I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your [...]]]> I Write Like is a web tool/toy that uses futuristic robot algorithms to tell you what famous writer’s style most closely resembles your own.  I put in part of the first chapter of Hubris and got this:

Um…thanks?

The Sorting Hat

Harry and the rest of the first years enter Hogwarts for the first time.  In front of the whole school, each of them gets placed into one of Hogwart’s four houses by the magical, talking Sorting Hat. Harry [...]]]> I’m re-reading the Harry Potter series from start to finish in the name of over-analysis. Spoilers ahoy.

The Sorting Hat

Harry and the rest of the first years enter Hogwarts for the first time.  In front of the whole school, each of them gets placed into one of Hogwart’s four houses by the magical, talking Sorting Hat. Harry is relieved to be placed in Gryffindor, after worrying that he might end up in Slytherin, Voldemort’s old house.  The first years join their new houses for a sumptuous meal. During the meal Harry catches sight of a mean-looking professor and finds that his scar starts burning ominously as soon as the professor looks at him. After dessert, he and the rest of the Gryffindor students make their way to their dormitory tower.  Harry falls into an exhausted sleep, and has a darkly portentous dream.

Thoughts

Rowling really knows how to make a reader hungry. The Hogwarts feast is probably the first time the book really got its hooks in me.  Good fantasy has to bring you into its world, and the only way it can do that is to offset its high-flying impossibilities – magic, dragons, what have you – with the familiar trappings of our own world.  Sure, I’d love to be able to levitate things and teleport and fly on a broomstick, but if I’m going to vicariously live in Rowling’s wizarding world, they had better have some good food. And Hogwarts doesn’t disappoint.

The description of the feast is a good example of how much more specific Rowling’s writing is getting.  Hogwarts didn’t get much description from the outside but now it’s really starting to take shape; the Great Hall, with its thousands of floating candles and its magical sky-ceiling, is the first location in the book that really sticks.

Keeping with the important grounding-in-reality approach, Harry’s emotions as he enters Hogwarts should be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever had a first day at school. His legs feel “like lead,” he’s incredibly nervous, and he’s utterly convinced that he’s there by mistake and that at any moment someone will discover his ruse and kick him out.  He also feels everyone’s eyes on him, staring and judging, although unlike most of us Harry is not just using his imagination; everyone is staring at him, because he’s a celebrity.  This part should theoretically be hard to relate to if you’re a non-celebrity like most people, but it fits in so cleanly with Harry’s general sense of nervousness that I barely thought about it.  Everyone feels like they’re conspicuous and different on their first day of school, whether they actually are or not.

The matter of Harry being selected for Gryffindor will come up again, at the end of this book and even later. Harry has already learned that he has some strange connections to Voldemort and the last thing he wants is to end up in his old house. Yet he clearly fears that he will, powerless to do anything about it.  It’s heavily implied later on that the Sorting Hat doesn’t really choose the house; the student does, so Harry naturally gets his wish.  But that fear of being drawn to darkness is telling.  It’s a good quality for a hero to have, which is why it’s such a common trope: Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, and Odysseus all had to gaze into the abyss and confront their own evil impulses before they could complete their respective journeys.  Harry will have to do the same, literally (in the form of the Horcrux he carries with him) and more figuratively (in growing up and putting his emotional baggage behind him).

Speaking of the houses, I still don’t get the sense that Slytherin is anything other than the “evil” house, something that’s always bugged me.  Gryffindor is for the brave, Hufflepuff is for the loyal and hard-working, Ravenclaw is for the studious (it always seemed like Hermione should’ve ended up there, doesn’t it?), and Slytherin is for “cunning folk [who] use any means to achieve their ends.”  That could almost apply to Fred and George, but it’s still a pretty unconvincing euphemism for “these people would paint a house with your blood if they really liked the color.” I tried to remember if anyone ever came out of it who was basically good but just really ambitious to the point of ruthlessness; the closest I could get was Professor Slughorn, who’s not evil but still a pretty slimy bastard, and…

Snape!  Why there he is, that perennial red herring and morally ambiguous double agent, sitting with the rest of the teachers and throwing Harry the first of many nasty looks.  I’m a fan of Snape, and I’m glad to see him appear.  That’s not to say I like Snape, but since Rowling tends to paint her evil characters with pretty broad, sometimes vaudevillian strokes, it’s nice to have at least one character whose motives are complex, and who can be a major unsung (until the end) hero of the series while still being a petty, reprehensible twit most of the time.  He’s far and away the most complicated character in the books.

