Plot hole - POV

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 18357

Haggridd wrote:

>Thanks for the info, Amy, but it really doesn't address the theory 
>raised by you in message #18330, or by Andrea in #18328, about 
Mad-Eye 
>originally intended simply to be a goodguy DADA teacher, and a plot 
>hole necessitated creating the Barty Crouch, Jr. substitution for 
>Moody. 

Well, I quoted JKR in order to show that if people are wondering what 
the admitted plot hole was, the answer has nothing to do with the 
Moody plotline, AFAWK.  It seems to have had to do with how to get 
information outside the school.  Some who think Moody/Crouch is 
farfetched seem to be using "JKR said she had to rewrite a major 
chunk" as evidence that this plotline got rewritten, and there's no 
support for this, as far as I can tell.  If you find Moody/Crouch 
unbelievable, it may have to be blamed on JKR's overall plotting or 
judgment, and not on her having had to scramble to turn someone at 
Hogwarts into a Death Eater.  (I personally don't think Moody/Crouch 
is that farfetched.  When I said it worked as well as the surprises at 
the ends of the other books, I meant that as a compliment--they were 
all hinted at adequately, as Stacy said.)

But now I'm getting intrigued: why =did= JKR need someone to be 
carrying info out of the school, Skeeter-style?  This certainly takes 
up a lot of GF, but I would have said that you could excise it without 
damaging the plot (it would still be enough to make a writer weep, as 
Stacy said--what a lot of work rewriting all those scenes...).  As 
things stand at the end of GF, Rita has made life more miserable for 
Hermione, Harry, and Hagrid, but has had no significant impact 
otherwise--i.e., this plotline is important to character but not to 
plot.  Is something important going to come of one of her articles, 
e.g. the thought someone threw out last week that because of them, 
Fudge has been shifted from admiring/indulging Harry to really 
believing he is dangerous?  

Stacy wrote:

>Everything furthers the plot. And 
>that was the hole; Icicle wasn't needed. She didn't further the plot. 
>And so a lot of time was spent in cutting her out.

I don't think so.  It sounds possible that she DID further the plot; 
she did what Rita now does for it--get private information out into 
the public.  For some reason we don't know, she didn't work and the 
reporter character had to be expanded.

Magda wrote:

>There was the Quidditch game in PS/SS when Quirrel was trying to hex
>Harry's Broom and Hermione and Ron tried to figure out what to do. 
>It ended with Hermione setting Snape temporarily on fire.

>That was H/R POV.

To be precise, that scene is third-person 
whateveryoucallitwhenthenarratorisn'tinANYONE'Shead (however I search, 
I can't find a term for this POV).  We see things Harry can't see, 
which distinguishes it from the vast majority of the narration 
(third-person limited to Harry), but we don't get anyone else's POV.  
We only know of Ron and Hermione what we'd know if we were sitting 
next to them in the stands.

The first part of the first chapter of PS/SS and the first chapter of 
GF are the only ones where third-person limited is used but is limited 
to the POV of a character besides Harry:  Vernon and Frank, 
respectively.  After Vernon goes to bed in PS/SS 1, the narration is 
as at the first Quidditch match--third person, showing us things Harry 
can't see yet not letting us into the thoughts of Dumbledore, 
McGonagall, or Hagrid.

Amy Z
League of Obsessed Nitpickers

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 "I might remind you that =your= pincushion,
 Thomas, still curls up in fright if anyone
 approaches it with a pin!"
                  -HP and the Goblet of Fire
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