JKR's writing, plot, storyline (Re: First potions lesson/Harry getting special treatment)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 146029

La Gatta <katmac at k...> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> I'm not sure whether JKR set out to write a series of 
> children's books and found that it had gotten away from her
> (Snape goes from being the eleven-year-old's idea of a teacher
> from hell to something much more complex and tragic), or 
> whether our view of Snape developes from book to book to match 
> Harry's own growing level of awareness.


I think it's probably a mixture of both.  I've long suspected 
that JKR did not have things nailed down nearly as firmly as 
she liked to let on.  I think she definitely had a story arc in 
mind, and certainly plot points she wanted to get in and details 
of the world.  But many things convince me that the development 
of canon has been a great deal more fluid than she commonly likes 
to indicate.

For one thing, both GoF and, especially, OOTP seemed to suffer 
from the fact that they were based around plot points rather than 
storylines.  That is she had definite things she wanted to happen 
or be revealed in fifth and sixth year, but not really a 
storyline in place to contain them.  Similarly large sections of 
GoF had the smell of being written in reaction to various 
questions/issues raised by groups in the fandom.  And parts of 
GoF seemed to pretty directly repeal (or at least sweep under the 
rug) parts of OOTP.  

I think JKR did let the story get away from her at some key 
points, and we have seen the effects of that.  I also think, as 
I've said before, that she is sometimes quite naive about the way 
things come across to readers.  Places where she thinks her 
messages/purposes/reasons are perfectly clear bring forth 
reaction that she obviously has not anticipated, although she 
probably should have.  The shipping examples are obvious.  To 
take another case, the weariness with which she answered 
questions about why Sirius Black died, combined with a certain 
snappishness that is quite different than her usual public 
demeanor, seems to indicate that she was blindsided by the 
reaction and criticism she received on that point -- an opinion 
that is reinforced by the speed with which she disposed of the 
whole issue in GoF, like a harried housewife dumping a burned pot 
roast into the outside garbage before it smells up the house.  
The change in Dumbledore and his demeanor between the infamous 
speech at the end of OOTP and the third chapter of GoF is another 
example.  

I also think that she did not fully expect the effects of the 
genre shift we have seen.  One workable definition of "genre" is 
that it is the set of conventions that determines the questions 
appropriate to ask of a story.  In the first book we are 
definitely in the genre of a fairy tale.  By GoF we are into 
melodrama/fantasy adventure.  In a fairy tale, for instance, the 
hero's background is taken for granted and wizards are always 
inscrutable, so Dumbledore's decisions with regard to the 
Dursleys are not appropriate fodder for questions.  In a 
melodrama or adventure story, on the other hand, such questions 
are very important and legitimate.  In other words, as the HP 
saga moved in genre, new questions were admitted that made a lot 
of what had gone before very problematic.  I don't think JKR 
fully anticipated a lot of the effects of this shift, and much 
of what we have seen lately arises from her scramble to deal 
with it.


Lupinlore