So the first thing he does when he spots Harry is give him a dirty look, since he sees the face of his young tormentor James Potter looking back at him.  But then Harry gets his telltale oh-crap-it’s-Voldemort burning sensation in his scar.  Of course if we read closely:

The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell’s turban straight into Harry’s eyes…

Aha, very clever, Ms. Rowling. Yes, Quirrell is now sporting the turban that hides the fact that Voldemort has taken up residence on the back of his head. It’s a much more obvious hint than I remembered; Rowling points it out and calls it “ridiculous” as soon as Harry recognizes Quirrell, and later Harry has a dream in which he’s very meaningfully threatened by a giant version of the turban. And now, I guess Voldemort was looking at Harry through the turban at that moment too, or maybe his nasty thoughts jumped onto Snape’s glance and hitched a ride, or maybe I’m overthinking things.  It’s misdirection, and surprisingly effective misdirection at that; did anyone actually peg Quirrell as the villain before the reveal? I certainly didn’t.  But the clues are right there.

Other stray thoughts:

• Dumbledore’s often-overlooked goofiness gets a few nice moments here, particularly in this segment, which has always been a favorite of mine:
  

  Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

  Dumbledore’s not crazy by any stretch, but he seems like he could attend the Mad Hatter and March Hare’s tea party and have a lovely time while he was there.

• A good number of other side characters get introduced: Lavender Brown, the Patil twins, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan. Some of the other first years’ names sounded familiar although I wasn’t sure if they appeared later. And of course the ghosts: Nearly Headless Nick, the Bloody Baron, and Peeves the Poltergeist. They’re not major players but they give Hogwarts a really nice bit of otherworldly color.
• Harry certainly has a lot of meaningful dreams over the course of the series. Rowling overuses this device a bit, although not nearly as much as someone like Stephen King.

Stay tuned, because our first real introduction to Snape is still to come.

The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

Harry rides out the remainder of the summer with nervous expectation.  On September first, the Dursleys drop him off at King’s Cross station in London.  A friendly red-headed family, the Weasleys, help Harry [...]]]> I’m re-reading the Harry Potter series from start to finish in the name of over-analysis. Spoilers ahoy.

The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

Harry rides out the remainder of the summer with nervous expectation.  On September first, the Dursleys drop him off at King’s Cross station in London.  A friendly red-headed family, the Weasleys, help Harry find his way through a magical entrance to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, where he boards the Hogwarts Express.  On the way to the school Harry meets Ron Weasley, the youngest brother in a large family of wizards who already feels overshadowed by his siblings; Hermione Granger, a brainy Muggle-born girl who talks at great length; Neville Longbottom, an awkward boy who’s always losing things; and he is reintroduced to Draco Malfoy, the upper-crust bully he met at Diagon Alley earlier.  Other side characters make their first appearances.  After enjoying some wizard candy for the first time, Harry disembarks and follows the rest of the first-years across a still lake to the massive castle of Hogwarts.

Thoughts

This is a busy chapter, with a lot of major character introductions.  It’s clear that the characters are Rowling’s focus in this section; she offers spare details on the exact look and feel of the train, the passing countryside, and even Hogwarts itself, which is described only as “a vast castle with many turrets and towers.”  The characters don’t get a lot of physical description either.  Here’s what we know about what these (mostly major) characters look like:

Ron: “Tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose.” Like all the Weasleys he has “flaming red hair.”

Mrs. Weasley: “Plump.”

Fred and George: No description aside from the hair.

Percy: He “looked like the oldest.”

Ginny: “Small.”

Hermione: “She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.”

Neville: “Round-faced.”

Draco: “Pale.”

Crabbe and Goyle: “Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean.”

Rowling has demonstrated in interviews that she knows exactly what her characters look like, even down to their eye color, so it’s surprising that she doesn’t describe them more thoroughly. She seems more focused on presenting their personalities through their dialogue and actions – showing and not telling, which I appreciate.  Although she flatly tells us that Crabbe and Goyle are mean, she lets us figure out for ourselves how nasty Malfoy is, and Ron’s description of the Malfoy family’s dodgy history doesn’t come until after we’ve already seen him in action. Likewise, Fred and George’s mischievousness doesn’t get brought up until we’ve watched them goof around at length.  The telling reinforces the showing, rather than lazily replacing it.  It’s pretty solid character writing.

I wouldn’t mind a bit more description of the environment.  Then again, I don’t recall having an issue with that first time I read the books.  It’s hard to say if that’s an issue with the writing or if I just want and expect different things as a re-reader.  Reading a book the second (or in my case, third) time around is like that.  On a first read, the text is fluid; your imagination will insert details and descriptions alongside the canonical ones, without much caring which is which.  It isn’t until the re-read when you find out which details you imagined, or were contradicted by other details that you missed.  The text is no longer fluid, especially because you know how it ends, which gives each plot point a sense of finality that wasn’t there back when you were still guessing as to the ultimate outcome.  So as a re-reader, you’re not just going back over the story; you’re retracing your own steps as a first-time reader.

