JKR's writing mechanics

[PrincessMojo]

I appologize for continuing the off topic but I must say Big Brother your assessment of the picture of Robert Smith is dead on! Props to you

[Severus Snape]

Let me see.... that will be a detention for you, Miss Mojo. You will report to the dungeon immediately for your punishment -- enforced scrapbooking.

I assure you, the image you see on the left is indeed a picture of myself and not of this Robert Smith person. Ridiculous Muggle rock star. As if the lankness of his hair and the frightening aspects of his personage could ever compare with mine.

Now get back on topic or I will make you.

[Big Brother]

So, Sevvy, if JKR made you subconsciously predict the fate and nature of the next seven DADA teachers with your silly little potion logic puzzle, did she also force you against your will to be an insufferable jerk, or do you do that voluntarily?

[Severus Snape]

Big said:

So, Sevvy, if JKR made you subconsciously predict the fate and nature of the next seven DADA teachers with your silly little potion logic puzzle, did she also force you against your will to be an insufferable jerk, or do you do that voluntarily?

If you insist on referring to me as "Sevvy" I shall be greatly inclined to refer to you as "Squicky the House Elf".

In fiction, the author creates a story and the characters, but the character creates the detail. Once a character is fixed in the author's mind and comes alive on paper with a name and a personal history, almost everything else follows.

This works rather like geometry, as set down by the ancient Greek wizard Euclid. The characters are the axioms, the postulates: from them everything else is logically derived. The events of the story are the theorems, important developments in the natural lives of the characters. The author is the mathematician, who investigates the possibilities of certain strands of the web of proofs and ignores others, trying to prove the theorems she has devised.

Why do I continually try to save Potter's life though I cannot stand the sight of him? Because I owe his wretched, arrogant father my life. It is part of my personal history, part of the Postulate of Professor Snape.

Why did I put the bottles of Potion in that particular order? Because the blasted riddle needed to rhyme (as truly powerful magic often does, I'm afraid) and be solvable. Whatever other motives Madam Rowling had when she made those rules and brought the developing proof of the story in that direction are beyond my knowledge.

As far as I am personally concerned, each of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers during Potter's time at Hogwarts has been "poison". Dangerous incompetents and murderers all. It is long past time for Headmaster Dumbledore to hire someone actually qualified for the job.

Personal attitudes of the characters in the axioms are a more complex issue, but I shall entertain the notion that you are not as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach. My personality, I am told, comes from a particular science teacher whom Madam Rowling knew as a student. So perhaps I am an "insufferable jerk" because he was. You might as well ask whether someone forced him to act as he did as ask me whether I do so "voluntarily".

[Lolua]

Severus said:

This works rather like geometry, as set down by the ancient Greek wizard Euclid. The characters are the axioms, the postulates: from them everything else is logically derived. The events of the story are the theorems, important developments in the natural lives of the characters. The author is the mathematician, who investigates the possibilities of certain strands of the web of proofs and ignores others, trying to prove the theorems she has devised.

An interesting theory, Professor. I'd no idea Euclid was a wizard, since we have him in Muggle math books, but I guess if Ptolemy was a wizard, then Euclid isn't that much of a stretch.

Anyone who doesn't understand the references to geometry and wants to, start a thread over in Charge Parity Conservation and I'll answer any questions you have. I might even post the axioms of Euclidean geometry if there's enough interest, or if I'm bored enough.

[Mlle Bienvenu]

So... much.... fourth wall breaking....head exploding.... :: Foooom! ::



Anywhoo.....Excellent interpretation of storybuilding... I think you're spot on. :-) Always start with the characters and the story will arise from that. That's the way I try to work myself :-)

[Big Brother]

Mlle said:

So... much.... fourth wall breaking....head exploding.... :: Foooom! ::

<strongbad>YOUR HEAD ASPLODE!</strongbad>

Mlle said:

Anywhoo.....Excellent interpretation of storybuilding... I think you're spot on. :-) Always start with the characters and the story will arise from that. That's the way I try to work myself :-)

One of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, in his later years developed a similar storybuilding technique.

1.) Create several interesting characters.
2.) Put them in a tricky situation.
3.) See if the characters can come up with a way out of it.
4.) If they can, put them in an even trickier situation.
5.) Once they reach a situation they cannot handle, bring in a Deus Ex Machina ending, and end the book.

This led to books that were quite enjoyable to read, if a bit non-standard in plotting. The endings usually sucked, though. Classic examples of this writing style from Heinlein include "The Number of the Beast" and "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls".

J.K. Rowling does not seem to write in this style. She seems more like J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) in her love of pre-set long-term plot arcs and setting plot points up WAY ahead of time. Which results in good endings, but several points around the middle of the story when the story drags due to the need to wait for events to develop on schedule.

[Lolua]

Big said:

J.K. Rowling does not seem to write in this style. She seems more like J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) in her love of pre-set long-term plot arcs and setting plot points up WAY ahead of time. Which results in good endings, but several points around the middle of the story when the story drags due to the need to wait for events to develop on schedule.

Except that her original process in discovering Harry's story sounds a lot like Euclid's when he was coming up with those seemingly arbitrary axioms.

But in 1990, my then boyfriend and I decided to move up to Manchester together. It was after a weekend's flat-hunting, when I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, that the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head.

I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn't have a functioning pen with me, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one. I think, now, that this was probably a good thing, because I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen).

Source: www.jkrowling.co.uk/textonly/biography.cfm
She started with a character: a boy who doesn't know he's a wizard. If the first thing she'd imagined was the struggle against a Dark Lord or the idea of a school for wizards, I might think that her process was like JMS's. But I really think she started with the characters on that train journey (definitely Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid were formed on that train) and went from there.