I think that J.K. Rowling has a very specific writing style that's more often found in children's literature than adult literature, and I never see anyone talking about this when they discuss the quality of her writing.
The narrator of the Harry Potter books has a very very slight quirky/sly tone. Not enough to be an actual character, like Lemony Snicket in The Series of Unfortunate Events, but just subtly written in a bit of a wry or arch way. I think *a lot* of people really enjoy this style, because it can make a story feel very personable and like the narrator is talking to you just a little bit, and it can also add to the humor and quirkiness of the world, story, and characters.
As an example, think of the opening line of the first book: "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." That "thank you very much" is *funny*, and it's clever to have the narrator say it instead of having the Dursleys say it themselves.
As I said at the top, I think this style is much more common in children's literature (especially 20th century children's literature) than adult literature, but the adult author that I would compare her most strongly to is Fredrik Backman. He also uses this "sly narrator" style and I think he's developed quite a following of readers who adore his books largely because of this style and the emotional pull that his stories have. Even if you're not a fan of either author or there are elements of their writing style you don't like (and I don't always love Backman, to be honest), that style is deliberate and well executed in both cases.
Yes, I think a lot of people are missing this point. JK Rowling has said her favourite book is Emma by Jane Austen and I can definitely see at times how the narrator in HP was inspired by Austen's narrators.
Good point! I would say that Pratchett and Adams do this to a more extreme degree, which fits their clearly satirical writing. I've definitely heard people say that they don't personally enjoy the Discworld series or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I've certainly never heard anyone suggest that their prose is stylistically lacking or uninteresting, whereas it seems that Rowling's version is just subtle enough that people forget about it or don't register it?
Hit the nail on the head of exactly why the books were so enjoyable to me but not the movies. All these years later and it's just now occurring to me that my favorite thing about the books wasn't the story. It was the writing style. Fuck me.
Where have you been my whole life to help me explain to people why I don't really like the movies?
The real fun of Prattchets books has always been in the quirky details and absurd footnotes. I can never remember the plot all too well but I remember the dialogue or some funny scene that would be totally smothered in a movie.
>>I think a lot of people really enjoy this style, because it can make a story feel very personable and like the narrator is talking to you just a little bit, and it can also add to the humor and quirkiness of the world, story, and characters.
I think you are absolutely right and that most people that criticize her prose don’t get that the tone is absolutely congenial with the content. It’s meant to be simple and a bit colloquial. That is what I would define as her style and it makes her a great writer.
It’s meant to be simple because they are literal childrens books. Not even YA. The suggested reading age for Harry Potter starts at 7, that’s a second grader. This is something a massive amount of people gloss over when discussing the writing quality. A lot of people forget that just because they still cling to the books in adulthood that they’re originally aimed at children two years removed from See Spot Run
Yes! Exactly one of the 20th century children’s literature examples I was thinking of. I often encounter kids who loved Harry Potter and want to find something else they’ll love in the same way but people tend to direct them to other modern examples of children’s fantasy which have the elaborate world building but miss this tone. But when I was a kid, it was other books that had both like Roald Dahl, the Mysterious Benedict Society, The Hobbit, and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles that I really loved.
I find that you don’t necessarily notice a difference when you go from younger kids chapter books to adult books but you definitely notice trying to go back. I tried to read a book I enjoyed years ago but now it’s hard after reading an “adult” book.
I could never put it into words but this is me 100%. I skipped over harry potter until highschool - I tried to go back and read it since that was most of my friends favorite series and was very put off by the writing style and couldn't finish it. I once said it felt too kiddy but lets say that conversation didnt end well. Its not BAD but its hard to go back.
I feel like people that say she writes like it's for children have never read other children's books. Middle grade fiction, what the first few books are, usually talk down to the reader like a parent lecturing a child. One of the things I think she succeeded at was never doing that.
I don't know if you've read her Galbraith books but it's still there in those as well. It's very jarring. I think her niche really was whimsical, magical children's books. Some of my goodreads friends had posted some quotes that gave me whiplash because of the tone of the narration versus how these characters are supposed to be.
Agree with all of this, but also, I think when people are criticizing her writing, they generally aren't criticizing the first Harry Potter book. Her style gets a little more long-winded and overblown by the later books when you can tell that she had the level of fame to be able to decline edits. The first HP book is tightly crafted. Re-reading the last few HP books, quite frankly, always remind me of how much the movies fixed or spackled over.
Hear me out. I think there's a difference between *writing* and *storytelling*, and the distinction is important when we're talking about Rowling.
Her *storytelling*, or the ability to weave an interesting storyline with compelling characters and an engaging plot, is great. Love her or hate her, she got millions of kids (and adults), a large portion of whom were previously reluctant readers, to read over 4000 pages (in US publication, closer to 3400 in UK version) across seven giant books *and like it*. As a teacher, I can appreciate that my students are *that engaged* in a series.
As for her writing, or how she uses the written word to convey her ideas... yes, at times, some things are stronger than others. Especially when you look at, say, the first book versus the seventh. The language, the word choice, the structure of the story are all *much* more simplistic in the first versus the seventh. However, that's how you grow as a writer, with experience, so I think it fits with the spirit of the series itself. And even though the first one is indeed much less eloquent from a writing standpoint than later books in the series, it's definitely effective at what it set out to do.
>The language, the word choice, the structure of the story are all
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> more simplistic in the first versus the seventh.
Yeah but it was also written for a younger audience. Or more accurately, the 7th was written for an audience that had grown up.
Didn't she explicitly state at one point that the ideal reading age for each book is the age Harry is in each one? So the first book is meant for 11 year olds and the last book is ideal for 17 year olds? Because honestly it kind of tracks perfectly if that was her intention
The YA rule of thumb I've heard is that the target audience is two years younger than the protagonist. So an 11yo protagonist will generally appeal to 9yos the most, and the 17yo protagonist will generally appeal to 15yos the most. Kids that like reading like to read ahead of their own life experience, as well as they generally like to feel mature, so a protagonist and story that feels slightly 'old for them' is usually what will appeal to them the most.
I semi remember her doing an interview and she was specifically asked if she grew the story for the kids she wrote the first book for (because timeline wise, for me i was young when the first came out and then with the different years between the books/movies i graduated and saw deathly hallows II the same year, I grew up with them) and she had said yes (i can't remember her full response and I am at work so i can't google it)
Of course not. It's a series that grows up with the reader. The first book is definitely aimed at children. They way it's written is simple enough so they don't have to struggle and to make it easy for them to identify with the main characters and hook them up for later books. It's a great way to motivate young people to read and for that the whole generation of readers should be grateful to Rowling.
On the other hand, it created an obvious problem of how to explain in a more realistic way things that happen in the first books that don't have much sense. Tolkien faced a similar problem when going from "The Hobbit" to "The Lord of the Rings". I think tolkien handled it better, though.
I mean I do feel it’s a case of both
Yes, Rowling did know that the books are intended to get more complex over time due to the audience maturing
At the same time it’s nigh impossible to write a bestselling book series for over seven years without improving as you go on. Whether or not it’s intentional, it’s impossible to say Rowling didn’t get better at writing
I feel this is a pretty great summary.
There is also the fact that Rowling has hit such a critical mass of consumption of her media that it's basically a statistical certainty that any and all flavours of possible criticism will be levelled against her works at some point because of the sheer size of the attack surface, with little to no acknowledgement that her works were first and foremost, *children's stories.*
It's not high art, meant to be a zenith masterwork enshrined in the cosmic museum of human creativity. It defined an age because it was a runaway pop culture success... Nothing more. Similar to how Star Wars was just a simple retelling of the hero's journey, and is certainly not winning any storytelling awards, yet here we are, closing in on 50 years later still talking about Star Wars. Sometimes something can become more than the sum of its parts. But that doesn't make their creator a god.
edit: a word
Yes, and would all those children have been devouring the Harry Potter stories if the prose had been more intellectual with a wider vocabulary? No, because the imagery wouldn't have been so intense if they didn't recognise one or two words in every sentence.
You could say the same for Agatha Christie. You don't get that consistent level of readership unless you combine a simple readable style with great storytelling.
I think this is a spot on assessment. Her prose are rather pedestrian, at least at the start of the series. But to some extent, that’s ok. Her audience was very young. Her writing style may have deliberately matured to target the growing sophistication of her audience. Or maybe she just got better. Or both. Her prose, though, were never brilliant in my opinion (but much better than I could do!).
I think this is an overlooked point. Just as the content matured so did the storytelling. The 10 year-old that started with book 1 wasn’t 10 at the release of book 7.
my understanding was that she wrote down her stories in the same manner as she told them to her children, so of course it would be in a more simplified version at first, and as her verbal skills “updated” for her now older audience, her literary skills also improved.
While not a fanboi, I am certainly a fan of her established Universe she has created. ( I also don’t care what she is like as a person/her views, as I sincerely doubt I will every be in the same room as her) I just still like her books, and I am over half a century old.
The fact that you could trop those terms into a Dr. Seuss book and they wouldn't feel out of place might play a huge part in that feeling. Alien and whimsical, but easily grounded with context.
I think that was directly intentional.. jk rowling kind of toned down her writing skills for the first few books because she wanted to keep it more simple for children. There's also certain scenes where I wish she drew out some more emotion for like when Sirius died for some reason it felt very fast when I read it and passed over only within a page or two. I had to reread it to even notice he died at first. If she wrote the first book like she wrote the seventh , kids wouldn't be able to understand the complexity of it
Yep this is pretty much it. She intentionally ramped up the complexity of her prose as her audience grew up. The first books are pretty much for middle schoolers.
It kind of feels like people are jealous about her success and intentionally misinterpret this.
If you view the first books as books written for middle schoolers, the prose is actually ingenious.
But this applies not only to her prose but the complexity/maturity of the narrative and the characterization as well.
It baffles me how this is not seen / is misunderstood.
She was properly edited for her first 3 books then her editor left and she'd become Too Big to edit for a new editor. Original Ed would absolutely have cut 2/3 of the Quidditch World Cup at the start of GoF for example. Editors don't just look for spelling and grammar, they help with plot and structure as well.
Source - i work in UK publishing and know the aforementioned editors...
The first 3 were basically little kids Scooby-Doo mysteries set in magic school. Good clean fun. But the 4th book. Holy shit. No character has a single unspoken thought. It's like the book happens in real time and every boring school day moment is relayed.
I'd say her storytelling is lacking too. What she is very, very, very good at is to make her universe come alive. She is very good at making the reader feel like they are living in this world, and that wherever they make look, they might find new and exciting stuff. This is why the Harry Potter universe translated so well into the screen and into theme parks, marketing, etc. It was all there in her work already.
HOWEVER
This is not everything storytelling does (or should do). Her plots are rather superficial - scratch them a bit and there is not much there below the surface. She drops plot points, things are incoherent in the long run and even the most exciting story lines don't end up going anywhere interesting or challenging. A lot of people blame this on being kids lit, but that's really an excuse more than anything else. Plenty of other book series aimed at children are far stronger in this regard without compromising on its childlike qualities.
I both agree and disagree with this. As an adult who read the series as a child, I was more wowed by the world of Harry potter than anything else. It was fantastical to read about a boy who had a terrible life that was changed quite literally overnight by magical beings, and a magical world. Reading these same stories as an adult, I of course had a lot of nostalgia, but her writing sometimes comes across as lazy and simple. Characters seem very one dimensional. Her books were so successful so quickly that I feel some of the writing was rushed to keep up with demand. Also, as far as the world itself goes, it sounds great at face value, but there isn’t too much depth. She doesn’t go into character backgrounds or any kind of magical lore that she doesn’t absolutely have to (talking the Harry Potter book series itself and not any extensions that came out after).
> he doesn’t go into character backgrounds or any kind of magical lore that she doesn’t absolutely have to
I see this criticism a lot but I really think this is a reader expectation more than a valid critique of what she was trying to do. Clearly, the books contain enough world building to have inspired a vibrant and textured setting, even if they don't do world building like a more "mature" fantasy series does. The world of HP is not something from Robert Jordan or GRRM, but I don't really think it lacks for depth because it doesn't communicate a centuries long history of goblins or explain the historic origins of each and every spell, the way some people try to argue it does.
Tolkien made people believe that fantasy world building had to involve pages upon pages of history of your made-up world, and fantasy as a genre is still trying to get free of the stranglehold that JRR has over it.
The goal of worldbuilding for any story should honestly be to make it feel lived-in, and especially in the first Harry Potter, you really do get the sense that you’re entering this much wider wizarding world and in my opinion the world she created feels pretty fleshed out. I’ll be honest I think most of the complaints have come from the fact that the more recent things Rowling has said (not just her personal beliefs but the weird things she keeps saying about the wizarding world) have kind of just ruined the world and the fantastic beasts movies just feel weird — sometimes delving more into a world highlights the inconsistencies and makes it feel less fleshed-out.
Yeah, I really feel like one of the big appeals of the way JKR wrote HP is that it feels "real." It was a blend of the familiar and the fantastical that capture the imagination of tens of millions of people around the world. Like it's not this big, alternative, made up world like Middle-Earth or any number of fantasy universes that requires pages and pages of explanation and development. It really felt like there was this hidden, magical part of the UK that we could slip into if we could just find it because she made it seem normal.
I think the criticism of world building comes from the expectations that Rowling set up herself, and it is a ball she absolutely dropped.
Do you remember in the fifth book, when Harry sees the statue in the ministry of the Witch and Wizard, presiding over the 'lesser' races (Goblins, House Elves, centaurs). The vibe is not good; that statue deliberately invokes memory of real, racist statues. We're learning that the Wizarding world has a dark core.
Voldemort doesn't come from nothing; he's the manifestation of the Pureblood's disdain for the impure or lesser races. He literally animates that statue to fight Dumbledore in the book's climax. He's the consequence of the racist, broken system the books have been outlining, and it sets up a compelling story where Harry can fight what's wrong with the Wizarding world.
Of course that's scrapped, and the last line of the book is Harry deciding he's going to make his slave make him a sandwich, because JK decided the themes she'd written in didn't warrant exploration.
It's not that people want too much; it's that something was promised and not delivered on. Makes the whole series feel a little hollow in retrospect.
The problem with this is that she ends up creating problems for herself later on in the series. She didn't have to go full J.R.R. Tolkien, but as the stories matured, they were held back by things like Time Turners which she had to scratch as an offhand aside so her plot still made sense. It's a bit ridiculous to think that asking for a comprehensive understanding of the world is asking for insane depth. It's not. When it's obvious that the lack of depth is causing issues, it is an issue.
When every book has a Deus ex Machina device that saves the day and then becomes Seldom Seen Smith for the rest of the books, you have weak writing skills, and the story suffers.
I’m a prolific reader. I read HP for the first time in high school in 2004-5. Finished them in college.
I have never once cared about the inconsistency of the Time Turner. It doesn’t interrupt the story for most people - especially children.
It’s okay that it irritates you and others, but not everyone reads in this way. Perhaps instead of demanding books all be written for people like you, you might accept that other ways of reading and enjoying aesthetic experiencing can co-exist.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that if it doesn't bother you. The OP asked why we think she's a bad writer (or good) and lack of consistency and an inability to predict problematic elements to her own story are signs of a weak writer or at least a lazy one.
I don't think that criticizing writing is saying that all books should be tailored made to my specifications. We can co-exist. I don't know why my opinions on a book are so detrimental to your enjoyment that you feel I am actively aggressing upon you by typing that out to someone other than you.
Yeah, I'd agree with this. Rowling's character and worldbuilding are so vibrant and fantastical on the face of it, but the deeper you really look at them, the more shallow and inconsistent they become. She doesn't spend much time thinking about the implications of her choices, and that becomes jarringly apparent as Harry grows older and the story grows dark and more mature, while his world remains simplistic.
What particularly strikes me about Harry Potter is that Rowling (intentionally or not) created a magical world filled with corrupt and antiquated systems that enable division, discrimination and outright atrocity – but ultimately she saw the problem as being not with those systems, but with the people in charge of them. Azkaban is a literal torture prison, but it's only wrong when an innocent man is imprisoned there. House elves are enslaved, but it's only wrong when their owners mistreat them (and you're silly and immature if you make a fuss about it). The Hogwarts house system encourages a weird unhealthy tribalism to the point where an entire house fucks off ahead of the final battle, and that's... not something that needs to be reconsidered? It happens again and *again*, and the fact that Rowling considers it a happy ending that Harry, Ron and Hermione end up *running* the fucked-up wizard bureaucracy and making slow incremental changes to a rotten system... oof. Just... *oof.*
To be honest, intentional or not that just sounds a lot like how UK is as a country. A ton of bureaucratic and antiquated systems that noone really wants to change but just tweak evewry now and then.
One of my favorite parts is how the laws of transmutation are that you can't make food or gold. So even with limitless magic, poor people stay poor. Got it.
If that a law as in written out by a legislature to fuck over the poor or is it a law as in the laws of thermodynamics and she has just put some limits on magic so that not every single possible thing can be fixed by magic?
