Harry Potter and the Fundamentals of Fantasy
by Philip Martin
Director, Great Lakes Literary, LLC
In 1997 (1998 in the U.S.), an 11-year-old British lad named Harry Potter, with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, emerged from nowhere, destined to enchant the world of fantasy. In the first in a planned series of seven books, the youngster with unruly hair and a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead entered Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.
In the next ten years, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling exploded to sell more than 325 million copies around the world, dominating bestseller lists and scooping up prizes as handily as Harry grabbed golden snitches in Quidditch.
Despite the boom, fantasy is hardly a new phenomenon. Although nothing like the worldwide appeal of the Potter series, Richard Adams’ Watership Down was widely read in the 1970s by readers of all ages. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings rose to popularity in America in the 1960s in paperback. Older greatest hits include The Wind in the Willows (1908), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Literary giants such as William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, and Oscar Wilde all wrote major works of fantasy.
After centuries of great fantasy books, haven’t all the good tales been told? Hardly. Fantasies are often recycled stories, and there is always room for one more. But that doesn’t mean it’s a snap to write one.
“So many writers think fantasy is easy,” says Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn. “All you have to do is rip off some elves, goblins, and a few other things from Tolkien and spend about 10 minutes making up imaginary words . . . and bingo, you’re in business. . . .
“It’s not at all like that. What made Tolkien unique is that he spent 50 years building his world, and he built it from the inside out.”
Likewise, Rowling has labored long and hard to win her success. She claims that the idea for her series came in a flash on a long train ride. Harry Potter popped into her mind almost fully formed, scar and all. But an idea is one thing; writing a successful book, let alone a series, is another. Consider that twelve publishers in the U.K. turned down the first Harry Potter manuscript before small Bloomsbury decided to accept it.
Before you start, remember: you need to write well. As Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, noted, the rules of fiction are the same for Beatrix Potter as they are for Fyodor Dostoyevsky. You need to deliver gripping beginnings, page-turning plots, and characters that readers care about.
That said, there are a few things that, if done right, help to make a fantasy story work. Here are 8 principles that worked for Rowling, and might work for you!
1. Put new wine in old bottles.
Storytelling is the art of recycling. Take an old story and refresh it, as writers have done through the ages. Clearly, Rowling used themes seen in stories from the Arthurian cycle to works by Roald Dahl, Ursula Le Guin, and others. For instance, in Eva Ibbotson’s 1994 book, The Secret of Platform 13, there is a portal to a magical kingdom: “under Platform Thirteen of King’s Cross Railway Station.” It is a “secret door” found “behind the wall of the old gentlemen’s cloakroom with its flappy posters.” The premise is quite similar to Rowling’s Track 9¾, also at King’s Cross station.
Or consider a tale of a young lad just turned eleven, with a bit of wizard’s blood in him. He enters a school for fledgling magicians, in a far-off castle that has odd rooms, doors, and passageways. Pictures on the wall that wink back at him. He starts as a First Year student, forms friendships with a girl and a boy in his class, messes up early spells in classes like Curses and Transformations. Despite his unprepossessing appearance, everyone knows he is destined to play a key role in facing a threat from an evil lord who will threaten the school’s very existence.
Harry Potter? No, it’s young Thornmallow, from Jane Yolen’s 1991 novel, Wizard’s Hall.
Despite similarities that connect Rowling’s work to others, there’s no doubt that her original series is a fresh rendering, albeit with some familiar magical elements, character types, and fantasy themes encountered elsewhere.
2. Put limits on magic.
If magic has unlimited powers, where is the tension? Whoever possesses magic shouldn’t be able to solve any problems with a wand or spell. Instead, magic should be uncertain, dangerous, and mysterious, even to its own users.
For young apprentice-wizards at Hogwarts, magic is a difficult skill and takes a long time to master. In class after class, the students wrestle with unruly magical herbs, creatures, spells that backfire or fizzle, and more. Some character are better at certain aspects of magic than others.
As author Garth Nix has said, using magic should be more interesting than using an electric stove or a rifle. Therein lies much of the plot of many a fantasy story: characters struggle to discover how to use the right magic, often as underdogs to the seeming greater powers of evil antagonists.
3. Make your hero endure life as an orphan.
Harry Potter, Dorothy in Oz, and Taran in Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series are all orphans. In other books, children are separated from parents: consider Ged in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy or young King Arthur, raised by Merlin. Or parents are simply left far behind, as when the Darling children go off to Neverland, or Alice falls down the rabbit hole, or the children in C.S. Lewis’ series go through the wardrobe into Narnia.
