn't know--which is a problem considering we rarely leave his head. So, she has invented invisibility cloaks and pensives and he can see and hear things he shouldn't. Brilliant.


--and perhaps the thing that most makes JKR a brilliant storyteller--she uses throw-away lines like nobody else. Ever.

The moment I realized that the entire third book was about a man who was mentioned in passing in the first chapter of the first book...well...I knew I'd love her forever.

I know I’ll never have anything approaching her level of success (because NO ONE will EVER have that level of success again for a very, very, very long time). And that’s okay. But I do think we muggles have a lot to learn from the woman who created Hogwarts. And for that, I am grateful.

-Ally