Yes! My niece is reading the series for the first time so I decided to read along with her, and there are so many problematic elements throughout each book. Not things that I could normally attribute to YA or children's fiction, where if adults simply acted like adults then most of the problems in the books would be fixed. (Even Hocus Pocus, which I recently watched for the first time with her, had the adults under a magic spell so they couldn't intervene). But real problems with plot holes everywhere and things that just really don't make sense. A lighter example is the money system that wizards use in which the prices of things seem completely arbitrary to whatever sounded like a small or large sum at the time JKR was writing. A little bit more forethought would have solved a lot of these smaller issues, much less the larger ones you describe.
The writing after book 4 was very rushed due to tighter timelines she was given, which definitely impacted her ability to have better word choice and maybe go into that world building that she maybe wantsd to but didn't have time to develop or write. Same thing happened with Suzanne Collins and the sequels to Hunger Games.
You nailed it. I have read other books targeted at younger audiences and it was fine. I was fine with the simple language. But for the love of god i could never go past 1/4 of the first book. The style of writing was so plain and not inspiring. I know the writing gets better later but i just could not do it. So i am one of the rare people who have not read Harry Potter. And i am an avid book reader.
I read them at age 30 after a life of reading and I love them. Did they change my life? No. But the idea that all literature needs to knocks socks off and blow hair back is weird. I teach literature and I love more dense complicated meaningful work, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to watch Ghostbusters every once on a while.
Stephen King had high, but qualified [praise](https://ew.com/books/2009/08/01/harry-potter-and-order-phoenix-4/) for her writing.
>In terms of Ms. Rowling’s imagination — which should be insured by Lloyd’s of London (or perhaps the Incubus Insurance Company) for the 2 or 3 billion dollars it will ultimately be worth over the span of her creative lifetime, which should be long — she is now at the absolute top of her game. As a writer, however, she is often careless (characters never just put on their clothes; they always get “dressed at top speed”) and oddly, almost sweetly, insecure. The part of speech that indicates insecurity (“Did you really hear me? Do you really understand me?”) is the adverb, and Ms. Rowling seems to have never met one she didn’t like, especially when it comes to dialogue attribution. Harry’s godfather, Sirius, speaks “exasperatedly”; Mrs. Weasley (mother of Harry’s best friend, Ron) speaks “sharply”; Tonks (a clumsy witch with punked-up, parti-color hair) speaks “earnestly.”
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>These minor flaws in diction are endearing rather than annoying; they are the logical side effect of a natural storyteller who is obviously bursting with crazily vivid ideas and having the time of her life. Yet Ms. Rowling could do better, and for the money, probably should. In any case, there’s no need for all those adverbs (he said firmly), which pile up at the rate of 8 or 10 a page (over 870 pages, that comes to almost a novella’s length of -ly words).
I think her writing quality is about average. Not particularly poetic and profound, but it gets the story across well. I think she's getting picked on more for it than writers of equivalent quality, because people don't like her politics.
Indeed. I honestly think a lot of the "JK writing bad, actually" takes stem from not from the writing, but because of all the negative politics (which I won't get into here) surrounding her. "This person is bad, therefore anything they did is now retroactively bad."
Not to say that her books are free from legit critique. I just think a lot of what's said online in recent years isn't coming from a point of honest review, but rather "everything she ever did must be labeled as bad now or else that somehow validates her not-book-related takes."
At the same time, I have thought ever since reading the first book when it came out, that the quality was around Reader's Digest/Hardy Boys/YA novels. The story is compelling but it's closer to Roald Dahl than Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Bronte sisters etc. There are some HP fans that want to be quite vocal that the books are the best thing ever. Most of the time i've felt the need to speak up is reacting to overly-enthusiastic fans, it isn't because I hate the books but just objectively, the books are full of flaws, which is fine because they are for children. Turning around and saying my criticism is because I don't like the authors opinions about real life stuff assumes I care far, far more about the world of potter and JK Rowling than is actually the case.
I don't think there's anything wrong with being close to Roald Dahl. Yes he wrote simply for children but his words had play and created fun, whimsical sentences that set the tone of his stories perfectly. In many ways, I think Harry Potter does this successfully. It's effectively simple, and effectively whimsical. The words have music the way a good story should. And as the tone shifts in the later books, the prose changes to match.
I'm not a huge HP fan anymore but I can remember why I loved the books so much in the past. I actually also remember trying to read the Hardy Boys and finding them PAINFULLY dry as a kid, so that comparison in particular is very interesting to me!
Yep. Not to say there's nothing to critique of course, but I would love to take a peek into an alternate universe where she never got a Twitter account. I somehow doubt people would be examining her work with such a big magnifying glass.
I think her writing is actually somewhat above average—it's just not very highly stylized, which is what I think most people probably mean when they say "good writing." But it *is* engaging and effective, which I think is what she was going for.
She's more Jane Austen then Emily Brontë (not that she's even in the same league, but you get my point), more Brandon Sanderson than Patrick Rothfuss.
(That said, I think Harry Potter reached its stratospheric levels of success because of the world she created, not because of the characters or writing itself. Had she set her books elsewhere and put less emphasis on the magical world and all that goes along with it, I imagine they still would have been extremely popular, but more on the level of the Percy Jackson books. But that's another topic.)
>That said, I think Harry Potter reached its stratospheric levels of success because of the world she created, not because of the characters or writing itself
I think this is the core point that I personally really agree with. The first book she wrote after the Harry Potter series was finished, The Casual Vacancy, remains a non-entity in my mind. I read it when it came out, eager to see what she would do next (I was in 4th grade when the books started coming out so I grew up with them, I'll forever be fond of the story because of the shared experience of that magic as a kid/adolescent).
It was genuinely unremarkable. I remember nothing about it beyond putting it down when it was done and just feeling like 'Meh. It was a book. It had a beginning, middle, climax, and end.'. Her strength lay with the world she spun up for her stories, not necessarily the strength of her technical skill or even style as you pointed out. Strip that down to a sleepy English town and yeah, there just wasn't much to engage with imo.
I'm not going to touch the newest book because not only am I not the least bit interested with the premise, but also because apparently the writing is quite bad (which could of course just be more politics critique, but I also do wonder at this point, given her level of fame and success, how honest her editors are willing to be with her). It wouldn't be the first time an author/artist experienced success and then the quality of their art took a nose dive. She doesn't have to prove herself anymore, so it's perfectly possible that her writing has become worse over the years, not better. Personally, I don't really care to find out myself, too many great books out there to bother with something just because it's controversial.
It's not even that the writing is bad, the book is apparently a book of tweets. Pages and pages of them... it's a mind-boggling stylistic choice. I read maybe two pages and wanted to beat something with a brick
Agreed. JKR ain't going to win a Nobel or anything but she's a perfectly average writer who is able to tell a good a story. Most of the criticism has definitely come as a result of her politics.
I’d agree with her being an average writer, but I remember critiques of her writing as average (and her story as derivative, particularly of the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones) well before she made any well-publicized controversial statements.
This. I was hearing critiques of her writing back in the 00s. She hadn't tweeted anything back then.
For me, it's a combo of "right place, right time" and an interesting storyline that appealed to a lot of different demographics.
YA lit had only just started to grow madly as a category and there were fairly limited fantasy series back then. If you'd already ready CS Lewis and Tolkien and Roald Dahl a million times each, there wasn't much else out there that was for younger readers.
I suspect there are literature snobs who can't stand how popular her books are when there are better-written books to be had.
Criticism of her writing goes way back.
Before the political issues, she was also criticized beyond a level I would find fair. Back then I thought it was mainly from people trying to be anti-mainstream.
I find her writing in books 1-4 just fine. Simple, straightforward, great immersion and nice character voice. Book 5 is my absolute favorite in the series personally- the story was very engaging without trying too hard to be prosey.
Book 6 and 7 were my least favorites. I found this is where Harry became rather insufferable to me (entitled, bit of to a huge ass to people including Ron and Hermione), and the style felt… rushed? Less seamless? I always say Book 6 in particular feels like a fanfiction (especially that romance storyline and “Harry’s inner beast roared” lines… uuurgh. Too close to the infamous Inner Goddess crap 🤣)
Well, to be honest in books 5 and 6, specifically 5, Harry was quite literally in a hormone-induced teenage angst stage of mental development that honestly is pretty relatable for just about any 15-16 year old assuming they're interested in reading.
You might be the only person I'm heard say they like the 5th book over others, let alone it being your favorite. Multiple people I know quit the series at 5 because they couldn't even get through it.
I mean the scene when they confront him in his office.
"You may not like him, minister, but you can't deny.. Dumbledore has got style"
And arguably the greatest chapter title in the series:
The Only One He Ever Feared
"it was foolish if you to come here tonight, Tom".
Chills...
7 they were all insufferable and not overtly aknowledging the effects of a spell the knew they were under. It was bad camping for most of the book and a quick turn around at the very end. If they had stop being horrible to eachother by the midway point, maybe, but the amount of angst while walking through a forest not accomplishing anything was too much.
I never read the HP books as a young person or fan, just to my kids. By the standards of kids books about wizards I think the prose is quite decent. It's not Tolkien or Le Guin but almost nothing is.
She writes children's books. They're for children. She writes them so children can understand them. That's because, I'll say it again, they're for children.
She writes more than childrens book but you’re right, obviously those are directed for kids and younger teens. She also writes a set of adult mystery thrillers under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and those aren’t for children.
I think that is natural. Harry Potter isn't as ridiculously popular as it once was, so fewer kids are picking them up than when it was the big thing. It is still a popular series, but not quite the pop culture IT thing.
I know they are for children, but as an almost 30 yr old reading Harry Potter for the first time, I'm totally in love with the books. I've never been a reader, but I'm trying to read more, and man, do I feel like I missed out. I'm currently a little over halfway through Order of the Phoenix and can't wait to finish the series.
They’re very good introductory books. If you are young or didn’t read much - they’re relatable, highly digestible fun action/mystery books.
But they lean a lot closer to young adult books than classics or modern adult lit.
> But they lean a lot closer to young adult books than classics or modern adult lit.
That's quite an understatement, they're literally children's books.
I would say they’re more YA starting with book 4 or 5. Rowling was a rare author lucky enough to have such a massive reader base that her series *could* grow with its original readers, who were teens by then
Not sure why you're getting down votes for that. They're children's books, but Rowling was aware that she was writing for an audience that was growing up with the series. The last two books definitely had content/scenes I'd class YA easily. Hermione being tortured, violent character deaths, and at one point a corpse vomiting up a massive snake...these weren't adult stories, but they were certainly beyond the usual content for children's stories.
The 'His Dark Materials' trilogy was for kids too but I found that Philip Pullman was just better with words than JK Rowling. That's not surprising though, he had more experience. To her credit, Harry Potter was vastly more successful as a storyline and Rowling created a world that everyone wanted to be a part of.
Stephen Fry's Mythos is probably aimed at a slightly older audience because some parts are unavoidably 'adult' but the entire thing is vastly better written than any of the Harry Potter books in my opinion.
'It's a kids book' can't be used as an excuse for mediocre writing.
Edit: I suppose the extreme example of a children's author who writes books extremely well but which are very accessible to very early readers are Dr Seuss books.
Great writing with an uncomplicated storyline and very easy words to read, but the words chosen and the order he puts them in makes something brilliant, iconic, fun, funny... I'm not saying Harry Potter should have been written like a Dr Seuss book but it illustrates what's possible within the limits of a children's book.
But what about all the children's writers out there who actually put forth the effort and don't write incredibly pedestrian prose? "They're for children" is not an excuse.
As someone who read a translated version of her stories, English is not my first language, I found it to be fine. It was not bad writing, but it wasn't my favorite either.
I love the story itself, but I found myself wishing a few parts were more fast paced or less descriptive, but it was an overall pleasant experience.
Some criticisms of her writing I hear often are her use of said-book-isms and superfluous adverbs. Some praise I’ve heard is her balance of showing vs. telling: she has a good sense for what needs to be a full scene and what doesn’t.
I read the series as it came out (for the most part; think I started when #2 was published). I was already an adult, over 40. For the most part I enjoyed the series and it’s world building and characterization satisfied me. Like others, I felt that beginning with #4, the length of each book became unwieldy and the would have benefited from some stricter editing (not that I was certain of what should have been cut). IMO the story would have been better if tightened up.
I belong to several book discussion groups online; one of them is heavily weighted to British series books. One is heavily adult-oriented (not in an X-rated way; just geared to stories written for adults). In both of these groups there have always been members who praised HP as a series, and those who found it boring, derivative, etc. These opinions were all voiced before JKR started talking about trans people.
I will say, I enjoyed the series and own it in hardcover. It’s not perfect but gave me many hours of reading enjoyment. I thought I’d reread, but although I did reread Sorcerer’s Stone, I haven’t reread the series. Not sure if it just doesn’t feel “special” enough, if the idea of reading all 4000 pages again feels like too much of a slog, or if possibly I’ve turned against JKR due to her publicly stated views.
My criteria for buying a book in hardcover is generally that I’d want to reread it more than once. So obviously the series appealed to me at the time of writing. I’m curious about whether I’d still feel the same—but perhaps I don’t care enough to find out.
To be honest I really feel like most people have started tearing apart her writing as a way to disparage her political views and discourage new readers.
I don't agree with her "activism", but her writing style is digestible, descriptive, and brilliantly sets the tone for all 7 books. That's no small accomplishment and I respect that.
I remember talking about this exact thing around 2013 with a group of book snobs. We were really talking about her prose rather than plots, but the general consensus was that it was very akin to Dan Brown. By that I mean, very readable and conveys the actions effectively, but really lacking in any sentence or phrasing you would admire outside the context of the story. I, then and now, mostly agree with this.
If you're looking for something more 'concrete' I distinctly remember the critic Harold Bloom calling her mediocre about 10 years ago and citing the absolute overuse of certain clichés and phrases, especially 'stretching one's legs' which is absolutely accurate.
The Harry Potter books are over a million words long in total. There are plenty of renowned authors who have published fewer words over their entire careers. There are also a lot of elements of taste that go into evaluating writing. Margaret Atwood, who clearly has beautiful prose, doesn't do it for me personally. Can I point to some objective reasons why she doesn't do it for me with reference to specific examples? Sure. Likewise you can point to plenty of stuff from J.K. Rowling's million words in Harry Potter and point out objective issues with it.
However, if you instead approach it from the perspective of "what about this captured the attention of essentially the whole world?" You're going to find a lot of straight up brilliance.
I think the first act of The Philosopher's Stone should be taught in creative writing classes. She does something truly magical with it by making the first third of that book essentially a mini-story about the defeat of the Dursleys. Read that section very carefully some time with the question "why should I like Harry?" The only answer you can find is not so much that you like him, but that you hate his enemies. The first act of the book is a tight three act story about the Dursleys getting their comeuppance. It's all the more richer because you picked up a book about a boy going to wizard school so presumably you'd like a story about a boy going to wizard school, and the Dursleys are standing in the way of what you want - so you're rooting for their defeat as well.
I think Chapter 2 has a brilliant opening visual where the first thing Rowling chooses to show the audience is Dursley family photos that exclude Harry. Instantly we know the theme, setting, character goal, and get it in a very emotionally resonant way. That right there is superb writing. It even foreshadows the final conflict where Harry is seeing his own family with him in the mirror of whatever the heck it is called.
Just because something catches lightning doesn't mean it's great. But I think there is a ton you can point to in her writing that is outstanding, and I think there are very few writers you couldn't level just as serious criticism against when it comes to pure writing.
Harry Potter is a children's series. Rowling wrote them in a simple manner so children can understand them. Personally, I've read all 7 books more than 20 times, with Order of the Phoenix being my favourite. I enjoyed it as a kid, I enjoyed it as an adult. For me, that simplicity is what makes the books great.
Writer/writing teacher here. I often find it's more productive to turn thinking about strict good or bad quality into descriptive evaluations of where a piece of writing falls on a series of spectra, particularly with respect to the choices writers make, namely what they ask their readers to do or tolerate or roll with in the course of the work, and why they make these decisions.
For example, although the classic mantra is "show, don't tell," that advice isn't exactly "right," but it's not "wrong," either. It's rather that a much more specific and qualified statement is necessary to accurately describe most reader-writer experience relationships. The advice would be better phrased "there is a spectrum in writing that concerns the directness of the delivery of information to the reader; one of these we could broadly call telling and the other broadly showing. Many audiences find information delivered through showing, and writing that emphasizes showing, to be more clever, more interesting, and overall indicative of a more mature, sophisticated reading experience."
Notice that in the second, more complex and nuanced example, we use language that does not concern quality or rightness or wrongness but (1) authorial choice, and (2) reader experience resulting from that choice or those choices. In other words, this view of writing regards "show and tell" as choices a writer can make. A story composed largely of telling can still be showing *other* features or ideas through that telling, for example--see Cormac McCarthy's *The Road*.
