[HPforGrownups] Character Development (was Re: Why Hermione isn't in Ravenclaw)

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 6350

Scott wrote:

> This brings me to a question about character development.  Basically
> would Jo have written the story to fit the characters, or would she
> have written the characters to fit the story?  In my own experience
> with writing they both seem to help each other along.  As I write I
> find out new things about the characters and therefore the story can
> branch off into different directions than I originally thought.
> While I would guess JKR is much the same, I thought maybe Peg, as a
> published author, or anyone else for that matter could shed some
> light on this subject.

This, I imagine, is very idiosyncratic for each writer.  I dreamed up an
entire political structure for my first book based on an elaborate metaphor
about gems--the seven political houses were called "the Diadem" and each
house was named after a gem, and so jewelry making was a big part of the
culture--a political house allying itself with another political house (say
a wedding) would commemorate the occasion by commissioning a piece of
jewelry using both gems).  And the ENTIRE reason I used this metaphor was
that my heroine was a gemcutter, and I asked myself, "how can I put a
gemcutter at the epicenter of the political action?

In my second book, one of the main characters was an Irish musician, and I
wove Irish music and legend throughout the book.  And the entire reason I
did that was that when I saw a man reading in a public library and thought,
"Aha, he looks just like the way I imagine my character, Sean, should look,"
he happened to be wearing an Irish sweater.

Imagine how different the book might have been if had been wearing a Hawaiin
shirt.

So, for me, as for Scott, plot drives character and character, in turn,
drives plot.

Books that are failures for me are the ones where the characters and plot
don't seem to have much to do with each other.

I imagine an example of this in Rowling's work might be the fact that Harry
is a great Quidditch player.  She has talked about how she thought about one
of the ways that cultures come together is with sports, and so she dreamed
up Quidditch.  And she made Harry a great Quidditch player.  Now does he
have great reflexes because she made up Quidditch, or is because she made up
Quidditch the reason why he has great reflexes?

Once she made up Quidditch, of course, she had a possibility for bringing
many characters together and starting lots of plot lines, at the Quidditch
World Cup.

And how are those great Quidditch reflexes of Harry's going to be a plot
turning point later in the series?

Peg