Harry Potter and the Secondary World

I went to watch the latest Harry Potter the other night, and it was alright. I'm not a massive fan of either the books or films, both of which I regard as readable and watchable, but nothing much more. Whilst JK Rowling (and the filmmakers) have a grasp of big events and the occasional clever moment, there's something missing that I couldn't put my finger on until now.

I think Harry Potter is one of the first examples (there have been others since) of 21st Century literature. It's a perfect example of this new generation of fiction that makes low demands on an audience and readership and favours events and rigid exposition over warmth and heart.

Don't get me wrong, I think Harry Potter is a fairly big achievement, seven books, soon to be eight huge films and all manner of merchandise to boot, there has to be something there. But I don't think what's there is quite the same as Rowling wants to achieve.

Fantasy is about building a world. A completely true statement to an extent. However, the problem most fantasy writers, and sci-fi writers as well, seem to come across is far too much focus on this world-building aspect. Writing maps, biographies, histories, drawing pictures of places is not writing a fictional book. It's creating a game world. A world in which people can speculate, imagine and play. Tolkien describes the concept of world building below:

"What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside."

This idea can become a little obsessive for fantasy writers, but a lot of them, Rowling included, miss the point.

Take for instance, one of the minor villains of Tolkien, Gollum, or as he's originally called 'Smeagol'. Tolkien, an English language professor has deep set origins for his characters names, for instance Sméagol" bears strong resemblance to Old English smēaġan, a verb meaning "to ponder". For people who are not scholars, this isn't something that strikes you too much. If you are an expert (like Tolkien) in the use of Old English then you may notice this similarity, but it would not detract from the overall enjoyment of the story.

This is where Harry Potter comes in. Take one of the minor villains of the story, Dolores Umbridge. Recognise that surname? It's identical, in pronunciation (if not spelling) to umbrage, a word that means:

1.offense; annoyance; displeasure: to feel umbrage at a social snub; to give umbrage to someone; to take umbrage at someone's rudeness.
2.the slightest indication or vaguest feeling of suspicion, doubt, hostility, or the like.

And that's essentially her character in one fell swoop.

And that's not the only character who Rowling does this too, what about Harry's Godfather, Sirius Black? Who turns into a Black dog. Sirius was Icarius' faithful dog, who was changed into a star. Pretty much predicates exactly what happens to the character in the books. Other characters have closely written names, Hagrid is haggard, Snape snaps at the children, Cornelious Fudge fudges things.

Now look back at that Tolkien quote, where he talks about bringing our minds into this Secondary World. The one thing that detracts from a story is anything reminding us of the existence of this Primary World, it brings people out of the story and reminds them that they are reading fiction. Rowling's problem in the books is that so many things have reference to things in our world, that don't require it. I'm not arguing that a pen has to be something completely different in the Harry Potter world (because it does, after all take place in a vague side universe alongside our own, and events bleed together). But do we really need the main villain to be named after the French, "vol-de-mort" meaning "flight from death" (meaning literally escaping death). Literally naming your characters exactly what they are like is not world building, it's lazy writing.

Structure is also something that modern fantasy seems to be confused about. Lord of the Rings is deceptively simple. There's an evil ring, and it needs to be thrown into a big volcano. Simple. Harry Potter? There's an evil wizard, and he's split his soul into seven pieces and hidden them all in different places, so we've got to find these seven pieces of his soul and destroy them. That, to me, doesn't sound like literature. It doesn't sound like a story. You know what it sounds most like to me?

A video game.

There's 21st century literature for you. A new post-millenium fantasy/sci-fi structure. No need for simple plots. Why not just write your role-playing game down on a piece of paper and have at it with levels, and bosses. Harry Potter has severely structured stories. Every single book is almost identical. Harry starts a new school year (even the story set outside of the school takes place within one school year, more or less) with Harry starting off simple and happy, learning new spells and tricks and new characters. Along the way he has minor battles and takes part in mini-games of Quidditch whilst mystery upon mystery piles up until, ta-da the final boss rears it's head and Harry uses all these new skills he's learnt in this book to defeat it. Then there's the mandatory cut-scene in which Dumbledore explains everything (even after he dies, this still happens).