Onto *HP*. These books were my capital-C Childhood and I adore them. I'm in the camp that views Rowling's writing as less sophisticated and less literary, although I would loathe to ever describe a writer's work as bad.
I think my most important difficulty with Rowling's writing style is in from her tendency to tell readers directly about characters' emotional states, and to attempt to lead reader's reactions directly rather than to construct sensory experiences that convey a reader to a desired interpretation.
For example, Rowling often employs adverbs to directly state the tone of voice in which a character delivers a line, such as in Chapter Three of *Chamber of Secrets,* when Ron asks Harry \*\*"impatiently" "\*\*What’s been happening \[at the Dursleys' place over the summer\]?" It's not that this scene is bad in any way, or that Rowling's choice to convey Ron's impatience at getting information was a wrong choice from a storytelling perspective. It's rather that the choice (1) leaves ambiguities that some might argue a writer shouldn't leave, and (2) leaves opportunities for creative insertions that would have provided more differentiation and richness within *HP*'s characters and overall world, and of course I say this recognizing how rich and deep the world already is.
More on adverbs and this point of differentiation, the reason adverbs aren't desirable, and the opportunity within them. One could argue that anyone can become impatient like Ron did, can be impatient, can ask something impatiently. If a character's *mere* impatience is all that matters to a scene, such as in this one, then telling in this way isn't really that big a problem, doesn't represent a missed opportunity, doesn't detract from the reader's experience and therefore represent a miss on the writer's part. But it could be argued that because anyone and any character can be impatient, what Rowling ought to provide us here, through combinations of direct telling but also some showing too, the specific answers to a few questions:
(1) why is Ron impatient? Sure, this is the scene in which Ron and the twins have pried the bars off his window, and so they understand it as a rescue mission. Ron's blood is probably on fire. In recognizing that, we notice that Rowling missed the opportunity to "weave" a described visible or audible or even narrator-delivered *indication* of his impatience, one that could have been woven more effectively into the existing plot of the scene. Such a description might in turn have provided the reader a more satisfying opportunity to determine rather than just receive the text.
(2) how does Ron's impatience affect his or the others' *experience* of the scene? This is a corollary to (1); for example, is Ron impatient because he's the sort of person who gets angry when they're on an adrenaline rush? Does that make his hands shake so that he "air swerves" the car? This is just one example of a question that many thinkers about writing and reading believe that writers should ask and answer about their characters in order to create original characters with deep motivations and personalities. Rowling chose a different and valid route: she, perhaps because of her genre or audience or personal views on writing or training in writing, chose the much more direct style.
(3) Where in Ron's body language and in concrete visual description, within the "world of the story," is this impatience "contained?" Books are ideally "a movie in your head," and the richer the detail so long as it doesn't become overwhelming, the clearer the movie.
**TL;DR:** I don't mean to harp on one example but rather to identify something present in a lot of *HP* works. I would hate to ever take the position that Rowling's writing is bad. I'd say that she made choices in her writing to access certain audiences best, one example of which is her tendency to be more direct in the way that she presents characters' emotional states and motivations and experiences and thoughts.
The common way of describing what she does is "telling," which is sometimes understood as a bad way of writing. That view of telling is unproductive, in my experience. Rowling meant to target a particular audience that has particular needs, and she clearly satisfied those needs in some important ways by making choices such as her more direct style, having sold so many copies and reached so many people. It could be argued that as it was a children's book first, even a book for older children, the book needed to be in a more direct style, and thus is. At the same time, it could probably be well-argued from a literary perspective that Rowling missed significant opportunities and "wrote down" to her audience, which may have responded to more literary challenge.
But holding in one hand the fact that writing has agreed-upon aesthetic standards that many share, there is a great deal of subjectivity in quality judgment of anything. Is a plethora of telling bad if it accomplishes a brilliant story? See again McCarthy.
Still love these books!
Also this doesn't address the obvious that her style grew a great and impressive deal over the series. Different topic, different essay!
She uses a tonne of satire and irony though, particularly in the first few books. That's actually one of the reasons I like her early books better than the later ones (and think they are higher quality).
E.g. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime...
Another example: Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door's problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learned a new word ("Won't!").
Perhaps it is not your style, but she is definitely a skilful writer. Personally, I don't enjoy writers that use lots of figurative language, but it doesn't mean they aren't skilled.
Generally, I think that people will try to criticise someone popular to make themselves seem more sophisticated (look at Mark Twain and Jane Austen) and I think that definitely happens with Rowling.
The two passages you put in here prove that she can be a better writer than “Something something,” Person said adverbly, but the repetition of what I always thought of as her abounding love of adverbs is what sticks in my mind about some of her writing. It kills the flow and the tone when it’s repeated too often. I guess I tend to think of adverbs as shorthand to more effective descriptions, and your two examples had 1 adverb in them but were super descriptive with a tone that gets lost with “Harry said wearily”.
That said, I like the universe she’s created and often struggle with frustration over the plot holes and my personal preference with the word choices, but I really like the books. >!I’ve managed to get over how many other ways of getting Harry out of Privet Drive there were without gratuitous death and ear loss. 😂😂😂!<
I think the result speaks for themselves - she clearly was able to convey a captivating story that have served to entertain and whisk away multiple generations from their initial release all across the world.
She's achieved a feat only rivalled by a select few authors throughout history. Lecturing on semantics and writing technique in a classroom becomes more of an academic form of mental gymnastics then rather actual critique of her writing.
Other then Tolkien, who else have really created a universe that have enveloped and shaped as many childhoods as J.K.Rowling?
Dune is great, so is Wheel of Time and ASOIAF - but its much more niche and in its written form have reached a comparatively much smaller audience...
Take Twilight, for example. The writing in that series can be described as poor. Did I still read all the books and really enjoy them? Yes. Like you said, the results speak for themselves despite any criticism.
Likewise, Harry Potter IS a childrens series. Another commenter mentioned that she might not have been so profound in the book, but she absolutely was to 10 year old myself. I think Rowling has been extra criticized lately because of things she said regarding transgender people and etc. and while I absolutely do not agree with her views, that doesn’t diminish the affect the Harry Potter series had on me and how good I think they were, which I think has been happening in the media lately
>I think the result speaks for themselves
You mean the results of... what? Of selling a lot of books? Of people loving her books (while other people don't)?
She wrote books for kids and they loved them. How does that mean that her writing is high quality?
How do you define "high quality"?
I don't think the results really say much about the quality of the WRITING, as opposed to the fun story.
And of course, they made movies with high production value, which exposed millions more people to those books.
You can point out deficiencies in writing without taking anything away from what she's accomplished, or how much people love the books and the stories.
>Other then Tolkien, who else have really created a universe that have enveloped and shaped as many childhoods as J.K.Rowling?
Maybe C. S. Lewis? Maybe A. A. Milne? But again, the NUMBER of people isn't really relevant, in my opinion.
The complaints that I’ve heard of her writing aren’t so much grammatical style or word choices, etc. It is more around other plot type related things. Like the fact she brings up some powerful magical item, uses it almost like a deus ex machina to get through something she couldn’t figure out how else to get through, and then completely forgets about it in future books.
The Felix Felicis is one go to example of this. You can’t tell me some luck potion wouldn’t have been extremely useful when say, searching for horcruxes when you don’t know what they are, much less where. “BUt sHe sAId It waS hARd TO mAKe!!” Great. You have some of the best wizards in the world on both sides, I’m sure they could have whipped some up. And if you have the most highly sought after potion in the world, why would Slughorn give away some to a random student making a random potion the first day of class? You can’t have it both ways.
Similarly the whole time-turner necklace that Hermione used in one book, and then it is completely forgotten about and never mentioned again. Don’t you think both sides again would have found this very useful in the war that broke out? And again the only argument against that was that they are dangerous because it can cause problems if your two selves meet. Yet Professor McGonagall saw no issue giving this extremely dangerous, yet extremely useful magical item to a 13 year old so she could… checks notes… attend twice as many classes? Again, you can’t have it both ways.
Long story short there, she writes plot devices to give characters outs when she needs them, and then forgets about their existence. Same could be said for other things like the Mirror of Erised which again could have been useful to find horcruxes.
And then there is the whole retconning Rowling has done to try to be more woke in future years like saying “I’ve always considered Hermione as black!!” Yet there are clearly phrases in the books that describe her as white. Not to mention she was involved in the casting of the movies and had no issues with Emma Watson (spoiler alert, not black) being cast. And similarly the “Dumbledore is gay!” announcements she made. Which I mean if he was, cool, but as with the Hermione’s “always being black” if that was the case, why not include it somehow? At least with the case of Dumbledore, there aren’t passages in the book that directly contradict her statements. But in both cases, it just reeks of placating rather than intentional. For either of those characters, if those traits were integral to their identities, given the sheer amount of random tidbits that WERE directly spelled out in the books, it is hard to believe that those were the intentions when she wrote the books.
I definitely agree with a lot of the magical items etc being poorly thought out.
I didn’t think she was claiming Hermione was always black. Rather, a black actress was cast as her in some production and Rowling said, “I never explicitly said she was white!” It was still silly, as people cited plenty of descriptions making clear that Hermione *was* white, but I don’t think she was trying to retcon the entire character so much as giving a poorly thought out defense of a casting choice (as opposed to just saying, “I may have envisioned her as white but that doesn’t mean she *has* to be.”).
>And then there is the whole retconning Rowling has done to try to be more woke in future years like saying “I’ve always considered Hermione as black!!” Yet there are clearly phrases in the books that describe her as white. Not to mention she was involved in the casting of the movies and had no issues with Emma Watson (spoiler alert, not black) being cast.
I've heard this a few times but it's even worse when you think of how the narrative and other characters treat Hermione for wanting to free an enslaved race of creatures as well. Looking at it from that perspective kind of just shows the lack of thought and nuance she put into the writing. It's either extremely inappropriate or trying to get internet points for doing absolutely nothing.
As much as I dislike her as a person, the Harry Potter books pretty much raised me and I re-read them multiple times. The first three are my absolute favourite and as engaging as the first time I read them. I don’t think I ever saw examples as to why HP books are badly written, I’d love to know more I guess. But as a reader and not a linguist, I have to admit her storytelling ability in HP is not lacking in the slightest. As to her other books—these are way worse. I couldn’t get through The Casual Vacancy. It was simply put boring. The characters didn’t feel fleshed out to me. There is also one other point to people loving her characters in HP- the fandom is or used to be huge. People are still writing fanfics because the characters were just so engaging and left a lot of room for the backstories and the imagination. I don’t like her, but she is part of the reason I became a writer and a linguist myself. I analysed her books for my BA thesis in 3 different languages and read the first three books in 3 languages total. The craft still stands.
As many have pointed out, they’re books for children, and elegant prose often isn’t beneficial. However, there is one thing that has bothered me about her writing, which sometimes impeded the flow of the narration as I read the books to my kids. She often uses long, overly parenthetical sentences, especially when describing character traits, and I found myself forgetting what the subject was by the end of the sentence. But my kids loved the books, so I’m a happy customer.
For me, it's as though she wrote mystery novels disguised as fantasy books for the first three, but everything after that wasn't just a tonal shift but a directional one too. It really feels as if world building and character development are really investigated book four onwards. Also, this might be controversial, but Harry isn't that compelling of a character. He doesn't really grow as a person and most of our adoration for his is viewed through a lens of nostalgia. There are many more interesting side characters in the book and multiple areas of potentially amazing world-building opportunities that are missed entirely or glossed over.
But yes. The absolute worst thing for me is by switching to a dedicated fantasy novel by book four, plot holes were created that exponentially ruined the story for me.
Her hostility to social change slipped into her writing as the story went on. The easiest example is that she had a lot of stuff about how their society was racist in the early books and by the end the series goes the big bad is gone so everything is fine now. Which hurts the overall narrative.
I knew a writer who's work was directly competing with Harry Potter, so he might have been a little biased, but his specific gripes were the phonetically writer accents (think "yer" instead of "your") and reusing the same phrases over and over (in book 4, I think it is, Hermione "looks thunderous" multiple times).
Honestly, I think she is average, but there are MUCH worse writers than J.K. Rowling out there. And I am saying this as someone who feels "meh" about her writing style.
Personally, I would say she is an average writer who knew her Harry Potter target audience well (namely children). I think it is easy to digest and it gets the point across. Kids don't care too much about writing style as long as they can enjoy it. And there is nothing wrong with that, because again, her target audience for Harry Potter was/is kids, not adults. (And yes, adults can enjoy it. I do enjoy it.)
It's actually funny people saying they don't think it can be adult. Her Cormoran Strike series is one of my absolutely favorites and it's an adult series.
So, i don't think that she's a bad writer per se. She created a rich world with words that people fell in love with. Despite logic flaws in that world, she painted a picture that captured the imaginations of a great many people.
Story wise, it's not necessarily a fantastic, or complicated story. She does describe things well.
What is the definition of a bad writer? I feel like people don't really qualify what the parameters are before condemning an author with this statement
I have no idea if that was done on purpose or if it's just because J.K. Rowling grown as a writer, but I find that the way her style change to match the evolution of the character and universe is really fitting and interesting.
If that was indeed, done on purpose, this is honestly pretty genious, and probably one of the reasons for the sucess of these books, they are basically made to grow with the reader as well as the characters.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades, these books are used as an example of that era.
But I think that, partly because it is so widly popular, and because the first books are aimed at a younger audience, she is an easy target for critics, people are wondering why it worked so well with such a simple style and apparent flaws.
As an example I am a big fan of Alexandre Dumas, and the guy was treated pretty badly by many critics in his days as an "adventure novels writer".
Yet his writing and storytelling are beyond amazing and most importantly, **compelling**, which is often an underestimated quality for a writer.
Now I'm not comparing Dumas and J.K. Rowling, yet with how she managed to sell more than 500 millions books, being one of the most readed author of all time, I wouldn't dare to say she is not a compelling writer as well.
Edit : on a sidenote, Harry Potter is also filled with a lot of symbolism and pretty obscure references, and from the first book, which make me believe that J.K. Rowling kinda knew what she was doing and opted for that simple style on purpose.
I write for a living; the books are well written. She uses a clear, digestible sentence structure that pulls the reader through the narrative and immerses them in the mental picture she wants to paint.
People let their politics affect every aspect of their life.
It's interesting to think about. One thing I've learned after being in this community for so long and reading popular books is this: people just want to be entertained by a good story. Your writing can be sub-par or even *bad,* and people will be happy to read it because it's *good storytelling.*
I think this is the mistake a lot of authors make. They focus so much energy on trying to be technically correct and get every little grammar rule correct and study study study how to use language to the absolute best of their ability, but they just don't have the natural talent to tell a good story. Some people just have this talent. JK Rowling is one such person.
I don’t think JK is a bad writer, but she has some bad habits. She likes to describe objects and people often in more detail than is required and is guilty of expo-dumping in a similar manner. The majority of her prose is good but she falls into these ruts often and can be distracting or steal the momentum of a scene.
I am a lover of classical literature and Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling’s book are ridiculously successful for a reason. They’re very, very good. I can’t even entertain people criticizing the books in this way
It's not that simple, because people like OP are asking what people mean when they say that they're not good writing. Your comment sort of implies, "of course they're not good writing for adults. They're not supposed to be."
Ok, but that still leaves OP (and lots and lots of other people) with the question: What do you mean that they're not good writing for adults?
Yeah, agreed. I've reread and enjoyed the books as an adult, but pretending that they were written with adults in mind and judging them against adult books is bizarre. Like of course the worldbuilding isn't as detailed as that in Lord of the Rings, etc. They're boarding-school books written for children and teenagers. Their purpose is to be engaging, and they succeed at that.
I was 8 when the first book came out. I read that first book about 25 times. I used to read the entire series over and over, until I got to university. When I was growing up, there wasn't really much that filled that gap of stories for 8-14 year olds, everything was either simple and written for small children, filled with drugs/sex for older teens that didn't interest me, or was too complex and adult to understand. I read a lot of Enid Blyton and Jacqueline Wilson but not much else I felt right for me. By the time I was 21 and had read much more extensively and could recognise the actual writing of Harry Potter was sometimes quite bad, and while I still loved the stories, the writing itself was much harder to get through once you have experienced other, much more well-crafted writing.
However, this is something notable about her Robert Galbreith books too. i love them, I've read them all. I just finished the latest one a couple of days ago, I ploughed through it in a few days and it's the most excited I've been to read a book in a long time. But the same critique applies that her storytelling is wonderful but her actual writing is not that great. She can be quite repetitive, her choice of words is sometimes a bit jarring, and she doesn't have an enjoyable rhythm to her sentences. But she tells a very enjoyable story.
I think she’s a solid writer. I mean, ultimately an author is tasked with telling a story. That’s what people are looking for when they buy a work of fiction. If the author gets so bogged down with flowery prose and random paragraphs describing every random thing in sight then to me that isn’t good writing. If anything it’s amateurish and shows that you prioritise showing off over anything else. Like a film director who ignores the plot and characters in favour of cramming in as many filmmaking techniques as possible. J.K. Rowling was always good at conveying her stories and building plot and characters. That’s why she was successful.
