Is JK Rowling a good writer?

[author_by_night]

Over the years, something I've seen more and more of is this: "She may be famous, but in reality, JK Rowling isn't a very good writer."

Some minor spoilers for all Harry Potter books under the cut (and potentially huge ones in the comments).

We could consider that the Harry Potter series, at least, is about young people.  The language and dialogue itself is written on the same level as they are. Harry thinks and speaks the way an eleven year old speaks and thinks in the first book and continues onward as a teenage boy. Readers largely  grew with Harry; yes, there were many adult fans, but the vast majority were kids and teens when they first read the books. Therefore, it makes sense that the books seem simplistic now; we're older and realize "Lavender, can I see Uranus?" is no wittier than your average twelve year old boy's body-related joke.  We also realize how simplistic some of her rules are, such as all Slytherins being mean. (I can't speak for the writing in JKR's books for older readers, because I haven't read them.)

I will say that there are flaws in her world-building, which I don't think have anything to do with her target audience whatsoever. It's very obvious upon re-reading that JK Rowling made up a lot as she went along. I don't blame her entirely - seven books is a lot, and of course her writing changed over time. It's to be expected. Still, as fun as her callbacks to earlier books are, as well as realizations that someone was mentioned in the first book (most notably Sirius Black), the reason we notice this is because so much was thrown in later. We only hear of or meet most people and concepts when it's relevant to the story; while on one hand, it works for infodump control, it doesn't make sense when you re-read the books and realize Aurors should've at least been mentioned in PoA, if not CoS. That surely Ron should have known the Lovegoods (though they are mentioned in GoF) - it actually made more sense in OoTP, since Luna seemed to be a relatively new friend of Ginny's as well, yet when Luna and her father are invited to Bill and Fleur's wedding, it's suddenly apparent that they're family friends. But should a writer be expected to have everything planned out perfectly, or be able to fit them into earlier works? Don't all longstanding works have odd holes and inaccuracies? Besides, her world-building is incredible, her characters are memorable, and the messages left a deep impact with many young readers who are now young adults.

Then there are her scripts, the play and movie respectively. I've only read the script for The Cursed Child, but from what I heard, it's "less about the story and more about the visual effects." A lot of people have said the same for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I don't know that I would classify scripts where the scenery is better than the story as good writing.  However, they were also collaborative efforts, and really, script writing and novel writing are so different that I'm not sure it's really fair to judge JK Rowling as a novelist based on her script writing. Not to mention that they were collaborative works.

I do think there are some unfair arguments. I feel that a lot of fans built expectations based on their own fannish experiences, whether comparing the books to other works or writing their own fanfiction; canon tended to go a different direction. I'm not opposed to critiquing how JKR went about that direction, but I don't think it's right to judge her solely based on the fact that hers weren't the stories we wanted them to be. (Besides, there were so many ships in the fandom that she couldn't have possibly pleased everyone.)

The other argument I've seen is less about shipping and more about where Harry Potter is rated on the literary scale. I've heard the argument that "the books are more on par with Stephen King." Except... a lot of people would consider Stephen King a brilliant author. This seems to be a case of YMMV, more so than quality writing per se. If you're looking for a highly intellectual novel rife with allegory and mythical symbolism, it's not going to be Harry Potter. Yet a lot of beloved, classic novels aren't like that. Pride and Prejudice is, at face value, "girl meets guy, guy snarks at girl, girl sulks, guy says he loves girl, girl tells him to GTFO, girl's sister runs off with a shady soldier, guy saves the day, girl marries guy." Much like Harry Potter, it's renowned not for knocking the socks off of every philosophical literary academic, but for being rife with fun characters and wit. That's why I like it. A lot of people don't, but I've never heard anyone call Jane Austen a bad writer. It's more a matter of taste.

I'm just about out of thoughts! What do you guys think? Is JKR an overrated good writer, is she a good middle grade writer (but a sub par writer when you're older), or is she bloody brilliant and everyone who thinks otherwise has the emotional range of a teaspoon?

Comments

[reeby10.livejournal.com]

I think she's a good writer and she's definitely grown in her writing from the first couple of books, which is to be expected from a first time writer. However, I do think her major weakness is stable wordbuilding. She's great at most of the overarching stuff, not so much at the details and consistency. I don't blame her entirely for that bc as a professional editor, I think her editors should have done more to help her with that from the beginning (I think she's said she had most of the series planned out fairly early? And her editors certainly knew there would be multiple books), especially with consistency. Maybe part of that is that once her books took off there was so much pressure and expectation for great books with fast turnaround (I edit nonfiction primarily, but honestly a year or two between books is not that much time for revisions) that that sort of thing fell to the wayside.

The other things I do side eye her a bit for is all the post-canon info that could have fairly easily made its way into the books in a line or two which would have added a lot to the series as a whole (mostly from Twitter, but Pottermore stuff too), and the imo very simplistic worldbuilding she's shown (especially in her post-series American magical stuff, but also in everything outside the UK). Maybe she's too busy now or just doesn't care, but some research on history and race relations and such would go a long way...

I haven't read/watched Cursed Child or Fantastic Beasts so I can't really comment on that other than what I've heard. I definitely think they suffered from fans having far different expectations than the reality and again I wouldn't blame that entirely or even mostly on her, especially since they're collab works and unless she got a really good contract (which actually wouldn't surprise me) then she didn't get a whole lot of say in things after a certain point. Though I do feel like the marketing built very different expectations than the reality too, especially for Cursed Child, so there's that.

Overall, I guess I do think she's overrated, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Like there are a ton of writers that I think are overrated (many of which I do actually think are bad writers), but Harry Potter did a lot for literature and YA and the fantasy genre and even just for people on an individual level, and I don't think that can be overlooked or understated. But ymmv and all that :D