This isn't classic fantasy structure. This is a Playstation game.

And maybe this isn't a bad thing. Maybe this is just what the audience of today demands, the kind of level based structure where your characters grow stronger, learn new skills and gain new items like they've just gained a hell of a lot of XP. Is this what we, the audience demand? Are these stories not Rowling's fault at all, but an audience reared on serialised gaming, where they can log in to a whole fantasy world and live out their own story one chapter at a time. Did they bring this on?

It's hard to say. I can certainly understand how an audience raised on these stories would fall in love with the Harry Potter series, even if they shy away from other copycats but maybe publishers should, instead of trying in vain to please people, show us something new. Do something dramatic. Don't let an elderly man with a penchant for being quirky, explain everything. That's called telling. And that's writer's rule number one.

Let's be honest here, Rowling's series isn't the only one to subscribe to videogame rules of engagement. There's plenty of soft targets out there, Dan Brown & Laurel K Hamilton, stand up and take a bow. But when you go back and look at Lord of the Rings, or even The Hobbit, you get a feeling that sometimes genre fiction can be so much more than an angsty, partially sighted, orphaned, bullied, scarred, uneducated boy who lives in a cupboard under a staircase completing a video game.

A Magic Word: Origin.

Or, 'How I learned to despise interpretations of superhero continuity'.

I didn't like Superman: Earth One. In short, that's what this entire post will be about. It's a pretty fickle thing to say, and I'll go into some detail about it, whilst talking about the ways in which writers can claim to interpret origin stories and classic tales.

Superman: Earth One is written by J Michael Strazyinski, and tells the tale of a young Superman in our version of Earth, becoming the superhero for the first time. The main point is to have a whole new continuity and interpretation of the character, but let's just look at the main points in the story.

A young Clark Kent arrives in Metropolis, is shown to be fairly intelligent and decides to become a journalist. He works with Lois Lane, Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, and defeats a superpowered enemy after donning a red and blue costume.

What makes this so different from any other Superman story before? Nothing. There isn't a single moment in this strung out fight scene that couldn't take place in the current Superman universe. Add to this the fact that, let's face it, there is no Metropolis on our Earth. It's lazy writing.

But what about reinventing the myth? Isn't all this just necessary for readers who expect such things from Superman comics? What are the base elements of Superman? I think Grant Morrison, writer of 'All Star Superman' manages to sum up these elements in one page, and eight words:

"Doomed Planet
Desperate Scientists
Last Hope
Kindly Couple"

That'll do quite nicely. Because beyond these eight words, what else really should define Superman? A costume, that's just the logo, the brand, not the character. These other charactrs like Olsen and Lois Lane, they're just dressing - a result of years of continuity and story arcs - they don't define Superman, they're just a part of a particular story.

Pretend for a moment that you, as a writer are told to write a character named 'Superman', What if you were given just those eight words as an origin? Would you still send him to a fictional city, get him a job as a reporter and have him dress up in Red and blue?

Writers Spotlight - Halloween Special

There's a soft spot within me for horror. I don't consider myself a genre buff, even though I can devour sci-fi, fantasy and especially comics with the best of them. But there's always something about horror that grabs me. I'm not one for this new breed of True Twilight Anita Blake Vampire Diaries that appears to be more of a trend than Tony Blair Porn. But having said that, I don't know what it is that grabs me about horror.

So, I'm going to delve into the screenplays, novels, short stories and graphic novels that really got into me, and try and work out why they were so successful (in my mind at least).

