3 Things About Writing Fiction That I Learned From The Harry Potter Series
This article is a part of the November 2018 issue of Transcendence Magazine. Click here to download the full magazine for free!
First I thought of writing a review for the Harry Potter books, but then it came to dawn on me that there is no need for another review telling how great they are (that was exactly the same thing I was about to tell!), so I decided to write this instead; what I, as a fiction writer, learned from reading the Harry Potter books.
Harry Potter isn’t a story for just kids and teenagers, it has entertained people of all ages. So what makes them so appealing to everyone? Is it J. K. Rowling’s storytelling? That’s, definitely a major part of it but there are also these great inventions: magical places, characters, creatures and objects that are sure to keep you glued into the book.
So here are the three things that the Harry Potter books taught me.
1. Make the reader completely aware of what is in the protagonist’s mind
In the story Harry Potter is introduced as a boy who knew nothing about the magical world, he had to learn everything on the way forward. This makes the reader learn with him and now everything that Harry knows, the reader knows too. This will be great if you want the reader to think along with your characters. The harry potter books invoked lots of situations where they have to figure things out and in such situations, the reader will have a clear sense of the direction in which the character will think because they already have a good idea about the character’s knowledge base.
2. Don’t create completely new things, change existing ones
Most of the magical objects and places in the Harry Potter series are not so different from things in the real world. In the story, the fantasy and the real mostly exist side by side. J. K. Rowling could have envisioned the magical world to be in an entirely different place, completely separated from the real world but that would have made everything much less interesting. So here’s the takeaway, while creating a fantasy world don’t create something entirely different from the real world. It wouldn’t work even if you created something new and later try to bring it closer to reality, instead, what you should do is take an object or place from real life and then change it, bring in the magical elements to that nonmagical place.
3. Don’t let your thirst for heroism overpower your sense of reality
In the story there are certain situations in which we really want Harry to do something heroic, whether it be in fighting Voldemort, standing up to Professor Snape or kicking the ass of Draco Malfoy, we expect him to do something when Snape told that Harry’s dad was a moron (that was good after all as he didn’t have to regret when Snape finally reveals the truth) or to at least disarm Voldemort before escaping from the Little Hangleton graveyard. But such things don’t happen, such things should not happen. That’s what makes the characters of Harry Potter more close to reality (not the fantasy elements, but the characters). That’s just like real life, in real life a mountain is what we hope but a plateau is what we get.
So that’s it the three things that the Harry Potter series taught me. I am sure there are more, so if you have any ideas why don’t you just send an email to: niranjanan@theresonantvoice.com.
This article first appeared on the Transcendence Magazine.