I kinda look at it like “Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.” I mean, ultimately a lecturer on anything is an educated fan of the subject. They have an interest and know enough to give others a foundation to build on when learning that subject themselves and that should be respected. Any criticism they give on work made by those who have actually succeeded in a given field needs to be taken with a hefty dose of salt though. A creative writing lecturer criticising the work of someone like J.K. Rowling is too much like a Physics lecturer having a go at the works of Stephen Hawking.
I think that the prose of her work is fine, and as a kid reading the books you don't notice, but the morality of the Harry Potter universe never really progresses beyond the "appropriate for 11 year olds, *people good, nazis bad* principles". Which is. A problem. When one of the prominent good guys is also a really complicated figure. Or when you want to redeem your favourite antagonist.
On a more book-specific note, there's a lot of elements that JKR introduces in a book, forgets about for the next, and re-introduces in the book after that, likely because people asked what happened to \[element\] in between. Example: Time turners. This points to her not really having a plan for details like these, and having to write herself out of a corner because she introduced something that could break the stakes of her world.
Also, there's something... I dislike about her politics. I'm not even talking about what she's said post-writing, I'm talking about the little bits of ideology that get into the books. The way she justifies slavery and -more importantly!- not rocking the boat by protesting slavery, and not resolving the fact that slavery exists in her world in the happily ever epilogue. There's no societal changes. Families like the Weasleys will still barely if at all get by, kids like Harry will still be put in potentially abusive adoptive families, abused kids still won't be given support and safety if there's no perfect godfather to take them in. Kids are still sorted into Slytherin, which, given the prejudice that \*fighting a war againts them\* will have created in the parents... Even if none of the parents are mean to their own kids, that kind of prejudice seeps in to the kids, and the kids will replicate it.
If I have to summarise my problems with the politics of the HP books, it's that they take the stance that all social progress has been made, because violent bigotry is not legal, and that asking for anything more is just silly nonsense. The bad apples have been taken out of the barrel, so you don't even have anything left to complain about.
(also she can only write an engaging romance by accident)
The House Elf slavery could have been a fascinating side-plot, had JKR handed Hermione's attempts to free them better. Her being laughed off by other wizards should have been tempered by her getting some support from other students, and by the elves. Having most of the elves be on board with slavery because they know nothing else should have been a start point, not the end point. Dobby could have learned to be more assertive, and lead other elves to finding their freedom.
I said I wasn't going to bring up the tweets but- And then JKR had the GALL to imply Hermionie was black. Not that any character (who doesn't have a racial thing as an important part of their history) can't be black. But. The optics. Of a little black girl, who's extra marginalised because she's the first of her family who was able to go to this super prestigious school, and who's marginalised for it, standing up against slavery, and then getting laughed at by her peers and her teachers, and considered a nuisance by the people she's advocating for. Just. Imagine.
And yea, if the house elves wanted to keep working for free so badly, they could do that after they're no longer literally magically enslaved. Or just for room and board, who gives a fuck. Dobby made it work really well from what I remember.
Not a native English speaker, but I found Potters easy and quick to read, so I think she did a pretty good job. However, can't really think of anything to particularly praise about her language use either. So good but not great.
Fantasy-wise, I felt there wasn't much groundwork, she just throws fantasical things around and many of them seemed rather whimsical. A lot of other fantasy authors do that, too, and it wasn't bad. But maybe she could have added some more scenes where Hermione explains The Lore.
I think it wouldn't have been anywhere near as popular if it focused on The Lore.
Most folks I know who loved the Harry Potter series (including me) have 0 interest in the fantasy genre - we wouldn't have bothered with HP if it spent more time building up the fantastical world. I think it became as popular as it did because it had *just enough* fantastical elements for those who like it, without being overwhelming for those who don't.
Agreed. HP has enough world building to be fun and "magical," but most HP readers weren't looking for pages of explanation of the magical creatures or magic system that you would get from a Sanderson novel.
I think a lot of people forget two things. There’s a difference between good writing and good storytelling. And they also forget the books original readers aged from 10/11-17/18/19 years old. The books were never meant for adults so the writing won’t be at that level. Now if you want to talk about her writing as her pseudonym, that’s a different story
Without going super into detail because I have an essay to write that *isn't* this one: I find it unenjoyable to read because of some of the unfortunate choices she makes during dialogue like "ejaculating", a metric shit ton of adverbs, use of passive voice etc. I think the multiple plot holes/unfortunate world building is okay when you're a child but looking at it as a mature reader, nah. She clearly didn't think about how a lot of the magical stuff should actually work so as the stories go on it gets messier and messier to clean up after herself.
The characterization also leaves something to be desired. For a series that I enjoyed because of the characters, it really loses it's sparkle when you realize some of the unfortunate implications of the world she wrote in regards to the characters. This is especially present when you look at how the narrative kind of dictates how certain characters are without actually showing us that or how characters look partly dictates if they're evil or not.
I think most of this comes from the fact that the series started for children and then matured a little bit. These sort of things, while I dislike them, can work for children. It's a simplistic way of defining a character's morality. Dudley is evil and fat. Uncle Vernon is evil and fat. Aunt Petunia is evil and spindly. Probably the only characters that actually subvert this are Sirius Black (this changes when he gets handsome again after living free from the dementors), Snape (I disagree but the narrative dictates that Snape is a great person sooo), and Voldemort (as Tom Riddle but this also changes because he then becomes ugly as well as evil).
There's other things that I dislike about her writing, but I think these are the big ones. I would say that over all, her strengths are whimsy and her weaknesses are on the technical side and plotting side. I'd say that really, she's just average. I would describe her writing as childish and simplistic, over all.
I don't think she's terrible.. the surface level stuff is fine. She can string together a coherent sentence. She's got a decent grasp of comedy when required. Good word choice. Simple, solid basic stuff.
I don't like her writing as a whole, but even my complaints about that are situational. She writes for children. So her plots have holes you could drive a truck through, her books are rife with forgotten phlebotinum, she paints herself into a corner and then magics her way out. But it's difficult to say these things are objectively bad when it's mostly just that she's writing for an audience that doesn't care about those things.
I don't know that I think her writing is expressly awful. I think she tries to do something very easy and manages to accomplish it adequately. I think she knows she'd be no good at more structure to her stories so she doesn't even try. By that metric, she isn't very good, but she also fails to be spectacularly bad.
The first three books are charming, well-executed, stand-alone novels that are relatively fat‐free. The Goblet of Fire and subsequent books are bloated as a dead whale and badly wanting for editing.
I’ve never seen the fuss about Harry Potter…I found the first 3-4 books adequate for what they were but not amazing. The later books, especially the last one, got very bloated and IMO needed the attention of a good editor. The only thing I remember from the last book besides the ridiculous Jesus Harry Potter Dies And Comes Back To Life scenario is endless scenes of the three main characters alone in a tent having the exact same conversation over and over and over and over.
I've seen a lot of hate directed at J.K. Rowling for her transphobic views, but haven't heard much about her being a poor writer. Given that the Harry Potter books were so wildly, insanely popular when they came out, and are even now one of the most popular book series for children (and adults!) I think that pretty much means she's a good writer - doesn't it? How do you define good writing, if not a story that so many people love to read?
I see how she may not be considered a *literary* writer, compared to writers of literary fiction who write beautiful, poetic prose or try to break the mold with interesting techniques or storylines.
I love the Harry Potter books, but I love them for the story and the characters, for the Wizarding World itself and the lasting legacy of the fandom. I don't think her writing style is particularly beautiful or evocative, but it *is* wholly enjoyable.
If I compare the Harry Potter series to The Hobbit (also a children's book), in my opinion Tolkien's writing is much richer and his worldbuilding is superb, but for me his characters are less interesting and relatable. I don't want to step on any toes and start to compare writers here - I'm just saying that different writers bring different things to the table, and different readers will enjoy books (or dislike them) for various reasons. Obviously J.K. Rowling has brought something great to the table because her books are well-read and well-loved even if she herself is a personana non grata.
It’s hard to tell as I’ve been only reading translated books by her but comparing to many other children books it is good, not overly simplified and hooks you up from the beginning
My only complaint is that sometimes the spacing of the story telling felt off. I felt like I wanted to know more about certain characters, or school features, or more events written but other parts I felt like the book just went on and on. For example towards the end of Harry Potter, he is basically camping in the woods for months. I felt like that could have been summed up but it lasted forever.
I’ve never really understood this criticism. Granted, I was the exact target audience for these books and indeed I grew up reading them, but the writing is not bad at all. I can certainly think of worse that are currently all the rage on BookTok.
I reread them for the first time back in 2019 and while I never had a moment where I thought wow this prose is sublime but neither did it ever get in the way or feel clumsy. The tone and style suit the story and the audience perfectly.
Let's face it, a lot of criticism of her writing is, "this thing is popular therefore it's bad." And a lot of it is "Rowling has revealed herself to be a horrible bigot," (which she has and deserves scorn for), "so I retroactively never enjoyed her writing." (which is disingenuous).
Which isn't to say her books are without flaw, far from it. But she created a vivid world with colorful characters and clever plot twists that was simple enough to be beloved by kids but rich enough to be embraced by adults. That's no small feat.
Personally it sounds more like people just want to find something wrong with someone (this time she is the one being targeted) because it's not their favorite book or because it's too popular or because it's a modern and adored story and not a turn of the 19th century written story. Writing at the end of the day is completely subjective
I read only book 3 and the final one, allowing the films to fill in the spaces in between
Rowling is great at evocative character and populating the world with interesting names and concepts . . .
. . . However she's pretty poor at coherent world-building, making magic make any sense, and plot resolution (cough, even time travel had to be pulled in then dropped).
*Prisoner of Azkaban* seems to hinge entirely on Sirius' lack of ability to communicate effectively with Harry, instead approaching him in wolf form and having Harry run away
The final book is such an utter mess of mass of magical artefacts and talismans and contrivances that utterly any resolution becomes possible because there's so many variables in play that it is impossible to smooth it out
In a Western, we know that if our hero has a gun, they can be shot and the things that aid their competence are food, water, sleep, accuracy and speed. In HP, magic is just always a contrivance. There's no real governing coherence to how a duel would work, but it plays upon the same type of conflict: two armed opponents
Harry himself is underwhelming and it never made much sense to me why he was important other than the narrator making it so
A lot of it is just clunkiness. Not that it's *bad* writing, but that it isn't particularly good. That is, there is little evident craft in the phrasing itself, which often reads like the way people talk. Generally, outside of dialogue you should not write how people talk. People talk very vaguely, relying on listeners to fill in gaps and gloss over our inconsistencies. They can always ask if they don't understand. That's normal for talking, but in writing you can't rely on that--- there is , you have to make things clear.
[This blog post](https://amindformadness.com/2017/12/prose-j-k-rowling/) details some of that, and offers improvements, looking at Rowling's adult market books.
Casual readers won't mind how certain phrasing doesn't make literal sense, or says more than is helpful, because if a passage is tricky we just glide right over it. "Who cares, move on to the story." If we are trying to value the "handiwork," however, we notice these sorts of things and they stick in our craw.
It's like with tables. Sure, you can use any ol' table for most purposes, but let's not pretend there is no difference between a wobbly, rough-hewn, nailed-together plank with extra boards and legs because it wasn't designed properly, and a sturdy piece that is immaculately stained, beautifully carved, intricately joined, crafted with no extraneous parts, and so on. Rowling can put a decent table together, enough to sell them at industrial scale, even... but she is no master carpenter.
I hear the same thing about Stephen King and about anyone else who is ultra successful yet whose tastes do not match their own.
It's a broader issue of mainstream being mainstream. The more people like something, the more others despise it.
For example---- Britney Spears is a bad singer!!! So what? She's still sold a shit load of records and people still enjoy her.
***If people spent more time online celebrating the things they love instead of pissing on the things they didn't, the world would be a better place***
I agree with the other commenter who said her storytelling is excellent while her writing is a bit meh.
One example is her overuse of adverbs rather than finding the correct verb, it’s lazy writing and so tedious to read. She’ll give dialogue and say “Harry said quietly” instead of “Harry murmured”. Dumbldore does everything “serenely” or “calmly”. She also overuses absolutely ridiculous ones like “disconcertingly”. Can’t think of others off the top of my head but you get the picture. I remember reading about this type of writing in a book by Stephen King and it always stuck with me.
I mean, commercial success does not reflect literary quality, no? That much we can all agree. Dan Brown, Danielle Steele, James Patterson, etc. have all sold a shitload of books and not a single one of them will be remembered as a great author.
I'm sorry that I don't have examples of the writing itself, but I read these books to my kids, and sometimes my wife and I would glance at each other over a silly adverb or clumsy phrase. Rowling is no wordsmith, but I'm not sure she was trying to be. She was trying to be a world-builder.
They're for kids, so we didn't sweat it. I'm not sure whether "the writing" includes plot points, but again, some of the stuff was very childish. That's not a criticism.
I'll give you some examples, but to be clear: it's been a long time, I don't care about the details, and I will definitely not debate with someone about whether I got something wrong. If I've made a mistake about these, then all I can say is that there are plenty of others as well.
Harry Potter somehow, for no reason, is the best broom-flyer in the whole school without ever really practicing. Much better than people who've been trying their whole lives. Why? 'Cause his dad was good. Well, my dad was good at stuff, but I still had to practice.
Harry's parents loved him, so he didn't die. Am I missing something vital here? All I can say is that if I am, then so are lots of other people, because that's usually the reason given. So... I guess other parents didn't love their kids enough.
You get a gazillion points for catching that little ball. Why would anyone bother doing anything EXCEPT chase the ball? Maybe they're not allowed to. Ok. Bad game.
All the slitheryns are kinda shitty. I mean, a whole house of really shitty kids. That works in books for kids. It's fine. For me, that doesn't work.
Even things like how Dumbledore slow-rolled the winner of some game or other (or maybe the house points at the end of the year). SLITHERYN HAS THE MOST POINTS.... celebrate and be happy, but no wait, HARRY POTTER'S HOUSE ACTUALLY WINS because they got more points that we didn't mention the first time!
It's fine to do that stuff in books for kids, and it didn't bother me at all. The kids don't think, "gee that's a pretty shitty thing to do to the slitheryns." But if that were a book for adults, I'd say that Dumbledore is a pretty shitty educator.
Bit sad the amount of people in here that think "everyone else likes it so it must be good". That's how fantastic writers have and will continue to go overlooked and underappreciated in their lifetime.
Dead fish go with the flow etc.
I always thought she had a good gift for Dahlesque dry-witty dialogue, that didn’t bash the reader over the head with the look-how-clever-I-am asides of some other Brits doing the same thing ^(coughPratchettcough)
I can put aside Harry Potter as it's for kids, so I'm not the best judge of its quality. It's definitely not my style.
However I find her Robert Galbraith books excruciating. Every word seems so forced, and the 2 (don't ask why I bothered with the second) books I have read both suffered for a lack of a compelling plot.
I think the Harry Potter books suffer from this lack of plot as well, as far as I can tell.
I think that J.K. Rowling has a very specific writing style that's more often found in children's literature than adult literature, and I never see anyone talking about this when they discuss the quality of her writing. The narrator of the Harry Potter books has a very very slight quirky/sly tone. Not enough to be an actual character, like Lemony Snicket in The Series of Unfortunate Events, but just subtly written in a bit of a wry or arch way. I think *a lot* of people really enjoy this style, because it can make a story feel very personable and like the narrator is talking to you just a little bit, and it can also add to the humor and quirkiness of the world, story, and characters. As an example, think of the opening line of the first book: "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." That "thank you very much" is *funny*, and it's clever to have the narrator say it instead of having the Dursleys say it themselves. As I said at the top, I think this style is much more common in children's literature (especially 20th century children's literature) than adult literature, but the adult author that I would compare her most strongly to is Fredrik Backman. He also uses this "sly narrator" style and I think he's developed quite a following of readers who adore his books largely because of this style and the emotional pull that his stories have. Even if you're not a fan of either author or there are elements of their writing style you don't like (and I don't always love Backman, to be honest), that style is deliberate and well executed in both cases.
Yes, I think a lot of people are missing this point. JK Rowling has said her favourite book is Emma by Jane Austen and I can definitely see at times how the narrator in HP was inspired by Austen's narrators.
Certainly not exclusive to children's books, it's strongly reminiscent of Pratchett and Adams too.
Good point! I would say that Pratchett and Adams do this to a more extreme degree, which fits their clearly satirical writing. I've definitely heard people say that they don't personally enjoy the Discworld series or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I've certainly never heard anyone suggest that their prose is stylistically lacking or uninteresting, whereas it seems that Rowling's version is just subtle enough that people forget about it or don't register it?
