Plot in OotP

[ginnysthe1]

No: HPFGUIDX 118149


Adi wrote:
>All this discussion on the OOTp is so welcome that I felt like 
adding my two bits to it. I always thought that JKR was an excellent 
dramatist and a bad narrator. I didn't like GOF too and I think that 
PoA is exactly the right length for her. OOTP was very boring until 
the middle when Harry sees Arthur being attacked and picks up pace 
from there dramatically. Reading it, one can make many excuses: we 
can say that OOTP has to be boring and frustrating because that's how 
Harry was feeling; after the initial excitement that the wizarding 
world had to offer him, it is palling on Harry and some of that too 
should rub off in the novel and many more. The fact is we can fully 
sympathise with these things yet demand that a good author can make 
the material exciting for us the readers even though it is going very 
badly for the characters in it.<

>Yeah, there are wonderful glimpses strewn all over the novel but if 
JKR had just cut down the flab in the between these, OOTP would have 
been a great novel.<

>About the plotlessness though. I think the structures will be more 
and more linear now that the series is coming to a finish. So the 
rest of the novels will be 'plotless' too. More of backstory and less 
of surprising twists and turns.<

Kim adding a few more bits to the thread:
I think it's possible that more backstory in the last novels might 
furnish the surprising twists and turns you're looking for, don't you?

OotP was my favorite of the series so far, and one reason I'm biased 
in its favor is that it *was* so long!  Definitely something to be 
savored (as Pippin suggests) if you have the time.  But then I'd read 
nearly the complete works of Dickens by the time I was 19, so 
the "flabbiness" of OotP didn't bother me a bit.  IIRC, JKR was 
interviewed somewhere and she said that the last two books may be 
even longer than Phoenix.  That a girl! ;-)

In any event, not having read OotP for the second time yet, I'll keep 
an eye out next time for any parts that bore, bewilder, annoy, etc.  
Can't think of any right now...

Oh, and one last comment.  Maybe we're forgetting the schedule JKR is 
on.  She's really cranking them out, isn't she, considering how long 
it takes other writers to produce their own "masterpieces."  She's 
writing a serial in a sense, and some of her readers are walking the 
floors waiting for the next "baby" to be born.  And then there's the 
demand made by the HP movies: trying to get books out in time to 
finish *that* series before the actors get too old to play teenagers, 
or die of old age, as the case may be.  So, flaws and all, I think 
she's doing an admirable job.  After all, it could even be that some 
of the flaws can be traced to the hurry she's in.  Maybe over the 
coming years, after she finishes the series, she'll go back to the 
books, do some editing, and publish "new and improved" versions, and 
then we'll all be happy... 

Kim