[HPforGrownups] Re: Why not Actually Re-Write? Just for fun.

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 180364

liliput99ar wrote:
> I would have made Harry remember the mirror Sirius gave him to keep in 
> touch!! (OotP). I could not bear at that time the thinking of how 
> different things could have been...
Bart:
OK, it was one thing for Harry to forget the mirror. But so did Sirius!

Film critic Roger Ebert, in his list of "movie myths", lists one called 
the "idiot plot". This refers to a plot which requires that everybody 
act like an idiot in order for the plot to work. Sirius gives Harry a 
device to communicate with him, yet the gang has to wrack their brains 
trying to figure out a way to communicate with Sirius, and, after the 
first time following Harry receiving the mirror, Sirius doesn't say, 
"Why didn't you just use the mirror I gave you?"

There is a flaw in writing which usually plagues writers that are 
overhurried; I don't know the technical term for it, but I refer to it 
as writing at the character instead of writing the character. It is 
thinking of the character in the third person rather than the first. JKR 
has Sirius give the mirror to Harry, and then they both forget about it. 
Well, I ask, is there anybody reading this who would not have bothered 
to TRY OUT the mirror as soon as possible?

In the main area of this thread, JKR was too clever for her own good. 
She carefully hid clues in minutia of the novels, but did not consider 
the fact that this would cause readers to pay a LOT of attention to the 
minutia. When she was inconsistent, readers naturally took it for a 
clue. But a lot of the time, it turned out that she simply was being 
inconsistent.

Bart


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