Writers Learning from Other Writers

Chapter One of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

All writers begin our literary lives as readers. If you are like me, you fell in love with books, with other people’s stories, at an early age and you never lost a lifelong fascination with words and the places they take you.  If at some point, you develop the desire to become a writer as I did, you will inevitably ask yourself the question: how do others do it? After all, writing is not an aimless collection of words on a page but the result of a great deal of trial and error and careful thinking. Good writing may seem effortless to read but as all writers know, it is not effortless to create. What is it about a work of fiction that makes you want to spend your precious time reading? What are the techniques writers employ to keep you coming back?

I’ve never doubted the oft-heard proposition that writers can uncover these effective writing techniques by studying the works of other writers. I have to confess that as a writer, though, I mostly read for enjoyment than study. So I decided to take an in-depth look at the first chapter of one of my favorite novels, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, to try and identify what writing techniques author JK Rowling used to draw me in.

I made a list of passages in Chapter One where my interest peaked. This happened in multiple places:

·       during the breezy style of the writing, as for example, in the descriptions of the Dursleys: ‘Mr. Dursley has hardly any neck while Mrs. Dursley is all neck, the better to spy over the neighbor’s fences’

·       in the quirky events in the neighborhood, owls flying about in daytime, strange people in purple cloaks

·       Most of all, I was immediately curious about the villainous You-Know-Who and the boy he tried to kill, Harry Potter, already famous and celebrated by a strange group of cloak-wearing individuals with special powers. By Chapter One, I feel sorry for Harry, and am caught up in the contrast between his innocence and the debased situation in which he finds himself.

If you had asked what attracted me to The Sorcerer’s Stone before my re-reading of Chapter One, I’d have answered, “The scene in the beginning of the novel where the reader discovers the big-hearted orphan, Harry, has been forced to live in the cupboard under the stairs.” Upon my re-reading, I see that scene happens in Chapter Two, not Chapter One. It really is a powerful scene for me but I can see upon the re-read I was already hooked, perhaps unconsciously, in Chapter One.

In my re-reading, I also noticed how Rowling makes liberal use of adverbs, sentences which start as prepositions and/or conjunctions, and italics to emphasize a word or phrase. Many writing experts discourage these techniques and my publisher advised me against them when I went through the editing process of my debut, middle-grade novel, Eddie and the Vegetarian Vampire (Saguaro Books, LLC, 2022). However, I never noticed these things when I first read Chapter One. I was too caught up enjoying the ride and wondering what is going to happen next. Nor do these techniques bother me upon the re-read.

Somewhere on the internet, I read that JK Rowling thinks the single, best quality of the Potter series is its ability to inspire. It certainly inspired me. All else is secondary. That is a lesson in itself.