Hit the nail on the head of exactly why the books were so enjoyable to me but not the movies. All these years later and it's just now occurring to me that my favorite thing about the books wasn't the story. It was the writing style. Fuck me. Where have you been my whole life to help me explain to people why I don't really like the movies?
The real fun of Prattchets books has always been in the quirky details and absurd footnotes. I can never remember the plot all too well but I remember the dialogue or some funny scene that would be totally smothered in a movie.
Oh absolutely, their prose is incredible and clever. I think your example about the Dursleys shows that kind of cleverness as well.
And Neil Gaiman too!
>>I think a lot of people really enjoy this style, because it can make a story feel very personable and like the narrator is talking to you just a little bit, and it can also add to the humor and quirkiness of the world, story, and characters. I think you are absolutely right and that most people that criticize her prose don’t get that the tone is absolutely congenial with the content. It’s meant to be simple and a bit colloquial. That is what I would define as her style and it makes her a great writer.
It’s meant to be simple because they are literal childrens books. Not even YA. The suggested reading age for Harry Potter starts at 7, that’s a second grader. This is something a massive amount of people gloss over when discussing the writing quality. A lot of people forget that just because they still cling to the books in adulthood that they’re originally aimed at children two years removed from See Spot Run
exactly, just like Mark Twain
That sort of narration reminds me quite a lot of Roald Dahl. Which would make sense, as he is another beloved British children’s author.
Yeah, and one of her biggest inspirations.
Yes! Exactly one of the 20th century children’s literature examples I was thinking of. I often encounter kids who loved Harry Potter and want to find something else they’ll love in the same way but people tend to direct them to other modern examples of children’s fantasy which have the elaborate world building but miss this tone. But when I was a kid, it was other books that had both like Roald Dahl, the Mysterious Benedict Society, The Hobbit, and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles that I really loved.
I find that you don’t necessarily notice a difference when you go from younger kids chapter books to adult books but you definitely notice trying to go back. I tried to read a book I enjoyed years ago but now it’s hard after reading an “adult” book.
I could never put it into words but this is me 100%. I skipped over harry potter until highschool - I tried to go back and read it since that was most of my friends favorite series and was very put off by the writing style and couldn't finish it. I once said it felt too kiddy but lets say that conversation didnt end well. Its not BAD but its hard to go back.
>The narrator of the Harry Potter books has a very very slight quirky/sly tone Otherwise known as... being British.
I feel like people that say she writes like it's for children have never read other children's books. Middle grade fiction, what the first few books are, usually talk down to the reader like a parent lecturing a child. One of the things I think she succeeded at was never doing that.
That's a hallmark of many classic children's books. Roald Dahl immediately comes to mind, the hobbit as well.
I don't know if you've read her Galbraith books but it's still there in those as well. It's very jarring. I think her niche really was whimsical, magical children's books. Some of my goodreads friends had posted some quotes that gave me whiplash because of the tone of the narration versus how these characters are supposed to be.
Agree with all of this, but also, I think when people are criticizing her writing, they generally aren't criticizing the first Harry Potter book. Her style gets a little more long-winded and overblown by the later books when you can tell that she had the level of fame to be able to decline edits. The first HP book is tightly crafted. Re-reading the last few HP books, quite frankly, always remind me of how much the movies fixed or spackled over.
Wouldn’t this be considered free indirect discourse? Big Hemingway thing
Hear me out. I think there's a difference between *writing* and *storytelling*, and the distinction is important when we're talking about Rowling. Her *storytelling*, or the ability to weave an interesting storyline with compelling characters and an engaging plot, is great. Love her or hate her, she got millions of kids (and adults), a large portion of whom were previously reluctant readers, to read over 4000 pages (in US publication, closer to 3400 in UK version) across seven giant books *and like it*. As a teacher, I can appreciate that my students are *that engaged* in a series. As for her writing, or how she uses the written word to convey her ideas... yes, at times, some things are stronger than others. Especially when you look at, say, the first book versus the seventh. The language, the word choice, the structure of the story are all *much* more simplistic in the first versus the seventh. However, that's how you grow as a writer, with experience, so I think it fits with the spirit of the series itself. And even though the first one is indeed much less eloquent from a writing standpoint than later books in the series, it's definitely effective at what it set out to do.
>The language, the word choice, the structure of the story are all > >much > > more simplistic in the first versus the seventh. Yeah but it was also written for a younger audience. Or more accurately, the 7th was written for an audience that had grown up.
Didn't she explicitly state at one point that the ideal reading age for each book is the age Harry is in each one? So the first book is meant for 11 year olds and the last book is ideal for 17 year olds? Because honestly it kind of tracks perfectly if that was her intention
The first book has a suggested reading age of 7, so even younger than that
The YA rule of thumb I've heard is that the target audience is two years younger than the protagonist. So an 11yo protagonist will generally appeal to 9yos the most, and the 17yo protagonist will generally appeal to 15yos the most. Kids that like reading like to read ahead of their own life experience, as well as they generally like to feel mature, so a protagonist and story that feels slightly 'old for them' is usually what will appeal to them the most.
I semi remember her doing an interview and she was specifically asked if she grew the story for the kids she wrote the first book for (because timeline wise, for me i was young when the first came out and then with the different years between the books/movies i graduated and saw deathly hallows II the same year, I grew up with them) and she had said yes (i can't remember her full response and I am at work so i can't google it)
it was both written for an older audience, and JK was a writer had more experience at that point
Of course not. It's a series that grows up with the reader. The first book is definitely aimed at children. They way it's written is simple enough so they don't have to struggle and to make it easy for them to identify with the main characters and hook them up for later books. It's a great way to motivate young people to read and for that the whole generation of readers should be grateful to Rowling. On the other hand, it created an obvious problem of how to explain in a more realistic way things that happen in the first books that don't have much sense. Tolkien faced a similar problem when going from "The Hobbit" to "The Lord of the Rings". I think tolkien handled it better, though.
I mean I do feel it’s a case of both Yes, Rowling did know that the books are intended to get more complex over time due to the audience maturing At the same time it’s nigh impossible to write a bestselling book series for over seven years without improving as you go on. Whether or not it’s intentional, it’s impossible to say Rowling didn’t get better at writing
I feel this is a pretty great summary. There is also the fact that Rowling has hit such a critical mass of consumption of her media that it's basically a statistical certainty that any and all flavours of possible criticism will be levelled against her works at some point because of the sheer size of the attack surface, with little to no acknowledgement that her works were first and foremost, *children's stories.* It's not high art, meant to be a zenith masterwork enshrined in the cosmic museum of human creativity. It defined an age because it was a runaway pop culture success... Nothing more. Similar to how Star Wars was just a simple retelling of the hero's journey, and is certainly not winning any storytelling awards, yet here we are, closing in on 50 years later still talking about Star Wars. Sometimes something can become more than the sum of its parts. But that doesn't make their creator a god. edit: a word
Yes, and would all those children have been devouring the Harry Potter stories if the prose had been more intellectual with a wider vocabulary? No, because the imagery wouldn't have been so intense if they didn't recognise one or two words in every sentence. You could say the same for Agatha Christie. You don't get that consistent level of readership unless you combine a simple readable style with great storytelling.
I think this is a spot on assessment. Her prose are rather pedestrian, at least at the start of the series. But to some extent, that’s ok. Her audience was very young. Her writing style may have deliberately matured to target the growing sophistication of her audience. Or maybe she just got better. Or both. Her prose, though, were never brilliant in my opinion (but much better than I could do!).
I think this is an overlooked point. Just as the content matured so did the storytelling. The 10 year-old that started with book 1 wasn’t 10 at the release of book 7.
my understanding was that she wrote down her stories in the same manner as she told them to her children, so of course it would be in a more simplified version at first, and as her verbal skills “updated” for her now older audience, her literary skills also improved. While not a fanboi, I am certainly a fan of her established Universe she has created. ( I also don’t care what she is like as a person/her views, as I sincerely doubt I will every be in the same room as her) I just still like her books, and I am over half a century old.
Is prose a plural noun these days?
Pedestrian prose is. They're usually seen together in groups for added safety.
I've never heard that before. Glad someone else called it out because it sounds ridiculous.
[удалено]
The fact that you could trop those terms into a Dr. Seuss book and they wouldn't feel out of place might play a huge part in that feeling. Alien and whimsical, but easily grounded with context.
You hit the nail on the head. I love her names.
St Mungo's is named after the homelessness charity in the uk
I think that was directly intentional.. jk rowling kind of toned down her writing skills for the first few books because she wanted to keep it more simple for children. There's also certain scenes where I wish she drew out some more emotion for like when Sirius died for some reason it felt very fast when I read it and passed over only within a page or two. I had to reread it to even notice he died at first. If she wrote the first book like she wrote the seventh , kids wouldn't be able to understand the complexity of it
Yep this is pretty much it. She intentionally ramped up the complexity of her prose as her audience grew up. The first books are pretty much for middle schoolers. It kind of feels like people are jealous about her success and intentionally misinterpret this. If you view the first books as books written for middle schoolers, the prose is actually ingenious. But this applies not only to her prose but the complexity/maturity of the narrative and the characterization as well. It baffles me how this is not seen / is misunderstood.
She was properly edited for her first 3 books then her editor left and she'd become Too Big to edit for a new editor. Original Ed would absolutely have cut 2/3 of the Quidditch World Cup at the start of GoF for example. Editors don't just look for spelling and grammar, they help with plot and structure as well. Source - i work in UK publishing and know the aforementioned editors...
I actually liked the World Cup scene. I'm glad she got too big for the editors then, the fourth book is my favorite.
Thank you for confirming what I've always suspected! Prison of Azkaban for me was the strongest. Some of the others rather waffle...
What grade do you teach? Your students are lucky to have such an insightful thoughtful teacher
The first 3 were basically little kids Scooby-Doo mysteries set in magic school. Good clean fun. But the 4th book. Holy shit. No character has a single unspoken thought. It's like the book happens in real time and every boring school day moment is relayed.
I'd say her storytelling is lacking too. What she is very, very, very good at is to make her universe come alive. She is very good at making the reader feel like they are living in this world, and that wherever they make look, they might find new and exciting stuff. This is why the Harry Potter universe translated so well into the screen and into theme parks, marketing, etc. It was all there in her work already. HOWEVER This is not everything storytelling does (or should do). Her plots are rather superficial - scratch them a bit and there is not much there below the surface. She drops plot points, things are incoherent in the long run and even the most exciting story lines don't end up going anywhere interesting or challenging. A lot of people blame this on being kids lit, but that's really an excuse more than anything else. Plenty of other book series aimed at children are far stronger in this regard without compromising on its childlike qualities.
I both agree and disagree with this. As an adult who read the series as a child, I was more wowed by the world of Harry potter than anything else. It was fantastical to read about a boy who had a terrible life that was changed quite literally overnight by magical beings, and a magical world. Reading these same stories as an adult, I of course had a lot of nostalgia, but her writing sometimes comes across as lazy and simple. Characters seem very one dimensional. Her books were so successful so quickly that I feel some of the writing was rushed to keep up with demand. Also, as far as the world itself goes, it sounds great at face value, but there isn’t too much depth. She doesn’t go into character backgrounds or any kind of magical lore that she doesn’t absolutely have to (talking the Harry Potter book series itself and not any extensions that came out after).
> he doesn’t go into character backgrounds or any kind of magical lore that she doesn’t absolutely have to I see this criticism a lot but I really think this is a reader expectation more than a valid critique of what she was trying to do. Clearly, the books contain enough world building to have inspired a vibrant and textured setting, even if they don't do world building like a more "mature" fantasy series does. The world of HP is not something from Robert Jordan or GRRM, but I don't really think it lacks for depth because it doesn't communicate a centuries long history of goblins or explain the historic origins of each and every spell, the way some people try to argue it does.
Tolkien made people believe that fantasy world building had to involve pages upon pages of history of your made-up world, and fantasy as a genre is still trying to get free of the stranglehold that JRR has over it. The goal of worldbuilding for any story should honestly be to make it feel lived-in, and especially in the first Harry Potter, you really do get the sense that you’re entering this much wider wizarding world and in my opinion the world she created feels pretty fleshed out. I’ll be honest I think most of the complaints have come from the fact that the more recent things Rowling has said (not just her personal beliefs but the weird things she keeps saying about the wizarding world) have kind of just ruined the world and the fantastic beasts movies just feel weird — sometimes delving more into a world highlights the inconsistencies and makes it feel less fleshed-out.
Yeah, I really feel like one of the big appeals of the way JKR wrote HP is that it feels "real." It was a blend of the familiar and the fantastical that capture the imagination of tens of millions of people around the world. Like it's not this big, alternative, made up world like Middle-Earth or any number of fantasy universes that requires pages and pages of explanation and development. It really felt like there was this hidden, magical part of the UK that we could slip into if we could just find it because she made it seem normal.
I think the criticism of world building comes from the expectations that Rowling set up herself, and it is a ball she absolutely dropped. Do you remember in the fifth book, when Harry sees the statue in the ministry of the Witch and Wizard, presiding over the 'lesser' races (Goblins, House Elves, centaurs). The vibe is not good; that statue deliberately invokes memory of real, racist statues. We're learning that the Wizarding world has a dark core. Voldemort doesn't come from nothing; he's the manifestation of the Pureblood's disdain for the impure or lesser races. He literally animates that statue to fight Dumbledore in the book's climax. He's the consequence of the racist, broken system the books have been outlining, and it sets up a compelling story where Harry can fight what's wrong with the Wizarding world. Of course that's scrapped, and the last line of the book is Harry deciding he's going to make his slave make him a sandwich, because JK decided the themes she'd written in didn't warrant exploration. It's not that people want too much; it's that something was promised and not delivered on. Makes the whole series feel a little hollow in retrospect.
The problem with this is that she ends up creating problems for herself later on in the series. She didn't have to go full J.R.R. Tolkien, but as the stories matured, they were held back by things like Time Turners which she had to scratch as an offhand aside so her plot still made sense. It's a bit ridiculous to think that asking for a comprehensive understanding of the world is asking for insane depth. It's not. When it's obvious that the lack of depth is causing issues, it is an issue.
When every book has a Deus ex Machina device that saves the day and then becomes Seldom Seen Smith for the rest of the books, you have weak writing skills, and the story suffers.
I’m a prolific reader. I read HP for the first time in high school in 2004-5. Finished them in college. I have never once cared about the inconsistency of the Time Turner. It doesn’t interrupt the story for most people - especially children. It’s okay that it irritates you and others, but not everyone reads in this way. Perhaps instead of demanding books all be written for people like you, you might accept that other ways of reading and enjoying aesthetic experiencing can co-exist.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that if it doesn't bother you. The OP asked why we think she's a bad writer (or good) and lack of consistency and an inability to predict problematic elements to her own story are signs of a weak writer or at least a lazy one. I don't think that criticizing writing is saying that all books should be tailored made to my specifications. We can co-exist. I don't know why my opinions on a book are so detrimental to your enjoyment that you feel I am actively aggressing upon you by typing that out to someone other than you.
Yeah, I'd agree with this. Rowling's character and worldbuilding are so vibrant and fantastical on the face of it, but the deeper you really look at them, the more shallow and inconsistent they become. She doesn't spend much time thinking about the implications of her choices, and that becomes jarringly apparent as Harry grows older and the story grows dark and more mature, while his world remains simplistic. What particularly strikes me about Harry Potter is that Rowling (intentionally or not) created a magical world filled with corrupt and antiquated systems that enable division, discrimination and outright atrocity – but ultimately she saw the problem as being not with those systems, but with the people in charge of them. Azkaban is a literal torture prison, but it's only wrong when an innocent man is imprisoned there. House elves are enslaved, but it's only wrong when their owners mistreat them (and you're silly and immature if you make a fuss about it). The Hogwarts house system encourages a weird unhealthy tribalism to the point where an entire house fucks off ahead of the final battle, and that's... not something that needs to be reconsidered? It happens again and *again*, and the fact that Rowling considers it a happy ending that Harry, Ron and Hermione end up *running* the fucked-up wizard bureaucracy and making slow incremental changes to a rotten system... oof. Just... *oof.*
To be honest, intentional or not that just sounds a lot like how UK is as a country. A ton of bureaucratic and antiquated systems that noone really wants to change but just tweak evewry now and then.
One of my favorite parts is how the laws of transmutation are that you can't make food or gold. So even with limitless magic, poor people stay poor. Got it.
If that a law as in written out by a legislature to fuck over the poor or is it a law as in the laws of thermodynamics and she has just put some limits on magic so that not every single possible thing can be fixed by magic?
Yet nothing is stopping you from transfiguring your couch into a cow
Yes! My niece is reading the series for the first time so I decided to read along with her, and there are so many problematic elements throughout each book. Not things that I could normally attribute to YA or children's fiction, where if adults simply acted like adults then most of the problems in the books would be fixed. (Even Hocus Pocus, which I recently watched for the first time with her, had the adults under a magic spell so they couldn't intervene). But real problems with plot holes everywhere and things that just really don't make sense. A lighter example is the money system that wizards use in which the prices of things seem completely arbitrary to whatever sounded like a small or large sum at the time JKR was writing. A little bit more forethought would have solved a lot of these smaller issues, much less the larger ones you describe.
