Umbridge, detention, scars, and plotlines, oh my!. - Clumsy?

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 126093


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at y...> wrote:
> 
<SNIP>
> 
> bboyminn:
> 
> I will agree with you that some of the writing was a little clumsy.
> But it was not Ron getting the Prefect Badge that was clumsy but the
> final explanation of why he got it. And in saying that, I don't mean
> the reason, but the way the final explanation was written.

You make a good point, Steve.  The clumsiness of the event may well
relate to the mechanics of the writing.


<SNIP>
> 
> Now to the /clumsiness/. The phrase (something to the effect of),
> '...enough to be getting on with...' was used just a little too often
> for my taste. It may be a very common 'Britishism', but to my American
> ears, once was enough, but every use after that was jarring. And to
> use it to explain a very critical point in the story, why Harry wasn't
>  Prefect, was weak. Especially weak, as I have noted, because the
> phrase had already been used. 

I expect this is one of those cultural things.  I also am an American
and found the "...enough to be getting on with..." to be a curiously
colorless expression, conveying little sense of the immensity of the
weight on Harry's shoulders.  But, Dumbledore is British, after all,
and the expression may well convey something different to British
readers.  I would be interested to hear about it, if it does.


<SNIP>
> 
> For what it's worth, unless Harry is dead, I don't think Ron will be
> Headboy. But he will still have, in the end, a very outstanding career
> at Hogwarts, history-making outstanding.
> 

Well, as I've said in another post, how contrived the whole
development of Ron seems when all is said and done will depend a lot
on what happens in the next two books.  If Ron does have an
outstanding career without his vision in the Mirror coming literally
true, then it will not seem nearly as contrived as it will should he
actually become Quidditch Captain AND Head Boy AND winner of the
Quidditch Cup.


> 
> So, I agree parts of the story were clumsy, but not in the storyline
> or character development, I see it in the simple basic mechanics of
> writing. Personally, I think some of the copy editors should have
> called JKR on those repetitive phrases.
> 

Unfortunately, JKR is so successful now as to be editor proof.  I
don't mean that she has become arrogant or anything of that nature. 
Rather, with so much money riding on getting her books out, I am sure
the executives at her publishers have very little patience with
editors who take more than a minimal amount of time processing her
manuscripts.  I suspect Scholastic and Bloomsbury put tremendous
pressure on their editorial staffs to give JKR's submissions a couple
of run-throughs for spelling and grammar and then GET THE THING OUT. 
I wonder how much of the problems with OOTP could have been avoided if
the editors had had the freedom to treat her manuscript with the same
rigor they would have shown an unknown author's.


Lupinlore