You’re also spotting details that seemed innocuous at the time that you now know are quite significant, one of the best parts of a re-read.  This chapter has two such details: Scabbers the “rat,” and a casual mention of Grindelwald on Dumbledore’s trading card.

Scabbers, of course, is actually the treacherous Peter Pettigrew hiding in plain sight. I’m not entirely sure why he’s been hanging around the Weasleys all this time instead of hightailing it to Patagonia or somewhere; only Sirius Black knows he’s still alive, and he’s locked away in Azkaban. Is he waiting for Voldemort to return?  Does anyone besides Quirrell even know that Voldemort is still alive?  I can’t recall how well this is explained in the third book, so I guess we’ll have to wait until we get there.

What I find interesting here is that Scabbers/Wormtail actually defends Ron by biting Goyle when he tries to steal Ron’s candy. Perhaps he’s gained some affection for Ron over the years, or maybe he was never a fan of Goyle’s father the Death Eater and decided to take it out on his son. I like to think it’s the latter; that would be a nice little touch.

Grindelwald, I’m pretty sure, won’t be mentioned again until the very last book, although I’ll keep an eye out. I get the sense that Rowling was planning something significant between him and Dumbledore very early on. At this point in the books the most significant thing about him was that Dumbledore defeated him in 1945.  Obviously, when a British wizard defeats a German conqueror in 1945, that’s not an accidental choice, although I don’t believe Rowling makes the parallels between Grindelwald and Hitler any more obvious than that. Voldemort has many such parallels too, with his obsession with racial purity and his campaign of fear and domination. More on that later.

Grindelwald’s mention also brings up the fact that Dumbledore is gay, and Grindelwald was his lover, which Rowling has made explicit in interviews but never in the text.  This caused some very minor controversy when the last book was released, but by that point fundamentalist Christians had already burned enough Harry Potter books to be bored of the whole deal.  Some people – myself included – would have liked to see Dumbledore presented as openly gay on the page.  It would have been a daring choice for the world’s most popular books to make.  But I’m not going to get up in arms about it; maybe Rowling was intimidated by the potential response, or maybe she just preferred a chaste depiction of her older, wizened characters (no one has ever asked about McGonagall’s sex life, after all. Although, as per Rule 34 of the Internet, I’m sure some of the fan fiction has explored it. Google it yourself, because I’m sure not going to).  Either way, that’s how she chose to write him. I could deal with this by spending some time deconstructing whether Dumbledore ever “acts gay,” or I could just move on with my life. I’ll be doing plenty of overanalysis of his dialogue and actions in other respects anyway.

The chapter ends with the first years just about to walk into the Great Hall for the first time. Join us next time for a grand feast and a peculiar hat.

Charlie just wanted to reconnect with his adopted sister, Adriana. Adriana just wanted to avenge her birth mother by killing the six Gods and ending their tyrannical reign over the universe. But then things got complicated. Charlie [...]]]> Yesterday I did it, months before I thought I would: I actually wrote a query letter pitch for Hubris.

Charlie just wanted to reconnect with his adopted sister, Adriana. Adriana just wanted to avenge her birth mother by killing the six Gods and ending their tyrannical reign over the universe. But then things got complicated. Charlie has met the Gods, and though they’re rattled and threatened, they don’t seem much like tyrants. What’s more, they claim that if Adriana succeeds in killing all of them, she’ll wipe out the universe in the process. Adriana thinks they’re bluffing; the godishes, impish immortal beings that are not quite gods but not quite anything else, are in her corner. But even Adriana is starting to suspect that she’s being manipulated.

As Charlie races from New York to the Tian Shan mountains to the bowels of the earth to stop her, Adriana must face the anger that drives her, and decide whether she’s willing to risk everything-literally-to finish what she’s started.

And already I’m finding faults in it.  This, folks, is my least favorite kind of writing.  I’d rather churn out a dissertation on minor property disputes in 1890s Oklahoma than try to distill a 90,000 word story into a couple of paragraphs.  Or less.  While maintaining a strong sense of the characters, setting, tone, and emotional stakes.  And making it sound irresistible.  Which, considering my rejections outnumber my partial requests by about 30 to 1, I’m really not very good at.

But an author’s gotta what an author’s gotta do.  Writing a good query is a skill every writer needs, and the only way to get better is with lots of painful, demoralizing practice.  I’m glad I got a head start on this one, at least.

Diagon Alley

Hagrid escorts Harry back to the mainland and into London.  There, Harry is introduced [...]]]> I’m re-reading the Harry Potter series from start to finish in the name of over-analysis. Spoilers ahoy.

Diagon Alley

Hagrid escorts Harry back to the mainland and into London.  There, Harry is introduced to Diagon Alley, a hidden magical thoroughfare where wizards and witches do all their shopping.  He visits Gringotts, the heavily guarded wizards’ bank, and buys all his needed equipment for Hogwarts, including his magic wand.  He also meets a fellow first-year who comes across as an elitist jerk.  After his shopping is done, Hagrid takes Harry to King’s Cross station so he can board a train for home.

