A bit frustrated with fandom at the moment - DH spoilers

[Adesa]

No: HPFGUIDX 172974


> CJE:
>I personally have found myself increasingly distracted by JKR's over-
wordiness and clumsy style since at least Book 3. 

Adesa:

Really? I've always enjoyed her style. Her verbosity has always 
seemed, to me, to be vindicated by the sheer volume of information 
she conveys. I always thought that she crammed a lot of good 
information into each sentence. Perhaps she has occasionally overused 
adverbs (OotP, anyone?) but otherwise makes excellent word choices. 

I frequently find myself in the last few chapters of a HP adventure 
wondering how on earth JKR can squeeze in everything she needs to, 
only to have her wrap it up very nicely indeed. Yes, she uses a lot 
of words. But then, she's got a big story to tell. 

When it starts to *feel* wordy, I think, is a problem. But feeling 
that an author is rambling is very different from part of the story 
having slower pacing.

Each episode of our hero's years at Hogwarts had times when the weeks 
slipped by without much happening. JKR would slip in bits here and 
there of action that furthered the plot, usually following the same 
pattern as DH (though not as exciting or with as many brushes with 
DE's). What's different about DH is that the reader *feels* the 
dragging weeks. So, if JKR knows how to successfully write time 
passing without boring her readers, perhaps the tedium of weeks in 
the woods is intentional. It had me feeling restless, and I believe 
JKR meant for me to feel that way.

That being said, I think she dropped the ball in her Epilogue. Either 
she'd had it done for so long that she didn't want to change it to 
show her improved skills over the years (and the improved interest of 
her audience), or she was simply trying to finish it all off in too 
much of a rush. It felt like the latter. I don't mind that we are 
left wondering a lot about what happens to many characters. I *do* 
mind that the style with which she wrote the Epilogue was so very 
different from the rest of the series.

Adesa in Virginia