Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Plot

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Originally Posted by *Classic*Charm*

As for the proposition that the later books were written by ghost writers because they were so much better, I'll credit that to the fact that Rowling was an inexperienced writer when she started and simply got better the more she wrote.

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That wasn't my proposition. If anything, I think they got worse as they went along.

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

That wasn't my proposition. If anything, I think they got worse as they went along.

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My mistake, then, and my apologies. Why then do you think ghost writers were involved?

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Originally Posted by *Classic*Charm*

Why then do you think ghost writers were involved?

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Not so much that I think they were used, just an impression of inconsistency in the books which made me wonder whether the question had ever come up before.

Trouble is, I'd have to go back and re-read them to decide which passages I thought were involved and I doubt I could stomach that!

Hmm... I don't think she used ghost writers, but I do believe she dragged it out so as to squeeze as much profit from it all as possible. Very clever indeed...

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Originally Posted by illuminatus

Hmm... I don't think she used ghost writers, but I do believe she dragged it out so as to squeeze as much profit from it all as possible. Very clever indeed...

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That's true, too.

It might just be that the effort of writing a 400-page book on a 50-page plot was too much.

*sigh*

I joined the conversation late so I will get right to the point. I must admit, though, I have trouble separating the books from the movies now. I stopped the books at number 3 or 4 because they all seemed to have the same plot: Something bad happens-everyone blames Harry (no matter how many times he vindicates himself)- Harry fights big battle with unexpected outcome-Harry is vindicated(until the next bad thing.) It gets old after a while.....

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

Because my kids own books and films, I've been through the Harry Potter experience from go to whoa.

Aside from overwhelming feeling that J K Rowling's success is based upon slick marketing rather than good writing, I have one serious issue with her books:

I get a strong impression that two different writers are involved.

Maybe it's a deliberate ploy of Rowling's and she's much cleverer than I'm prepared to see?

Has anyone got any comments in this vein? Is it possible that Rowling, like Dick Francis, has her very own Chamber of Secrets?

The subject is obviously out there in some form - there's even a betting market on it here - with odds of 25:1 against her having used ghost writers.

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Interesting assumption! When Rowling was first discovered she was very poor, and if I'm correct, somewhat uneducated, thus not allowing her to write very much. Maybe her climb to fame and attempts at more sophisticated literature have changed her writing in such a dramatic way that an experienced literary critique might consider the discrepancy between her work to be two different writers, instead of one merely maturing.

I'm very interested in what others have to say!

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Originally Posted by SPQR

Interesting assumption! When Rowling was first discovered she was very poor, and if I'm correct, somewhat uneducated, thus not allowing her to write very much. Maybe her climb to fame and attempts at more sophisticated literature have changed her writing in such a dramatic way that an experienced literary critique might consider the discrepancy between her work to be two different writers, instead of one merely maturing.

I'm very interested in what others have to say!

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Nope, you're incorrect. Rowling has a degree in French and Classics, although I believe you're right that she was poor.

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Originally Posted by Goodman York

I joined the conversation late so I will get right to the point. I must admit, though, I have trouble separating the books from the movies now. I stopped the books at number 3 or 4 because they all seemed to have the same plot: Something bad happens-everyone blames Harry (no matter how many times he vindicates himself)- Harry fights big battle with unexpected outcome-Harry is vindicated(until the next bad thing.) It gets old after a while.....

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I was going to reply to this a while ago, but I couldn't find it.

Adventure stories of whatever kind are, almost always, cast from the same mold, and Rowling isn't the only one to make a bundle from the same plot and characters. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote dozens of novels, and I have only found one in which he veered from his norm. Think of any of the children's serial books, and think about the plots. They were all very similar.

The one in which Burroughs used a different plot, he copied The Prisoner of Zenda, and he did a fairly good job. I wonder whether Rowling will ever venture into a different realm.

The earlier books aren't written nearly as well as the later books, but I think that's because JKR just grew as a writer and learned some new things that made her more eager to try more complex writing styles.

A lot of people on this forum seem to have a problem with the Harry Potter series in a general sort of way and seem to think that it's just a fad; however, I'm pretty sure that HP is here to stay. Sure, it's popularity may decline since the books are all published and the movies are almost done, but they're great books to read over and over again because the themes are timeless.

I'm really sick of all the anti-Harry Potter talk.

I also dislike the comparisons of Harry Potter and Twilight or the when people discuss how Twilight is the new HP. HP considers timeless themes with increasingly better writing style, style that seems to grow along with the characters. In contrast, Twilight is a pop culture phenomenon, and Stephenie Meyer is on the bandwagon and churning out as many novels as she possibly can before the vampire craze is over. Her novels are consistent in their poor writing quality, which is only part of what makes her books very different from J.K. Rowling's.

Harry Potter made a lot of you guys mad.

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Originally Posted by mystery_spell

The earlier books aren't written nearly as well as the later books, but I think that's because JKR just grew as a writer and learned some new things that made her more eager to try more complex writing styles.

A lot of people on this forum seem to have a problem with the Harry Potter series in a general sort of way and seem to think that it's just a fad; however, I'm pretty sure that HP is here to stay. Sure, it's popularity may decline since the books are all published and the movies are almost done, but they're great books to read over and over again because the themes are timeless.

I'm really sick of all the anti-Harry Potter talk.

I also dislike the comparisons of Harry Potter and Twilight or the when people discuss how Twilight is the new HP. HP considers timeless themes with increasingly better writing style, style that seems to grow along with the characters. In contrast, Twilight is a pop culture phenomenon, and Stephenie Meyer is on the bandwagon and churning out as many novels as she possibly can before the vampire craze is over. Her novels are consistent in their poor writing quality, which is only part of what makes her books very different from J.K. Rowling's.

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Concurr'd. People on this forum like to crucify J.K. Rowling for being too simplistic. In reality, these books were marketed to a younger audience. They may not be "great literature" on the scale of the typical literary canon, but they could easily become classics of children's literature, much aligned in the tradition of Carroll, Baum or Dahl. None of these authors utilized stylistically difficult structure or diction (one could argue against a cohesive narrative strand in several of their works), but they are important to children's literature nonetheless.

My personal opinion of the Potter series is that it is a well-wrought story that deals with significant values of current society including wish fulfillment and the Occidental tradition of bravery as an important aspect of the ideal hero.

Twilight, on the other hand, reads like a poorly written self-insertion fanfic taking place in Anne Rice novels.

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Originally Posted by glover7

Twilight, on the other hand, reads like a poorly written self-insertion fanfic taking place in Anne Rice novels.

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I prefer to think of it as an overly long safe-sex pamphlet, with vampires.

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Originally Posted by glover7

Concurr'd. People on this forum like to crucify J.K. Rowling for being too simplistic. In reality, these books were marketed to a younger audience. They may not be "great literature" on the scale of the typical literary canon, but they could easily become classics of children's literature, much aligned in the tradition of Carroll, Baum or Dahl. None of these authors utilized stylistically difficult structure or diction (one could argue against a cohesive narrative strand in several of their works), but they are important to children's literature nonetheless.

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Nothing to do with Rowling (simplistic is not a minimalistic language, it is simpe as solution) but Lewis Carroll is considerable complex in both structure and diction (if this mean vocabulary). There is nothing simplistic about it.