Thoughts

All right, now we’re getting to the good stuff.  As familiar as Rowling’s wizarding world is to me by now, I still get a little vicarious thrill reading Harry’s first introduction to it.  One of the things that keeps me coming back to these books is their deft balancing act between fantasy world-building and a well-paced story.  Both are critical to good fantasy writing, but they’re often at odds with each other.  The fantasy genre is a naturally attractive one to writers who are, well, fantasists, and so it’s usually the world-building that gets in the way of the story; linger too long on the minutiae of your magical city, or the particular breeds of trolls you’ve invented, and you can easily lose your readers to self-indulgence (Eragon, especially the last hundred pages or so,  is a prime example of this).

Rowling is pretty good at avoiding this trap.  She tends to work in layers; we get a nice broad overview of Diagon Alley in this book, but we’ll return to it many times, and on each trip we’ll get to see a new side of it.  This patient approach makes the world feel lived-in, and keeps the various settings from feeling superfluous; Gringotts is a cool little setpiece now, but it’s also a Chekov’s Gun – if you set up a place as absolutely theft-proof, of course our heroes are eventually going to have to break into it.

So we get to see Diagon Alley, but we don’t really linger here.  This whole chapter is just a taste of things to come.  There’s actually a lot of foreshadowing in this chapter:

• The first mention of Harry having his mother’s eyes.  This is a point that comes up a lot over the course of the series, and Rowling acknowledged that it was an important one.  I think a lot of people, myself included, suspected that this had some magical connotation that would factor into Harry’s final battle with Voldemort.  I was pleasantly surprised when this turned out to be wrong; it’s all a buildup to a small but significant moment at Snape’s death.  It’s a sweet, very sad scene, and it says a lot about Rowling as a writer that she considered it as meaningful as the big climactic battle that follows.

• This exchange with Griphook the goblin is our first introduction (Voldemort killing Harry’s parents aside) of the inherent dangers of the wizarding world:
  

  “Stand back,” said Griphook importantly. He stroked the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melted away.

  “If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they’d be sucked through the door and trapped in there,” said Griphook.

  “How often do you check to see if anyone’s inside?” Harry asked.

  “About once every ten years,” said Griphook with a rather nasty grin.

  Children’s literature is not a very safe place for children, is it?

• We meet Professor Quirrell, this volume’s more-or-less villain.  No mention of a turban, so presumably he’s not hosting Voldemort on the back of his skull just yet, but I think at this point he’s already met the Dark Lord.  His introduction is something of a throw-away moment, which helps set up Snape as the red herring later on.

• I’d never noticed this, but the first fellow Hogwarts student that Harry meets is none other than Draco Malfoy.  We don’t know his name yet, but his stuck-up dialogue is unmistakable. It’s interesting that Harry is defined, so early on, by his connections to his enemies.  Close as his friends will become, they’ll never be quite as close as his foes.

• Speaking of which, we also get our first hint of Harry’s connection to Voldemort, when Harry gets a wand with a core feather from the same phoenix.  We’ll come back to this a lot, so I won’t touch on it just now, but it’s a core plot point and a major theme of the books.

This chapter also introduces Hogwarts’ four houses, along with Quidditch and wizarding money.  The latter two are both reflections of the somewhat random nature of the magical world.  Quidditch has a bizarre scoring system that heavily skews the game toward a single player; wizard money counts seventeen Sickles to a Galleon and and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle –  "easy enough," according to Hagrid. Even though the wizarding world has consistent rules, the mischievous nature of magic ensures that those rules will often be silly and arbitrary, in contrast to the real world.  The wizarding world is not nearly as concerned with convenience or efficiency as ours; that’s part of why it’s so much more fun.

Other thoughts:

• I felt a real twinge of melancholy when Harry picked out his owl.  Hedwig!  Of all the deaths in Deathly Hallows (an apt title, now that I think about it), I think hers was the only one that really stunned me.  I know we have a long, long way to go before that happens, but it still colors my re-introduction to her.  I wonder if I’ll have the same reaction to Fred and George, or even Dumbledore.

• I like Hagrid’s simple, eloquent explanation for the series’ version of The Masquerade: if Muggles knew about magic, they’d just want to use it for easy solutions to their problems.  The implication is that it would only lead to further problems, and it’s pretty hard to argue with that.

• When Harry and Hagrid leave the island in the beginning of the chapter, they take the Dursleys’ rowboat – so what happens to the Dursleys?  How do they get off the island?  I’ll bet there’s a funny short story to be written on that subject.

We’re almost to Hogwarts – tune in next time for platform nine and three quarters.