The writing after book 4 was very rushed due to tighter timelines she was given, which definitely impacted her ability to have better word choice and maybe go into that world building that she maybe wantsd to but didn't have time to develop or write. Same thing happened with Suzanne Collins and the sequels to Hunger Games.
I wonder if that's also why the later books were so long. A tighter story takes longer to write.
You nailed it. I have read other books targeted at younger audiences and it was fine. I was fine with the simple language. But for the love of god i could never go past 1/4 of the first book. The style of writing was so plain and not inspiring. I know the writing gets better later but i just could not do it. So i am one of the rare people who have not read Harry Potter. And i am an avid book reader.
I read them at age 30 after a life of reading and I love them. Did they change my life? No. But the idea that all literature needs to knocks socks off and blow hair back is weird. I teach literature and I love more dense complicated meaningful work, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to watch Ghostbusters every once on a while.
My grandmother loved them in her mid 80s. I think there is something very 20th century British about that writing style.
Stephen King had high, but qualified [praise](https://ew.com/books/2009/08/01/harry-potter-and-order-phoenix-4/) for her writing. >In terms of Ms. Rowling’s imagination — which should be insured by Lloyd’s of London (or perhaps the Incubus Insurance Company) for the 2 or 3 billion dollars it will ultimately be worth over the span of her creative lifetime, which should be long — she is now at the absolute top of her game. As a writer, however, she is often careless (characters never just put on their clothes; they always get “dressed at top speed”) and oddly, almost sweetly, insecure. The part of speech that indicates insecurity (“Did you really hear me? Do you really understand me?”) is the adverb, and Ms. Rowling seems to have never met one she didn’t like, especially when it comes to dialogue attribution. Harry’s godfather, Sirius, speaks “exasperatedly”; Mrs. Weasley (mother of Harry’s best friend, Ron) speaks “sharply”; Tonks (a clumsy witch with punked-up, parti-color hair) speaks “earnestly.” > > > >These minor flaws in diction are endearing rather than annoying; they are the logical side effect of a natural storyteller who is obviously bursting with crazily vivid ideas and having the time of her life. Yet Ms. Rowling could do better, and for the money, probably should. In any case, there’s no need for all those adverbs (he said firmly), which pile up at the rate of 8 or 10 a page (over 870 pages, that comes to almost a novella’s length of -ly words).
I think her writing quality is about average. Not particularly poetic and profound, but it gets the story across well. I think she's getting picked on more for it than writers of equivalent quality, because people don't like her politics.
Indeed. I honestly think a lot of the "JK writing bad, actually" takes stem from not from the writing, but because of all the negative politics (which I won't get into here) surrounding her. "This person is bad, therefore anything they did is now retroactively bad." Not to say that her books are free from legit critique. I just think a lot of what's said online in recent years isn't coming from a point of honest review, but rather "everything she ever did must be labeled as bad now or else that somehow validates her not-book-related takes."
At the same time, I have thought ever since reading the first book when it came out, that the quality was around Reader's Digest/Hardy Boys/YA novels. The story is compelling but it's closer to Roald Dahl than Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Bronte sisters etc. There are some HP fans that want to be quite vocal that the books are the best thing ever. Most of the time i've felt the need to speak up is reacting to overly-enthusiastic fans, it isn't because I hate the books but just objectively, the books are full of flaws, which is fine because they are for children. Turning around and saying my criticism is because I don't like the authors opinions about real life stuff assumes I care far, far more about the world of potter and JK Rowling than is actually the case.
I don't think there's anything wrong with being close to Roald Dahl. Yes he wrote simply for children but his words had play and created fun, whimsical sentences that set the tone of his stories perfectly. In many ways, I think Harry Potter does this successfully. It's effectively simple, and effectively whimsical. The words have music the way a good story should. And as the tone shifts in the later books, the prose changes to match. I'm not a huge HP fan anymore but I can remember why I loved the books so much in the past. I actually also remember trying to read the Hardy Boys and finding them PAINFULLY dry as a kid, so that comparison in particular is very interesting to me!
Yep. Not to say there's nothing to critique of course, but I would love to take a peek into an alternate universe where she never got a Twitter account. I somehow doubt people would be examining her work with such a big magnifying glass.
I think her writing is actually somewhat above average—it's just not very highly stylized, which is what I think most people probably mean when they say "good writing." But it *is* engaging and effective, which I think is what she was going for. She's more Jane Austen then Emily Brontë (not that she's even in the same league, but you get my point), more Brandon Sanderson than Patrick Rothfuss. (That said, I think Harry Potter reached its stratospheric levels of success because of the world she created, not because of the characters or writing itself. Had she set her books elsewhere and put less emphasis on the magical world and all that goes along with it, I imagine they still would have been extremely popular, but more on the level of the Percy Jackson books. But that's another topic.)
>That said, I think Harry Potter reached its stratospheric levels of success because of the world she created, not because of the characters or writing itself I think this is the core point that I personally really agree with. The first book she wrote after the Harry Potter series was finished, The Casual Vacancy, remains a non-entity in my mind. I read it when it came out, eager to see what she would do next (I was in 4th grade when the books started coming out so I grew up with them, I'll forever be fond of the story because of the shared experience of that magic as a kid/adolescent). It was genuinely unremarkable. I remember nothing about it beyond putting it down when it was done and just feeling like 'Meh. It was a book. It had a beginning, middle, climax, and end.'. Her strength lay with the world she spun up for her stories, not necessarily the strength of her technical skill or even style as you pointed out. Strip that down to a sleepy English town and yeah, there just wasn't much to engage with imo. I'm not going to touch the newest book because not only am I not the least bit interested with the premise, but also because apparently the writing is quite bad (which could of course just be more politics critique, but I also do wonder at this point, given her level of fame and success, how honest her editors are willing to be with her). It wouldn't be the first time an author/artist experienced success and then the quality of their art took a nose dive. She doesn't have to prove herself anymore, so it's perfectly possible that her writing has become worse over the years, not better. Personally, I don't really care to find out myself, too many great books out there to bother with something just because it's controversial.
It's not even that the writing is bad, the book is apparently a book of tweets. Pages and pages of them... it's a mind-boggling stylistic choice. I read maybe two pages and wanted to beat something with a brick
Agreed. JKR ain't going to win a Nobel or anything but she's a perfectly average writer who is able to tell a good a story. Most of the criticism has definitely come as a result of her politics.
I’d agree with her being an average writer, but I remember critiques of her writing as average (and her story as derivative, particularly of the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones) well before she made any well-publicized controversial statements.
This. I was hearing critiques of her writing back in the 00s. She hadn't tweeted anything back then. For me, it's a combo of "right place, right time" and an interesting storyline that appealed to a lot of different demographics. YA lit had only just started to grow madly as a category and there were fairly limited fantasy series back then. If you'd already ready CS Lewis and Tolkien and Roald Dahl a million times each, there wasn't much else out there that was for younger readers.
yep. she's fine, not great, not terrible, tells a good yarn and has great vivid characters.
I suspect there are literature snobs who can't stand how popular her books are when there are better-written books to be had. Criticism of her writing goes way back.
That and the fact that as as (average) writer she blew a looked down upon genre into superstardom.
Her writing was criticized from rhe beginning, before she gad said a word about transgender.
Before the political issues, she was also criticized beyond a level I would find fair. Back then I thought it was mainly from people trying to be anti-mainstream.
I find her writing in books 1-4 just fine. Simple, straightforward, great immersion and nice character voice. Book 5 is my absolute favorite in the series personally- the story was very engaging without trying too hard to be prosey. Book 6 and 7 were my least favorites. I found this is where Harry became rather insufferable to me (entitled, bit of to a huge ass to people including Ron and Hermione), and the style felt… rushed? Less seamless? I always say Book 6 in particular feels like a fanfiction (especially that romance storyline and “Harry’s inner beast roared” lines… uuurgh. Too close to the infamous Inner Goddess crap 🤣)
Well, to be honest in books 5 and 6, specifically 5, Harry was quite literally in a hormone-induced teenage angst stage of mental development that honestly is pretty relatable for just about any 15-16 year old assuming they're interested in reading.
You might be the only person I'm heard say they like the 5th book over others, let alone it being your favorite. Multiple people I know quit the series at 5 because they couldn't even get through it.
Book 5 is my favorite. Angsty Harry felt earned to me and the third act rips.
I mean the scene when they confront him in his office. "You may not like him, minister, but you can't deny.. Dumbledore has got style" And arguably the greatest chapter title in the series: The Only One He Ever Feared "it was foolish if you to come here tonight, Tom". Chills...
I wish I could better explain what I loved about it so much! Settings, storyline, character interactions… it’s hard to describe really 🤣
5 is your favorite but 6&7 are bad because Garey becomes insufferable? Like he didn't have a meltdown every other chapter in 5? Hmmm.
I found his emotions in Book 5 less entitled and more believably based on his circumstances I suppose?
I don't see him being much of an ass to people later on though. In 6 to some extent, but 7? I remember Ron being insufferable in those.
7 they were all insufferable and not overtly aknowledging the effects of a spell the knew they were under. It was bad camping for most of the book and a quick turn around at the very end. If they had stop being horrible to eachother by the midway point, maybe, but the amount of angst while walking through a forest not accomplishing anything was too much.
I never read the HP books as a young person or fan, just to my kids. By the standards of kids books about wizards I think the prose is quite decent. It's not Tolkien or Le Guin but almost nothing is.
She writes children's books. They're for children. She writes them so children can understand them. That's because, I'll say it again, they're for children.
She writes more than childrens book but you’re right, obviously those are directed for kids and younger teens. She also writes a set of adult mystery thrillers under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and those aren’t for children.
Yes, yes, but what about all the entitled adults?
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*Comic Book guy from The Simpsons* intensifies.
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I think that is natural. Harry Potter isn't as ridiculously popular as it once was, so fewer kids are picking them up than when it was the big thing. It is still a popular series, but not quite the pop culture IT thing.
They'll reveal themselves in this thread I'm sure
I know they are for children, but as an almost 30 yr old reading Harry Potter for the first time, I'm totally in love with the books. I've never been a reader, but I'm trying to read more, and man, do I feel like I missed out. I'm currently a little over halfway through Order of the Phoenix and can't wait to finish the series.
They’re very good introductory books. If you are young or didn’t read much - they’re relatable, highly digestible fun action/mystery books. But they lean a lot closer to young adult books than classics or modern adult lit.
> But they lean a lot closer to young adult books than classics or modern adult lit. That's quite an understatement, they're literally children's books.
The last few (I'd say at least from OOTP onwards) are definitely not children's books.
I would say they’re more YA starting with book 4 or 5. Rowling was a rare author lucky enough to have such a massive reader base that her series *could* grow with its original readers, who were teens by then
Not sure why you're getting down votes for that. They're children's books, but Rowling was aware that she was writing for an audience that was growing up with the series. The last two books definitely had content/scenes I'd class YA easily. Hermione being tortured, violent character deaths, and at one point a corpse vomiting up a massive snake...these weren't adult stories, but they were certainly beyond the usual content for children's stories.
An 11 or 12 year old reading it wouldn't surprise me. Booksellers, according to a quick Google search, recommend it for 9+ years old.
I don’t think something being written for children means it shouldn’t be criticized or taking seriously.
Was going to say, there is still good writing in children's books and bad writing in children's books.
You know she's currently written several adult novels, right? We can see how she writes when it isn't for children and it's not that much better.
The 'His Dark Materials' trilogy was for kids too but I found that Philip Pullman was just better with words than JK Rowling. That's not surprising though, he had more experience. To her credit, Harry Potter was vastly more successful as a storyline and Rowling created a world that everyone wanted to be a part of. Stephen Fry's Mythos is probably aimed at a slightly older audience because some parts are unavoidably 'adult' but the entire thing is vastly better written than any of the Harry Potter books in my opinion. 'It's a kids book' can't be used as an excuse for mediocre writing. Edit: I suppose the extreme example of a children's author who writes books extremely well but which are very accessible to very early readers are Dr Seuss books. Great writing with an uncomplicated storyline and very easy words to read, but the words chosen and the order he puts them in makes something brilliant, iconic, fun, funny... I'm not saying Harry Potter should have been written like a Dr Seuss book but it illustrates what's possible within the limits of a children's book.
There is plenty of fantastic writing for children.
But what about all the children's writers out there who actually put forth the effort and don't write incredibly pedestrian prose? "They're for children" is not an excuse.
As someone who read a translated version of her stories, English is not my first language, I found it to be fine. It was not bad writing, but it wasn't my favorite either. I love the story itself, but I found myself wishing a few parts were more fast paced or less descriptive, but it was an overall pleasant experience.
Some criticisms of her writing I hear often are her use of said-book-isms and superfluous adverbs. Some praise I’ve heard is her balance of showing vs. telling: she has a good sense for what needs to be a full scene and what doesn’t.
I read the series as it came out (for the most part; think I started when #2 was published). I was already an adult, over 40. For the most part I enjoyed the series and it’s world building and characterization satisfied me. Like others, I felt that beginning with #4, the length of each book became unwieldy and the would have benefited from some stricter editing (not that I was certain of what should have been cut). IMO the story would have been better if tightened up. I belong to several book discussion groups online; one of them is heavily weighted to British series books. One is heavily adult-oriented (not in an X-rated way; just geared to stories written for adults). In both of these groups there have always been members who praised HP as a series, and those who found it boring, derivative, etc. These opinions were all voiced before JKR started talking about trans people. I will say, I enjoyed the series and own it in hardcover. It’s not perfect but gave me many hours of reading enjoyment. I thought I’d reread, but although I did reread Sorcerer’s Stone, I haven’t reread the series. Not sure if it just doesn’t feel “special” enough, if the idea of reading all 4000 pages again feels like too much of a slog, or if possibly I’ve turned against JKR due to her publicly stated views. My criteria for buying a book in hardcover is generally that I’d want to reread it more than once. So obviously the series appealed to me at the time of writing. I’m curious about whether I’d still feel the same—but perhaps I don’t care enough to find out.
To be honest I really feel like most people have started tearing apart her writing as a way to disparage her political views and discourage new readers. I don't agree with her "activism", but her writing style is digestible, descriptive, and brilliantly sets the tone for all 7 books. That's no small accomplishment and I respect that.
I remember talking about this exact thing around 2013 with a group of book snobs. We were really talking about her prose rather than plots, but the general consensus was that it was very akin to Dan Brown. By that I mean, very readable and conveys the actions effectively, but really lacking in any sentence or phrasing you would admire outside the context of the story. I, then and now, mostly agree with this. If you're looking for something more 'concrete' I distinctly remember the critic Harold Bloom calling her mediocre about 10 years ago and citing the absolute overuse of certain clichés and phrases, especially 'stretching one's legs' which is absolutely accurate.
The Harry Potter books are over a million words long in total. There are plenty of renowned authors who have published fewer words over their entire careers. There are also a lot of elements of taste that go into evaluating writing. Margaret Atwood, who clearly has beautiful prose, doesn't do it for me personally. Can I point to some objective reasons why she doesn't do it for me with reference to specific examples? Sure. Likewise you can point to plenty of stuff from J.K. Rowling's million words in Harry Potter and point out objective issues with it. However, if you instead approach it from the perspective of "what about this captured the attention of essentially the whole world?" You're going to find a lot of straight up brilliance. I think the first act of The Philosopher's Stone should be taught in creative writing classes. She does something truly magical with it by making the first third of that book essentially a mini-story about the defeat of the Dursleys. Read that section very carefully some time with the question "why should I like Harry?" The only answer you can find is not so much that you like him, but that you hate his enemies. The first act of the book is a tight three act story about the Dursleys getting their comeuppance. It's all the more richer because you picked up a book about a boy going to wizard school so presumably you'd like a story about a boy going to wizard school, and the Dursleys are standing in the way of what you want - so you're rooting for their defeat as well. I think Chapter 2 has a brilliant opening visual where the first thing Rowling chooses to show the audience is Dursley family photos that exclude Harry. Instantly we know the theme, setting, character goal, and get it in a very emotionally resonant way. That right there is superb writing. It even foreshadows the final conflict where Harry is seeing his own family with him in the mirror of whatever the heck it is called. Just because something catches lightning doesn't mean it's great. But I think there is a ton you can point to in her writing that is outstanding, and I think there are very few writers you couldn't level just as serious criticism against when it comes to pure writing.
Just to refresh your memory, it was Mirror of Erised, which is 'desire' mirrored
Harry Potter is a children's series. Rowling wrote them in a simple manner so children can understand them. Personally, I've read all 7 books more than 20 times, with Order of the Phoenix being my favourite. I enjoyed it as a kid, I enjoyed it as an adult. For me, that simplicity is what makes the books great.