The purpose of the missing parents in the fantasy world: to allow young protagonists to venture out on their own, to discover the limits of their powers, and to overcome trials without parents to hold them back.
4. Take a trip.
As Tolkien noted, “To a storyteller, a journey is a marvelous device.” His masterpieces involve great quests, as small bands of heroes venture forth to overcome obstacles and resolve problems.
Sometimes a fantasy journey is to a place nearby, but wondrous. Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere tells of a man whisked off into a magical world in the London Underground, where he meets many odd characters—a modern, dark, urban version of Alice in Wonderland.
In the Potter series, the journey is two-fold. First, there is a standard beginning to most of the books: Harry has spent his summer in the normal (“muggle”) world, and so must journey each time back to Hogwarts academy.
The greater journey is that of moving from childhood through adolescence, as Harry and his friends grow up. For many readers of the series, this is the journey that interests them the most.
5. Sell the impossible with the “trick of particularity.”
Dorothy L. Sayers used this phrase to describe Dante’s Inferno, where the poet anchored his fantastic world with many realistic details.
In Franny Billingsley’s novel The Folk Keeper, she uses real facts about the sea, seals, and manor houses to give her story, based on old selkie (seal-people) legends, a ring of truth. She researched 18th-century houses and made detailed sketches. “Then when I got to writing . . . . I just put in little details that I hoped would evoke the whole feeling of place.”
In particular, the fantastic place known as Hogwarts is brought to life with finely crafted details. There’s a good argument that the imaginative specificity of Hogwarts is what makes Rowling’s series so unique. Take that fascinating place away, and the stories would be much thinner. But with Hogwarts, the series is delightful, and, if you ask Rowling’s fans, almost believable in its invented reality.
6. Mix humor and fantasy.
Fantasy often has an undercurrent of humor, perhaps rooted in its rebellious challenges to the norm or ordinary world. A top example in fantasy today is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, which regularly top British bestseller charts. His books have been described as Mark Twain meets Matt Groenig (creator of The Simpsons).
Likewise, the Potter series has a Dickensian array of secondary characters, a delightful mix of evil schemers and dim-witted dunderheads. Examples are the Dursleys, Harry’s step-parents, generally mean-spirited and clueless, who ignore or pester Harry as they dote absurdly on their doltish son, Dudley. Likewise, the escapades of Fred and George Weasley, Hagrid, and others provide a welcome comic relief throughout the series.
7. Build the tension.
Rowling delivers a plot bursting with cliff-hanging suspense. She constantly tantalizes us about things to come, revealing a hint but not the substance of what is lurking around the corner. Mischief is afoot – and we know it – as Harry and his friends struggle to uncover the murky, nefarious plans of the bad guys.
Plot points are laid out like a long Persian carpet stretching down an alluring, darkened hallway. A Quidditch match is coming. A three-headed hell-hound is guarding a trapdoor in a secret room in a forbidden corridor. The pure-blooded Malfoy is out to get Harry. Hagrid is incubating a dragon’s egg. One of the teachers is acting suspiciously. The forest beyond the school is forbidden. Oh, yes, and the Evil Lord is plotting to take over the world again.
As readers know, it is difficult to put down a Potter book. We want to find out what happens. Anticipation is one of the most delicious tastes of literature, and Rowling spoons out dollop after dollop.
8. Offer a heart of gold.
In fantasy, despite the power of magic, the human qualities of your characters should carry the day: things like friendships, kindness to strangers, trust, and goodness.
Harry Potter’s relationships with his friends are very close. He spends time fondly with a close-knit surrogate family, the Weasleys. His admiration for his mentor, Dumbledore, is sincere. Touching moments occur in each book when Harry tenderly recalls his deceased parents. In the end, all this is what allows Harry and his friends and allies to stand up to hallway bullies and Evil Lords, not just the power of magic.
Rowling is truly fond of Harry and his friends; she cares what happens to them. This pure love of an author for his or her own characters is compelling. Tolkien had a real fondness for his imaginary world of Middle-earth. He invented its elvish language (which he could speak quite convincingly, as he was occasionally asked to do in interviews); he wrote its legends, he drew its maps.
Rowling clearly shares that passion, and shares with us her love for the student heroes of the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Whenever possible, focus your story on elements of love, faith, and deep conviction, and your readers will follow you through all sorts of magical conundrums and curses in the hope that human qualities will prevail.
If you follow some of these fundamentals, you will be in good company. You may not sell millions of copies or make every bestseller list. But your words may lead your readers into a new world, one they have never imagined before but which, after reading your story, will be as real to them as the wondrous halls of Hogwarts and all the adventures that take place in and around it, swirling around the boy with the odd scar on his forehead.
