How not to write: J.K.Rowling

I’m about to write a blog post that, for some, might be a little bit controversial.

But J.K.Rowling – esteemed author of the Harry Potter books – cannot really write.

I am a little more halfway through reading the fifth book (Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix) to my seven-nearly-eight year old son. And, boy, do the chapters drag!

As far as I can tell my son seems to be enjoying it, although this may of course be simply because he wants to stay up later. It may also help that I often cut out large chunks of the book as I’m reading, with no loss whatsoever to the loss of what is actually going on (which rather suggests that the offending paragraphs didn’t really need to be there in the first place).

Granted, I did actually enjoy the first three books. J.K.Rowling certainly has no shortage of ideas, and her invention of Quidditch and Muggles and Gringotts, as well as the characterisations of Hagrid and Dumbledore, were pure genius.

But the problem is she really cannot write.

She ambles through the chapters, with no sense of pace whatsoever, and throws in needless adjectives all over the place, which rather suggests an over-reliance on a well-thumbed thesaurus.

She cannot let anyone just say anything. They always have to be doing something whilst verbally ejaculating. It’s totally distracting, and makes the book twice as long as it needs be. (Though of course the predictable way in which J.K.Rowling uses such adjectives does have the slight advantage that they can be truncated when the bedtime curfew has been generously exceeded, and the chapter – which is rarely less than 25 pages – needs to be brought to a close).

Here is a case in point, chosen at random:

“Mum’s crying again,” said Fred heavily. “…”

“Without a note,” added George. “…”

“We tried to comfort her,” said Fred, moving around the bed to look at Harry’s portrait. “…”

“Didn’t work,” said George, helping himself to a Chocolate Frog. “…”

“What’s that supposed to be anyway?” asked Fred, squinting at Dobby’s painting. “…”

“It’s Harry!” said George, pointing at the back of the picture. “…”

“Good likeness,” said Fred, grinning.

etc. etc.

It’s a predictably unvarying rhythm that you could set a watch by. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with inserting fresh adjectives and descriptions at those points where they need to be inserted, but the rhythmic monotony with which J.K.Rowling does this shows a lack of literary imagination.

Great imagination in the story, of course, but poor imagination in the writing.

The other problem is that J.K.Rowling appears to have written the books in order to keep up with her audience.

She started off writing a great book for kids, but by the time she reached the fifth book, which we are on now, her core audience presumably was adolescent. I really couldn’t care less about the relationship that Harry has with Cho, and Flavio probably feels the same way; it will be a few years before he has to deal with the complexities of the fairer sex.

It’s a shame because I just can’t get on with J.K.Rowling’s writing, but at the same time she has included some really spectacular ideas in her books.

But then I think back to one of my favourite childhood authors: Terry Pratchett. I much preferred Terry Pratchett’s writing to J.K.Rowling’s, of course, but then he did have this occasionally irritating tendency of drifting down an irrelevant path, making it hard for the reader to keep up with the often quite ingenious narrative he was attempting to craft. This happened to such an extent with his later books that I honestly find them quite hard to read, and to this day I think I have never attempted the last few that he penned.

But then I think back to what may be one of my favourite Terry Pratchett books: Good Omens.

Only it wasn’t just authored by him. It was written along with Neil Gammon, who was already fairly well-known for his graphic novels.

And because of this the book adhered to the narrative that the authors were spinning, and had that literary flare that keeps readers glued to the pages.

So maybe all J.K.Rowling really needs is a decent editor. Or perhaps a co-author that can keep her in check.

Locking away her thesaurus – or allowing her only to use it on Sundays – might be a good first step.