Charles Burns' terrific graphic novel Black Hole is best placed to start this off. In this coming of age body horror tale, a school in the American mid-west is consumed by a sexually transmitted disease that causes all manner of mutations on its victims. These stretch from tails, to blisters and perhaps the most horrible one, an extra mouth growing in your throat. The teens who are infected retreat to a nearby forest to form an odd commune. As Time magazine said at the time, "Fear of adulthood, fear of sex and fear of ostracization have never been more disturbingly explored in a serio-comic flashback to bellbottoms, big doobies and skinny-dipping in the woods." It's this common fear that all teenagers have, as well as the fairly horrific detail (someone's extra mouth talking to you whilst they sleep) that make this a truly frightening experience.

Is there a better, more effective short story than The Mist? The short answer, no. This simple tale of a group of survivors holed up in a supermarket during what can only be described as the apocalypse and the relgious segregation and ultimately puritan finale which result from this, is a brilliant story. Stephen King is sometimes (quite rightly) described as too wordy, and too concerned with writers in Maine being involved in car crashes, but with The Mist he succeeds in delivering a classic story, in just under 100 pages. What makes this work, is not so much the monsters (however briefly seen they are) but the people. In particular Mrs Carmody, who begins the story as a cranky religious nut, but by the end has risen to a much more papal position, ordering sacrifices to a vengeful God, as she puts it, "It's expiation gonna clear away this fog! Expiation gonna clear off these monsters and abominations! Expiation gonna drop the scales of mist from our eyes and let us see!" Almost more scary than this is the completely ambiguous ending, which won't be spoilt here. The film adaptation is likewise a true classic of the genre, with an arguably better ending.

I was a little disappointed with the original novel of Let the right one in, mostly because the film adaptation is so good, there was little to no chance that any other version would be unsuccessful. The film is an incredible piece of work, about the relationship between Oskar, a young Swedish boy and a vampire named Eli. Like Black Hole it examines the idea of coming of age. Unlike Black Hole and especially unlike The Mist, Let the right one in is an incredibly subtle piece of work. The vampiric element only constitutes about ten, or fifteen minutes of screentime, and if removed, you would still have a hell of a good film. Two moments really stand out for me, one of which is incredibly good writing, one of which is incredibly good filmmaking. The final scene in which Oskar and Eli are on a train, Eli hidden in a wooden box to protect her from the sun, Oskar tapping on it in morse code is a wonderfully written scene, bringing together the idea of this monster needing someone to protect her, and almost in a way, being the kind of monster that someone likes the idea of protecting. Earlier in the film, we see an older man who murders people and drains their blood to feed her, and by the end of the film we've no doubt in our minds that this is where Oskar is heading, with Eli forever young, Oskar will no doubt age and start killing people for her, until he outlives his usefullness. The other scene is also towards the end of the film, with the killing of three bullies by Eli. The whole scene is shot underwater, whilst Oskar is being drowned by one of the bullies. We see nothing but occasional splashes and the odd limb floating dream-like in front of Oskar and sinking to the bottom of the pool. You can watch this scene here

As an ongoing comic series, The Sandman was one of the best. When it finished it encompassed an incredible story, one long narrative with a very definate beginning, middle and end. However, there were times when it deviated into short stories, just on the fringes of the ongoing story. "24 Hours" is just such an issue. The main character of The Sandman is Dream, the embodiment of dreams and the dreaming (his reality). At this point in the story he has lost various items due to a period of time he spent imprisoned. One of these items is a ruby, stolen by a serial killer named John Dee (an old Justice League villain). He heads to a diner, and over the titular timeframe, wreaks havok with the customers. This is a fairly screwed up issue, filled with depravity and violence, all at the behest of a man with too much power in his hands. One of the Gaiman's captions puts it best when it says, "All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows when to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death."

So what is it in horror that I like? To me, that metaphor that comes with most of those stories above, that the monsters, vampires and creatures aren't what you should be scared of, that humans, in their toughest challenges, are the most dangerous people to be faced with, I think that's scarier. When you look at other horror films that I love, Dawn of the Dead, Onibaba, or books that I like, The Wasp Factory, Lunar Park. There's an element of that human indecency in those.

I think I'll leave this with a quote from Laurens Van Der Post, who said “Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.” I think he may have something there.