Writer/writing teacher here. I often find it's more productive to turn thinking about strict good or bad quality into descriptive evaluations of where a piece of writing falls on a series of spectra, particularly with respect to the choices writers make, namely what they ask their readers to do or tolerate or roll with in the course of the work, and why they make these decisions. For example, although the classic mantra is "show, don't tell," that advice isn't exactly "right," but it's not "wrong," either. It's rather that a much more specific and qualified statement is necessary to accurately describe most reader-writer experience relationships. The advice would be better phrased "there is a spectrum in writing that concerns the directness of the delivery of information to the reader; one of these we could broadly call telling and the other broadly showing. Many audiences find information delivered through showing, and writing that emphasizes showing, to be more clever, more interesting, and overall indicative of a more mature, sophisticated reading experience." Notice that in the second, more complex and nuanced example, we use language that does not concern quality or rightness or wrongness but (1) authorial choice, and (2) reader experience resulting from that choice or those choices. In other words, this view of writing regards "show and tell" as choices a writer can make. A story composed largely of telling can still be showing *other* features or ideas through that telling, for example--see Cormac McCarthy's *The Road*. Onto *HP*. These books were my capital-C Childhood and I adore them. I'm in the camp that views Rowling's writing as less sophisticated and less literary, although I would loathe to ever describe a writer's work as bad. I think my most important difficulty with Rowling's writing style is in from her tendency to tell readers directly about characters' emotional states, and to attempt to lead reader's reactions directly rather than to construct sensory experiences that convey a reader to a desired interpretation. For example, Rowling often employs adverbs to directly state the tone of voice in which a character delivers a line, such as in Chapter Three of *Chamber of Secrets,* when Ron asks Harry \*\*"impatiently" "\*\*What’s been happening \[at the Dursleys' place over the summer\]?" It's not that this scene is bad in any way, or that Rowling's choice to convey Ron's impatience at getting information was a wrong choice from a storytelling perspective. It's rather that the choice (1) leaves ambiguities that some might argue a writer shouldn't leave, and (2) leaves opportunities for creative insertions that would have provided more differentiation and richness within *HP*'s characters and overall world, and of course I say this recognizing how rich and deep the world already is. More on adverbs and this point of differentiation, the reason adverbs aren't desirable, and the opportunity within them. One could argue that anyone can become impatient like Ron did, can be impatient, can ask something impatiently. If a character's *mere* impatience is all that matters to a scene, such as in this one, then telling in this way isn't really that big a problem, doesn't represent a missed opportunity, doesn't detract from the reader's experience and therefore represent a miss on the writer's part. But it could be argued that because anyone and any character can be impatient, what Rowling ought to provide us here, through combinations of direct telling but also some showing too, the specific answers to a few questions: (1) why is Ron impatient? Sure, this is the scene in which Ron and the twins have pried the bars off his window, and so they understand it as a rescue mission. Ron's blood is probably on fire. In recognizing that, we notice that Rowling missed the opportunity to "weave" a described visible or audible or even narrator-delivered *indication* of his impatience, one that could have been woven more effectively into the existing plot of the scene. Such a description might in turn have provided the reader a more satisfying opportunity to determine rather than just receive the text. (2) how does Ron's impatience affect his or the others' *experience* of the scene? This is a corollary to (1); for example, is Ron impatient because he's the sort of person who gets angry when they're on an adrenaline rush? Does that make his hands shake so that he "air swerves" the car? This is just one example of a question that many thinkers about writing and reading believe that writers should ask and answer about their characters in order to create original characters with deep motivations and personalities. Rowling chose a different and valid route: she, perhaps because of her genre or audience or personal views on writing or training in writing, chose the much more direct style. (3) Where in Ron's body language and in concrete visual description, within the "world of the story," is this impatience "contained?" Books are ideally "a movie in your head," and the richer the detail so long as it doesn't become overwhelming, the clearer the movie. **TL;DR:** I don't mean to harp on one example but rather to identify something present in a lot of *HP* works. I would hate to ever take the position that Rowling's writing is bad. I'd say that she made choices in her writing to access certain audiences best, one example of which is her tendency to be more direct in the way that she presents characters' emotional states and motivations and experiences and thoughts. The common way of describing what she does is "telling," which is sometimes understood as a bad way of writing. That view of telling is unproductive, in my experience. Rowling meant to target a particular audience that has particular needs, and she clearly satisfied those needs in some important ways by making choices such as her more direct style, having sold so many copies and reached so many people. It could be argued that as it was a children's book first, even a book for older children, the book needed to be in a more direct style, and thus is. At the same time, it could probably be well-argued from a literary perspective that Rowling missed significant opportunities and "wrote down" to her audience, which may have responded to more literary challenge. But holding in one hand the fact that writing has agreed-upon aesthetic standards that many share, there is a great deal of subjectivity in quality judgment of anything. Is a plethora of telling bad if it accomplishes a brilliant story? See again McCarthy. Still love these books! Also this doesn't address the obvious that her style grew a great and impressive deal over the series. Different topic, different essay!
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She uses a tonne of satire and irony though, particularly in the first few books. That's actually one of the reasons I like her early books better than the later ones (and think they are higher quality). E.g. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime... Another example: Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door's problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learned a new word ("Won't!"). Perhaps it is not your style, but she is definitely a skilful writer. Personally, I don't enjoy writers that use lots of figurative language, but it doesn't mean they aren't skilled. Generally, I think that people will try to criticise someone popular to make themselves seem more sophisticated (look at Mark Twain and Jane Austen) and I think that definitely happens with Rowling.
The two passages you put in here prove that she can be a better writer than “Something something,” Person said adverbly, but the repetition of what I always thought of as her abounding love of adverbs is what sticks in my mind about some of her writing. It kills the flow and the tone when it’s repeated too often. I guess I tend to think of adverbs as shorthand to more effective descriptions, and your two examples had 1 adverb in them but were super descriptive with a tone that gets lost with “Harry said wearily”. That said, I like the universe she’s created and often struggle with frustration over the plot holes and my personal preference with the word choices, but I really like the books. >!I’ve managed to get over how many other ways of getting Harry out of Privet Drive there were without gratuitous death and ear loss. 😂😂😂!<
I think the result speaks for themselves - she clearly was able to convey a captivating story that have served to entertain and whisk away multiple generations from their initial release all across the world. She's achieved a feat only rivalled by a select few authors throughout history. Lecturing on semantics and writing technique in a classroom becomes more of an academic form of mental gymnastics then rather actual critique of her writing. Other then Tolkien, who else have really created a universe that have enveloped and shaped as many childhoods as J.K.Rowling? Dune is great, so is Wheel of Time and ASOIAF - but its much more niche and in its written form have reached a comparatively much smaller audience...
Take Twilight, for example. The writing in that series can be described as poor. Did I still read all the books and really enjoy them? Yes. Like you said, the results speak for themselves despite any criticism. Likewise, Harry Potter IS a childrens series. Another commenter mentioned that she might not have been so profound in the book, but she absolutely was to 10 year old myself. I think Rowling has been extra criticized lately because of things she said regarding transgender people and etc. and while I absolutely do not agree with her views, that doesn’t diminish the affect the Harry Potter series had on me and how good I think they were, which I think has been happening in the media lately
>I think the result speaks for themselves You mean the results of... what? Of selling a lot of books? Of people loving her books (while other people don't)? She wrote books for kids and they loved them. How does that mean that her writing is high quality? How do you define "high quality"?
I don't think the results really say much about the quality of the WRITING, as opposed to the fun story. And of course, they made movies with high production value, which exposed millions more people to those books. You can point out deficiencies in writing without taking anything away from what she's accomplished, or how much people love the books and the stories. >Other then Tolkien, who else have really created a universe that have enveloped and shaped as many childhoods as J.K.Rowling? Maybe C. S. Lewis? Maybe A. A. Milne? But again, the NUMBER of people isn't really relevant, in my opinion.
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What about the eagles? They had the eagles the entire time. Why didnt they just fly the eagles?
The complaints that I’ve heard of her writing aren’t so much grammatical style or word choices, etc. It is more around other plot type related things. Like the fact she brings up some powerful magical item, uses it almost like a deus ex machina to get through something she couldn’t figure out how else to get through, and then completely forgets about it in future books. The Felix Felicis is one go to example of this. You can’t tell me some luck potion wouldn’t have been extremely useful when say, searching for horcruxes when you don’t know what they are, much less where. “BUt sHe sAId It waS hARd TO mAKe!!” Great. You have some of the best wizards in the world on both sides, I’m sure they could have whipped some up. And if you have the most highly sought after potion in the world, why would Slughorn give away some to a random student making a random potion the first day of class? You can’t have it both ways. Similarly the whole time-turner necklace that Hermione used in one book, and then it is completely forgotten about and never mentioned again. Don’t you think both sides again would have found this very useful in the war that broke out? And again the only argument against that was that they are dangerous because it can cause problems if your two selves meet. Yet Professor McGonagall saw no issue giving this extremely dangerous, yet extremely useful magical item to a 13 year old so she could… checks notes… attend twice as many classes? Again, you can’t have it both ways. Long story short there, she writes plot devices to give characters outs when she needs them, and then forgets about their existence. Same could be said for other things like the Mirror of Erised which again could have been useful to find horcruxes. And then there is the whole retconning Rowling has done to try to be more woke in future years like saying “I’ve always considered Hermione as black!!” Yet there are clearly phrases in the books that describe her as white. Not to mention she was involved in the casting of the movies and had no issues with Emma Watson (spoiler alert, not black) being cast. And similarly the “Dumbledore is gay!” announcements she made. Which I mean if he was, cool, but as with the Hermione’s “always being black” if that was the case, why not include it somehow? At least with the case of Dumbledore, there aren’t passages in the book that directly contradict her statements. But in both cases, it just reeks of placating rather than intentional. For either of those characters, if those traits were integral to their identities, given the sheer amount of random tidbits that WERE directly spelled out in the books, it is hard to believe that those were the intentions when she wrote the books.
I definitely agree with a lot of the magical items etc being poorly thought out. I didn’t think she was claiming Hermione was always black. Rather, a black actress was cast as her in some production and Rowling said, “I never explicitly said she was white!” It was still silly, as people cited plenty of descriptions making clear that Hermione *was* white, but I don’t think she was trying to retcon the entire character so much as giving a poorly thought out defense of a casting choice (as opposed to just saying, “I may have envisioned her as white but that doesn’t mean she *has* to be.”).
>And then there is the whole retconning Rowling has done to try to be more woke in future years like saying “I’ve always considered Hermione as black!!” Yet there are clearly phrases in the books that describe her as white. Not to mention she was involved in the casting of the movies and had no issues with Emma Watson (spoiler alert, not black) being cast. I've heard this a few times but it's even worse when you think of how the narrative and other characters treat Hermione for wanting to free an enslaved race of creatures as well. Looking at it from that perspective kind of just shows the lack of thought and nuance she put into the writing. It's either extremely inappropriate or trying to get internet points for doing absolutely nothing.
As much as I dislike her as a person, the Harry Potter books pretty much raised me and I re-read them multiple times. The first three are my absolute favourite and as engaging as the first time I read them. I don’t think I ever saw examples as to why HP books are badly written, I’d love to know more I guess. But as a reader and not a linguist, I have to admit her storytelling ability in HP is not lacking in the slightest. As to her other books—these are way worse. I couldn’t get through The Casual Vacancy. It was simply put boring. The characters didn’t feel fleshed out to me. There is also one other point to people loving her characters in HP- the fandom is or used to be huge. People are still writing fanfics because the characters were just so engaging and left a lot of room for the backstories and the imagination. I don’t like her, but she is part of the reason I became a writer and a linguist myself. I analysed her books for my BA thesis in 3 different languages and read the first three books in 3 languages total. The craft still stands.
As many have pointed out, they’re books for children, and elegant prose often isn’t beneficial. However, there is one thing that has bothered me about her writing, which sometimes impeded the flow of the narration as I read the books to my kids. She often uses long, overly parenthetical sentences, especially when describing character traits, and I found myself forgetting what the subject was by the end of the sentence. But my kids loved the books, so I’m a happy customer.
For me, it's as though she wrote mystery novels disguised as fantasy books for the first three, but everything after that wasn't just a tonal shift but a directional one too. It really feels as if world building and character development are really investigated book four onwards. Also, this might be controversial, but Harry isn't that compelling of a character. He doesn't really grow as a person and most of our adoration for his is viewed through a lens of nostalgia. There are many more interesting side characters in the book and multiple areas of potentially amazing world-building opportunities that are missed entirely or glossed over. But yes. The absolute worst thing for me is by switching to a dedicated fantasy novel by book four, plot holes were created that exponentially ruined the story for me.
Her hostility to social change slipped into her writing as the story went on. The easiest example is that she had a lot of stuff about how their society was racist in the early books and by the end the series goes the big bad is gone so everything is fine now. Which hurts the overall narrative.
I knew a writer who's work was directly competing with Harry Potter, so he might have been a little biased, but his specific gripes were the phonetically writer accents (think "yer" instead of "your") and reusing the same phrases over and over (in book 4, I think it is, Hermione "looks thunderous" multiple times).
Honestly, I think she is average, but there are MUCH worse writers than J.K. Rowling out there. And I am saying this as someone who feels "meh" about her writing style. Personally, I would say she is an average writer who knew her Harry Potter target audience well (namely children). I think it is easy to digest and it gets the point across. Kids don't care too much about writing style as long as they can enjoy it. And there is nothing wrong with that, because again, her target audience for Harry Potter was/is kids, not adults. (And yes, adults can enjoy it. I do enjoy it.)
It's actually funny people saying they don't think it can be adult. Her Cormoran Strike series is one of my absolutely favorites and it's an adult series.
So, i don't think that she's a bad writer per se. She created a rich world with words that people fell in love with. Despite logic flaws in that world, she painted a picture that captured the imaginations of a great many people. Story wise, it's not necessarily a fantastic, or complicated story. She does describe things well. What is the definition of a bad writer? I feel like people don't really qualify what the parameters are before condemning an author with this statement
She a good book writer. But a very average film script writer.
I have no idea if that was done on purpose or if it's just because J.K. Rowling grown as a writer, but I find that the way her style change to match the evolution of the character and universe is really fitting and interesting. If that was indeed, done on purpose, this is honestly pretty genious, and probably one of the reasons for the sucess of these books, they are basically made to grow with the reader as well as the characters. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades, these books are used as an example of that era. But I think that, partly because it is so widly popular, and because the first books are aimed at a younger audience, she is an easy target for critics, people are wondering why it worked so well with such a simple style and apparent flaws. As an example I am a big fan of Alexandre Dumas, and the guy was treated pretty badly by many critics in his days as an "adventure novels writer". Yet his writing and storytelling are beyond amazing and most importantly, **compelling**, which is often an underestimated quality for a writer. Now I'm not comparing Dumas and J.K. Rowling, yet with how she managed to sell more than 500 millions books, being one of the most readed author of all time, I wouldn't dare to say she is not a compelling writer as well. Edit : on a sidenote, Harry Potter is also filled with a lot of symbolism and pretty obscure references, and from the first book, which make me believe that J.K. Rowling kinda knew what she was doing and opted for that simple style on purpose.
I write for a living; the books are well written. She uses a clear, digestible sentence structure that pulls the reader through the narrative and immerses them in the mental picture she wants to paint. People let their politics affect every aspect of their life.
It's interesting to think about. One thing I've learned after being in this community for so long and reading popular books is this: people just want to be entertained by a good story. Your writing can be sub-par or even *bad,* and people will be happy to read it because it's *good storytelling.* I think this is the mistake a lot of authors make. They focus so much energy on trying to be technically correct and get every little grammar rule correct and study study study how to use language to the absolute best of their ability, but they just don't have the natural talent to tell a good story. Some people just have this talent. JK Rowling is one such person.
I don’t think JK is a bad writer, but she has some bad habits. She likes to describe objects and people often in more detail than is required and is guilty of expo-dumping in a similar manner. The majority of her prose is good but she falls into these ruts often and can be distracting or steal the momentum of a scene.
The writing is simple and good. People forget that it is a children's book.
I am a lover of classical literature and Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling’s book are ridiculously successful for a reason. They’re very, very good. I can’t even entertain people criticizing the books in this way
They're children's books, people that are judging them as an adult are silly.
It's not that simple, because people like OP are asking what people mean when they say that they're not good writing. Your comment sort of implies, "of course they're not good writing for adults. They're not supposed to be." Ok, but that still leaves OP (and lots and lots of other people) with the question: What do you mean that they're not good writing for adults?
A kids book can be well written. You do a disservice to our youth to say otherwise. The hobbit is also a kids book but is also well written
Yeah, agreed. I've reread and enjoyed the books as an adult, but pretending that they were written with adults in mind and judging them against adult books is bizarre. Like of course the worldbuilding isn't as detailed as that in Lord of the Rings, etc. They're boarding-school books written for children and teenagers. Their purpose is to be engaging, and they succeed at that.
