Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows and Me


 

I want to talk about how my writing changed after reading Harry Potter. And read carefully for your chance to win the FIRST EVER IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE GIVEAWAY OF SHARPSHOOTER IN PETTICOATS.

I have read all the Harry Potter books. But I’ve never gotten into that ‘thing’ kids do where they read and re-read over and over. I didn’t quite get why they did that. And then, one day, my oldest daughter was reading the first Harry Potter again and she looks up from the book with this gleam in her eyes and says, “Hagrid is riding Sirius Black’s motorcycle.”



Harry Potter



Well, I knew my Harry Potter well enough to say, “Are you kidding? In the FIRST book?”

Sirius Black doesn’t appear in the Harry Potter series until book #3 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

In book one there is no indication that Sirius Black exists except for this tiny passing mention of his motorcycle. No further remarks are made, nothing. Well, nothing I know of, like I said, I'm not a true student of the books. But I know he wasn't important enough for me to have recognized the name when he made his appearance in book #3. Add to that, the sentence could have completely stood on it's own. Hagrid arrived on a motorcycle. Cut those two words, Sirius Black's, because they aren't important to the scene and there is no explanation for them to slow down the story.

 As a writer, this just made me ITCHY with envy. I got the complexity of what J K Rowling was doing. I mean I knew there was an over arching story about He Who Must Not Be Named. Of course I got that. I got that Rowling was building to a huge life and death all out battle of good against evil. Harry against Voldemort.

And I got the enormity of her details, Diagon Ally, The Mirror of Erised. All of this is amazingly deep, where a thousand (honestly a MILLION) little details matter and have clearly been given a tremendous amount of thought.



But with that tiny detail about Hagrid and Sirius Black and that motorcycle, I got that the series wasn’t seven books it was a seven book volume of ONE book. And that Rowling already knew, on a really deep level, her story. She knew Sirius Black mattered and she knew it so profoundly that she didn't even really bother to tell anyone. She just knew who's motorcycle Hagrid was riding and mentioned it in passing. I just loved that.

More importantly, from an author’s perspective, that little detail made my daughter eager then to re-read the books to find more tiny clues and asides that all mattered to this massive story.

Enter the Romantic Comedy with Cowboys author. Me.



When this great awakening occurred, I had the Lassoed in Texas series done and in print. Petticoat Ranch, Calico Canyon and Gingham Mountain. I was mostly done with the Montana Marriages series but they weren’t in print yet…still time to make changes. So began this process where I started thinking in terms of a high level of complexity, but in books that still stood alone.

In a lot of ways I can boil this down to Tom Linscott. The hero of Sharpshooter in Petticoats. Of course there’s much more to it than this, but he’s a good example.

In the original incarnation of Montana Rose, Tom Linscott was a name. A cranky area rancher who’d be willing to bid against the tyrannical land baron Mort Sawyer for Cassie Dawson’s foreclosed upon ranchland. In the beginning, Tom had no lines, no description, no role. He was a name spoken between Red and the banker. Linscott’s a trouble maker, he’ll make an offer just to spite Mort.

That’s it. Mort had to pay a little more than he wanted. And since Mort wanted to marry Cassie mainly to gain possession of the spring on her land…thus paying nothing for it…it was a burr under Mort’s saddle.

So now I’m thinking complexity. I already wanted to write the Sophie’s Daughters series, Sophie McClellen’s daughters all grown up…and I knew...in fact I was excited by the opportunity to be TRUE to those little girls as adult women. But to make it truly complex, I decided to have my characters from Petticoat Ranch run into my characters from Montana Marriages.

First thing I had to do was change dates. Montana Marriages was set in almost the same time exactly as Lassoed in Texas, early 1870s. But to run these families into each other, I needed to push Montana Marriages to a later date to give Sophie’s Daughters a chance to grow up. I still had time to do that because those books weren’t in print.

And I needed a little more depth in my sub-characters because minor characters in Montana Marriages could now be developed and used fully in Sophie’s Daughters, but of course, they had to EXIST.



So Tom Linscott, who is utterly undescribed, and who I saw as a crusty old goat, in Montana Marriages...well, let’s not do that, let’s make him HERO material. So now he needs to be described. Now he needs to be young and single. I still want him to be cranky, so now there's a bit of a feud between him and the Sawyers. To enhance Tom's character I gave him a mean horse to match him, but made that about him being a successful, forward thinking rancher. And I pulled a thread through all three Montana Marriages series pitting him against Wade Sawyer.  And I could now show Wade Sawyer's growth as a Christian through his struggle to get along with a very annoyed Tom Linscott. And double that clash by letting Wade marry Tom's sister.

All of this really matters in the Sophie's Daughters series, especially in book three. I had time to go back SIX BOOKS, from Sharpshooter in Petticoats to Montana Rose, and weave in the details that wouldn't matter until so much later.

My very own Hagrid-riding-Sirius-Black's-motorcycle-type detail. And I included many of them.

It’s hard to mention all the threads in a single blog post, but the bottom line is, I had the Lassoed in Texas series in print, it was set in stone. So I used that as my foundation and built from there. Now I can’t imagine the Montana Marriages series without Tom Linscott. He isn’t a huge character but he’s there in all three books, most importantly Wildflower Bride.

All of this is just me trying to interweave nine books to the point each of them matters to the whole.

 I think a big part of the reason Harry Potter was able to be so complex was because it took so long for Rowling to get published. She had the luxury of time. I’m sure when she was struggling to pay her rent she didn’t see it as luxury, but for the strength of the series, it was vital that she know the whole story, not just the over arching themes, but the details. This is what makes the stories re-readable.



Just for the record, I will say that the comparison between my books and Rowlings' pretty much ends there. I believe it ends totally at the point where her book and my book released the same month and hers sold twelve million copies the first DAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Mine sold.........somewhat less.



Someone once told me that the mark of a good book is when the reader can tell the author knows more about her characters than she's telling. That sounded so strange to me at the time, but we talk about backstory a lot. I'm a minimalist, and maybe I go too far with my minimalization (I may have just invented that word). But knowing your characters right down to their parents--who aren't in the book, and their childhood traumas which maybe you  barely mention and certainly not in detail....that kind of stuff makes a book shine. It becomes three dimensional in your writing and gives it depth.

All the fuss over Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows has me thinking about what I see as the real strength and brilliance of J. K. Rowlings' books. What makes them enduring. And with all of us who hang around Seekerville and many of us (including me for a long, long time) taking what seems like too long to get published, I say...use that time.

 Use this chance to give your stories depth, complexity, details. This is your chance to know your characters on a really deep, personal level.

See it as a luxury. And hope and pray that luxury ends real soon.

And that’s the story of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows and me.

Now, to get your name in the drawing for an IOU for a copy of Sharpshooter in Petticoats--I haven't gotten my author's copies yet, but should in a couple of weeks, I want you to tell me something only you know about one of your characters. If you're not a writer, you can just tell me one of your favorite characters in a beloved book.



Hopefully I'll get the books a week or so before they release, but probably not in time for Christmas. Then I'll send it straight off to you.

Mary Connealy
And here's the Seekerville Tweak of the Day.

Garfield