Seeing Green is sick of Harry Potter. Find out why in one of Seeing Green’s best posts ever….
You see, I say to D., when you read a non-serialized book (or see such a movie,) you’re like an empty slate (a tabula rasa,
I say, always eager to nudge his vocabulary,) and you let the author
work his/her magic on you as you immerse yourself in the writing. A
good author brings something fresh to every chapter, something new is
revealed, something old is borrowed.But a serial, by definition, is constrained, which is why so many of
Volume II’s are so disappointing. Rowling avoided the disappointments
magisterially, and was constantly inventive, constantly juggling the
many, many balls of her plot, constantly tying up or connecting loose
ends from previous novels. In this she was masterful and it worked well
through five books. VI and VII?…well…I tell D. to avoid cliches in his nascent writing (which he does a
lot of,) because cliches are like the wormholes in that apple, empty
but assertive. And, I continue, in an epic spanning, oh, what, some
3,500+ pages, how could an author not create her own cliches?
You start noticing these. I mention that, inevitably, the freshness
disappears, like taking another bite of the apple you’re saving for
some reason from the day before. Inevitably you see constructs seen
before, plot lines mentioned two volumes before, conceits you noted
three books ago. Formulas emerge…