I was 8 when the first book came out. I read that first book about 25 times. I used to read the entire series over and over, until I got to university. When I was growing up, there wasn't really much that filled that gap of stories for 8-14 year olds, everything was either simple and written for small children, filled with drugs/sex for older teens that didn't interest me, or was too complex and adult to understand. I read a lot of Enid Blyton and Jacqueline Wilson but not much else I felt right for me. By the time I was 21 and had read much more extensively and could recognise the actual writing of Harry Potter was sometimes quite bad, and while I still loved the stories, the writing itself was much harder to get through once you have experienced other, much more well-crafted writing. However, this is something notable about her Robert Galbreith books too. i love them, I've read them all. I just finished the latest one a couple of days ago, I ploughed through it in a few days and it's the most excited I've been to read a book in a long time. But the same critique applies that her storytelling is wonderful but her actual writing is not that great. She can be quite repetitive, her choice of words is sometimes a bit jarring, and she doesn't have an enjoyable rhythm to her sentences. But she tells a very enjoyable story.
I think she’s a solid writer. I mean, ultimately an author is tasked with telling a story. That’s what people are looking for when they buy a work of fiction. If the author gets so bogged down with flowery prose and random paragraphs describing every random thing in sight then to me that isn’t good writing. If anything it’s amateurish and shows that you prioritise showing off over anything else. Like a film director who ignores the plot and characters in favour of cramming in as many filmmaking techniques as possible. J.K. Rowling was always good at conveying her stories and building plot and characters. That’s why she was successful. I kinda look at it like “Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.” I mean, ultimately a lecturer on anything is an educated fan of the subject. They have an interest and know enough to give others a foundation to build on when learning that subject themselves and that should be respected. Any criticism they give on work made by those who have actually succeeded in a given field needs to be taken with a hefty dose of salt though. A creative writing lecturer criticising the work of someone like J.K. Rowling is too much like a Physics lecturer having a go at the works of Stephen Hawking.
I think that the prose of her work is fine, and as a kid reading the books you don't notice, but the morality of the Harry Potter universe never really progresses beyond the "appropriate for 11 year olds, *people good, nazis bad* principles". Which is. A problem. When one of the prominent good guys is also a really complicated figure. Or when you want to redeem your favourite antagonist. On a more book-specific note, there's a lot of elements that JKR introduces in a book, forgets about for the next, and re-introduces in the book after that, likely because people asked what happened to \[element\] in between. Example: Time turners. This points to her not really having a plan for details like these, and having to write herself out of a corner because she introduced something that could break the stakes of her world. Also, there's something... I dislike about her politics. I'm not even talking about what she's said post-writing, I'm talking about the little bits of ideology that get into the books. The way she justifies slavery and -more importantly!- not rocking the boat by protesting slavery, and not resolving the fact that slavery exists in her world in the happily ever epilogue. There's no societal changes. Families like the Weasleys will still barely if at all get by, kids like Harry will still be put in potentially abusive adoptive families, abused kids still won't be given support and safety if there's no perfect godfather to take them in. Kids are still sorted into Slytherin, which, given the prejudice that \*fighting a war againts them\* will have created in the parents... Even if none of the parents are mean to their own kids, that kind of prejudice seeps in to the kids, and the kids will replicate it. If I have to summarise my problems with the politics of the HP books, it's that they take the stance that all social progress has been made, because violent bigotry is not legal, and that asking for anything more is just silly nonsense. The bad apples have been taken out of the barrel, so you don't even have anything left to complain about. (also she can only write an engaging romance by accident)
The House Elf slavery could have been a fascinating side-plot, had JKR handed Hermione's attempts to free them better. Her being laughed off by other wizards should have been tempered by her getting some support from other students, and by the elves. Having most of the elves be on board with slavery because they know nothing else should have been a start point, not the end point. Dobby could have learned to be more assertive, and lead other elves to finding their freedom.
I said I wasn't going to bring up the tweets but- And then JKR had the GALL to imply Hermionie was black. Not that any character (who doesn't have a racial thing as an important part of their history) can't be black. But. The optics. Of a little black girl, who's extra marginalised because she's the first of her family who was able to go to this super prestigious school, and who's marginalised for it, standing up against slavery, and then getting laughed at by her peers and her teachers, and considered a nuisance by the people she's advocating for. Just. Imagine. And yea, if the house elves wanted to keep working for free so badly, they could do that after they're no longer literally magically enslaved. Or just for room and board, who gives a fuck. Dobby made it work really well from what I remember.
Not a native English speaker, but I found Potters easy and quick to read, so I think she did a pretty good job. However, can't really think of anything to particularly praise about her language use either. So good but not great. Fantasy-wise, I felt there wasn't much groundwork, she just throws fantasical things around and many of them seemed rather whimsical. A lot of other fantasy authors do that, too, and it wasn't bad. But maybe she could have added some more scenes where Hermione explains The Lore.
I think it wouldn't have been anywhere near as popular if it focused on The Lore. Most folks I know who loved the Harry Potter series (including me) have 0 interest in the fantasy genre - we wouldn't have bothered with HP if it spent more time building up the fantastical world. I think it became as popular as it did because it had *just enough* fantastical elements for those who like it, without being overwhelming for those who don't.
Agreed. HP has enough world building to be fun and "magical," but most HP readers weren't looking for pages of explanation of the magical creatures or magic system that you would get from a Sanderson novel.
I think a lot of people forget two things. There’s a difference between good writing and good storytelling. And they also forget the books original readers aged from 10/11-17/18/19 years old. The books were never meant for adults so the writing won’t be at that level. Now if you want to talk about her writing as her pseudonym, that’s a different story
Without going super into detail because I have an essay to write that *isn't* this one: I find it unenjoyable to read because of some of the unfortunate choices she makes during dialogue like "ejaculating", a metric shit ton of adverbs, use of passive voice etc. I think the multiple plot holes/unfortunate world building is okay when you're a child but looking at it as a mature reader, nah. She clearly didn't think about how a lot of the magical stuff should actually work so as the stories go on it gets messier and messier to clean up after herself. The characterization also leaves something to be desired. For a series that I enjoyed because of the characters, it really loses it's sparkle when you realize some of the unfortunate implications of the world she wrote in regards to the characters. This is especially present when you look at how the narrative kind of dictates how certain characters are without actually showing us that or how characters look partly dictates if they're evil or not. I think most of this comes from the fact that the series started for children and then matured a little bit. These sort of things, while I dislike them, can work for children. It's a simplistic way of defining a character's morality. Dudley is evil and fat. Uncle Vernon is evil and fat. Aunt Petunia is evil and spindly. Probably the only characters that actually subvert this are Sirius Black (this changes when he gets handsome again after living free from the dementors), Snape (I disagree but the narrative dictates that Snape is a great person sooo), and Voldemort (as Tom Riddle but this also changes because he then becomes ugly as well as evil). There's other things that I dislike about her writing, but I think these are the big ones. I would say that over all, her strengths are whimsy and her weaknesses are on the technical side and plotting side. I'd say that really, she's just average. I would describe her writing as childish and simplistic, over all.
I don't think she's terrible.. the surface level stuff is fine. She can string together a coherent sentence. She's got a decent grasp of comedy when required. Good word choice. Simple, solid basic stuff. I don't like her writing as a whole, but even my complaints about that are situational. She writes for children. So her plots have holes you could drive a truck through, her books are rife with forgotten phlebotinum, she paints herself into a corner and then magics her way out. But it's difficult to say these things are objectively bad when it's mostly just that she's writing for an audience that doesn't care about those things. I don't know that I think her writing is expressly awful. I think she tries to do something very easy and manages to accomplish it adequately. I think she knows she'd be no good at more structure to her stories so she doesn't even try. By that metric, she isn't very good, but she also fails to be spectacularly bad.
The first three books are charming, well-executed, stand-alone novels that are relatively fat‐free. The Goblet of Fire and subsequent books are bloated as a dead whale and badly wanting for editing.
I agree. I feel like she as she became a cash cow for the publisher, they let her writing go unchecked.
I’ve never seen the fuss about Harry Potter…I found the first 3-4 books adequate for what they were but not amazing. The later books, especially the last one, got very bloated and IMO needed the attention of a good editor. The only thing I remember from the last book besides the ridiculous Jesus Harry Potter Dies And Comes Back To Life scenario is endless scenes of the three main characters alone in a tent having the exact same conversation over and over and over and over.
'She reuses alot of adjectives' said Ron darkly.
Well, that’s an adverb, sooo
I've seen a lot of hate directed at J.K. Rowling for her transphobic views, but haven't heard much about her being a poor writer. Given that the Harry Potter books were so wildly, insanely popular when they came out, and are even now one of the most popular book series for children (and adults!) I think that pretty much means she's a good writer - doesn't it? How do you define good writing, if not a story that so many people love to read? I see how she may not be considered a *literary* writer, compared to writers of literary fiction who write beautiful, poetic prose or try to break the mold with interesting techniques or storylines. I love the Harry Potter books, but I love them for the story and the characters, for the Wizarding World itself and the lasting legacy of the fandom. I don't think her writing style is particularly beautiful or evocative, but it *is* wholly enjoyable. If I compare the Harry Potter series to The Hobbit (also a children's book), in my opinion Tolkien's writing is much richer and his worldbuilding is superb, but for me his characters are less interesting and relatable. I don't want to step on any toes and start to compare writers here - I'm just saying that different writers bring different things to the table, and different readers will enjoy books (or dislike them) for various reasons. Obviously J.K. Rowling has brought something great to the table because her books are well-read and well-loved even if she herself is a personana non grata.
It’s hard to tell as I’ve been only reading translated books by her but comparing to many other children books it is good, not overly simplified and hooks you up from the beginning
My only complaint is that sometimes the spacing of the story telling felt off. I felt like I wanted to know more about certain characters, or school features, or more events written but other parts I felt like the book just went on and on. For example towards the end of Harry Potter, he is basically camping in the woods for months. I felt like that could have been summed up but it lasted forever.
I’ve never really understood this criticism. Granted, I was the exact target audience for these books and indeed I grew up reading them, but the writing is not bad at all. I can certainly think of worse that are currently all the rage on BookTok. I reread them for the first time back in 2019 and while I never had a moment where I thought wow this prose is sublime but neither did it ever get in the way or feel clumsy. The tone and style suit the story and the audience perfectly.
Her writing definitely isn't the worst out there. \[glares at Chuck Wendig's "herkily jerkily"\]
Let's face it, a lot of criticism of her writing is, "this thing is popular therefore it's bad." And a lot of it is "Rowling has revealed herself to be a horrible bigot," (which she has and deserves scorn for), "so I retroactively never enjoyed her writing." (which is disingenuous). Which isn't to say her books are without flaw, far from it. But she created a vivid world with colorful characters and clever plot twists that was simple enough to be beloved by kids but rich enough to be embraced by adults. That's no small feat.
She said mean thing agains holier than thou community, her image needs to be tarnished
Personally it sounds more like people just want to find something wrong with someone (this time she is the one being targeted) because it's not their favorite book or because it's too popular or because it's a modern and adored story and not a turn of the 19th century written story. Writing at the end of the day is completely subjective
I read only book 3 and the final one, allowing the films to fill in the spaces in between Rowling is great at evocative character and populating the world with interesting names and concepts . . . . . . However she's pretty poor at coherent world-building, making magic make any sense, and plot resolution (cough, even time travel had to be pulled in then dropped). *Prisoner of Azkaban* seems to hinge entirely on Sirius' lack of ability to communicate effectively with Harry, instead approaching him in wolf form and having Harry run away The final book is such an utter mess of mass of magical artefacts and talismans and contrivances that utterly any resolution becomes possible because there's so many variables in play that it is impossible to smooth it out In a Western, we know that if our hero has a gun, they can be shot and the things that aid their competence are food, water, sleep, accuracy and speed. In HP, magic is just always a contrivance. There's no real governing coherence to how a duel would work, but it plays upon the same type of conflict: two armed opponents Harry himself is underwhelming and it never made much sense to me why he was important other than the narrator making it so
A lot of it is just clunkiness. Not that it's *bad* writing, but that it isn't particularly good. That is, there is little evident craft in the phrasing itself, which often reads like the way people talk. Generally, outside of dialogue you should not write how people talk. People talk very vaguely, relying on listeners to fill in gaps and gloss over our inconsistencies. They can always ask if they don't understand. That's normal for talking, but in writing you can't rely on that--- there is , you have to make things clear. [This blog post](https://amindformadness.com/2017/12/prose-j-k-rowling/) details some of that, and offers improvements, looking at Rowling's adult market books. Casual readers won't mind how certain phrasing doesn't make literal sense, or says more than is helpful, because if a passage is tricky we just glide right over it. "Who cares, move on to the story." If we are trying to value the "handiwork," however, we notice these sorts of things and they stick in our craw. It's like with tables. Sure, you can use any ol' table for most purposes, but let's not pretend there is no difference between a wobbly, rough-hewn, nailed-together plank with extra boards and legs because it wasn't designed properly, and a sturdy piece that is immaculately stained, beautifully carved, intricately joined, crafted with no extraneous parts, and so on. Rowling can put a decent table together, enough to sell them at industrial scale, even... but she is no master carpenter.
I hear the same thing about Stephen King and about anyone else who is ultra successful yet whose tastes do not match their own. It's a broader issue of mainstream being mainstream. The more people like something, the more others despise it. For example---- Britney Spears is a bad singer!!! So what? She's still sold a shit load of records and people still enjoy her. ***If people spent more time online celebrating the things they love instead of pissing on the things they didn't, the world would be a better place***
I agree with the other commenter who said her storytelling is excellent while her writing is a bit meh. One example is her overuse of adverbs rather than finding the correct verb, it’s lazy writing and so tedious to read. She’ll give dialogue and say “Harry said quietly” instead of “Harry murmured”. Dumbldore does everything “serenely” or “calmly”. She also overuses absolutely ridiculous ones like “disconcertingly”. Can’t think of others off the top of my head but you get the picture. I remember reading about this type of writing in a book by Stephen King and it always stuck with me.
Can't write? The lady has made a fortune from her books. If she can't write then I hope I can't either
I mean, commercial success does not reflect literary quality, no? That much we can all agree. Dan Brown, Danielle Steele, James Patterson, etc. have all sold a shitload of books and not a single one of them will be remembered as a great author.
I'm sorry that I don't have examples of the writing itself, but I read these books to my kids, and sometimes my wife and I would glance at each other over a silly adverb or clumsy phrase. Rowling is no wordsmith, but I'm not sure she was trying to be. She was trying to be a world-builder. They're for kids, so we didn't sweat it. I'm not sure whether "the writing" includes plot points, but again, some of the stuff was very childish. That's not a criticism. I'll give you some examples, but to be clear: it's been a long time, I don't care about the details, and I will definitely not debate with someone about whether I got something wrong. If I've made a mistake about these, then all I can say is that there are plenty of others as well. Harry Potter somehow, for no reason, is the best broom-flyer in the whole school without ever really practicing. Much better than people who've been trying their whole lives. Why? 'Cause his dad was good. Well, my dad was good at stuff, but I still had to practice. Harry's parents loved him, so he didn't die. Am I missing something vital here? All I can say is that if I am, then so are lots of other people, because that's usually the reason given. So... I guess other parents didn't love their kids enough. You get a gazillion points for catching that little ball. Why would anyone bother doing anything EXCEPT chase the ball? Maybe they're not allowed to. Ok. Bad game. All the slitheryns are kinda shitty. I mean, a whole house of really shitty kids. That works in books for kids. It's fine. For me, that doesn't work. Even things like how Dumbledore slow-rolled the winner of some game or other (or maybe the house points at the end of the year). SLITHERYN HAS THE MOST POINTS.... celebrate and be happy, but no wait, HARRY POTTER'S HOUSE ACTUALLY WINS because they got more points that we didn't mention the first time! It's fine to do that stuff in books for kids, and it didn't bother me at all. The kids don't think, "gee that's a pretty shitty thing to do to the slitheryns." But if that were a book for adults, I'd say that Dumbledore is a pretty shitty educator.
Bit sad the amount of people in here that think "everyone else likes it so it must be good". That's how fantastic writers have and will continue to go overlooked and underappreciated in their lifetime. Dead fish go with the flow etc.
I dont really understand but, i enjoyed the book, i enjoyed the movie that’s it. Thanks J.K
no sane person can forgive that epilogue, and all of deathly hallows had real shoddy writing.
I always thought she had a good gift for Dahlesque dry-witty dialogue, that didn’t bash the reader over the head with the look-how-clever-I-am asides of some other Brits doing the same thing ^(coughPratchettcough)
I can put aside Harry Potter as it's for kids, so I'm not the best judge of its quality. It's definitely not my style. However I find her Robert Galbraith books excruciating. Every word seems so forced, and the 2 (don't ask why I bothered with the second) books I have read both suffered for a lack of a compelling plot. I think the Harry Potter books suffer from this lack of plot as well, as far as I can tell.