Good writer - Two Trees

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 141290


Lupinlore: 
> > > Worst of all, JKR has a bad habit, as I've said before, of 
writing 
> > > herself into corners and then getting out by, well, cheating.

<SNIP> 

Steve:
> This (HBP) was a good book, but it was far from the best in the
> series, and I say that part of the reason for that is because the
> author has run out of options, not out of ideas, I'm sure much like
> fan fiction she is bubbling with those, but out of options. Things 
had
> to be said and done. Horcruxes had to be established, Voldemort's
> background had to be laid, Dumbledore had to do his part, Snape 
had a
> dark and dangerous role to play, and within those bounds, the story
> becomes restricted.
> 
> Let's just hope, that the final story, the final book, hasn't 
become
> so resticted that it loses its vitality. I would hate for it to be
> nothing more that an excuse to resolve the plot. Regardless of the
> final outcome, I am committed. I HAVE TO KNOW what happened; good 
or
> bad. So, I'll buy and read the last book, and live with the
> satisfaction of finally knowing Harry's fate as well as the fate of
> his friends.
> 

I think you've hit the nail solidly on the head, Steve.  The problem 
is that JKR established an ending long ago.  But since then her 
story, like all even reasonably well-established stories, has become 
a living thing.  It has grown and branched and twisted in ways she 
probably did not fully envision or expect, or at least did not fully 
appreciate from an early vantage point.  As she moved into the last 
couple of books she was faced with a story that probably did not 
really match the ending anymore.  It had outgrown the ending.  The 
story, as you say, had branched and ramified and taken on 
implications that the ending was never meant to contain.

In order to reach the preset ending, she had to start narrowing 
drastically -- or pruning to use the tree image.  She had to take 
the story into compressed routes that required dropping many of the 
themes and implications that had grown so naturally out of the 
living story.  Things that could not be contained within the pre-
envisioned end -- be they dystopian implications of Dumbledore's 
decisions, Harry's anger and hurt and grief, Luna and Neville's 
development, or whatever -- had to be radically pruned and shaped 
into forms that do not fit the organic pattern of the story as it 
actually developed.  As I said before, it is a case of plot 
dictating everything else -- which makes for all sorts of problems 
and mischief.

As you say, Steve, we can only hope that the ending justifies the 
route.


Lupinlore