
I am eager for November, because a few days after I turn 45, the new Harry Potter movie will come out, and the excitement I will feel as I stand in line with my ticket clutched earnestly in my hand will remind me that even though I'm old, I'm actually still young.
:)
Anyhow, because I am so hip, with-it, and on-the-cutting-edge, I have just noticed this article over at Apartment Therapy from July 29, 2005 (yes) about "Harry Potter style."
Maxwell Gillian-Ryan notes everything that follows until you reach the photo:
Rowling's "Harry Potter Style" is at once old fashioned, comfortable, cozy and disheveled, and signals (to us) a refuge from and a reflection of the troubling times brewing within (and without) the books.
Here's a typical passage from page 38:
The room was strewn with various possessions and a good smattering of rubbish. Owl feathers, apple cores, and sweet wrappers littered the floor, a number of spell books higgledy-piggledy among the tanged robes on his bed, and a mess of newspapers sat in a puddle of light on his desk.
This comforting and even attractive clutter is Rowling's hallmark (it is even in the design of her personal website), and it is followed by many more descriptions of old, cluttered and worn rooms where food smells great and you don't have to worry too much about keeping your elbows off of the table. It's friendly, familiar and -- most importantly -- safe from the dangers outside the door.


{The living room and kitchen from the Weasleys' house, The Burrow, located on the outskirts of Ottery St. Catchpole in Devon}
I (Suzanne) am happy to say that my life was enhanced immeasurably by the fact that I was, in fact, on the ball about reading the H.P. books as they each came out, and about rereading them, and rereading them again, so it's not Harry Potter I'm behind on.


It's that somehow I missed the fact that people were paying homage to J.K. Rowling's amazing design sense.
Really, she is a wiz :) at evoking mood through setting. And she does it all with WORDS. :)
You might be surprised to see, if you reread the books, how brief Rowling's initial descriptions of a place sometimes are, but how immediately evocative. It's lovely when she does that -- chooses words that appeal to more than one of your senses at a time, and places them strategically, like tent poles or cornerstones or the branches of a tree -- and then allows you to fill in the rest inside your own brain.
Then sometimes she comes back later, after you've got your own picture of the place, and gives you more details, to make it even better.
Do you have a vision of Harry's cupboard under the stairs clearly in your head? Here's Rowling's sole description of it:
Harry got slowly out of his bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.
A bed, socks, spiders, and a cupboard under the stairs. Those are relatively few concrete words, but that was enough for me to get a complete and absolute idea of how that space looked. How about you?
How about our first glimpse of The Leaky Cauldron? She says,
It was a tiny, grubby-looking little pub.
So we get a bit of an idea in our heads, and then she gives us a minute to think, and then we get a descriptive paragraph as immediately suggestive as the cantina scene in Star Wars:
For a famous place, it was very dark and shabby. A few old women were sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them was smoking a long pipe. A little man in a top hat was talking to the old barman, who was quite bald and looked like a gummy walnut. The low buzz of chatter stopped when they walked in. Everyone seemed to know Hagrid; they waved and smiled at him, and the barman reached for a glass, saying, 'The usual, Hagrid?'
So here we get tiny glasses of sherry, a long pipe, a top hat, a man "like a gummy walnut," and a buzz of chatter. And yet you are seeing more than those things in your heard, aren't you? Are you seeing the whole place?
How about Ollivanders? This gets more description right off. Look at her judicious use of adjectives here:
The last shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window.
A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as they stepped inside. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single spindly chair which Hagrid sat on to wait. Harry felt strangely as though he had just entered a very strict library; he swallowed a lot of new questions which had just occurred to him and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling. For some reason, the back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.
So here she's wanting to guide the reader more, perhaps because her own vision of Ollivander's was strong and specific, and perhaps because of its significance in the long-term story of Harry Potter.
Look at the words that imply age (in addition to the specific "382 BC", ha): narrow, shabby, peeling, faded, dusty.
Look at the words that suggest a tradition and importance that would go along with that old age: fine wands, gold and purple (both royal colors), a spindly chair (hard to slouch in one of those, and a nice, prim, and formal juxtaposition to the massive and casual Hagrid who sits in it), and a neat pile of narrow boxes (to fit in the narrow shop).
Look at the words that connote a dark secrecy or something more than meets the eye: "somewhere in the depths of the shop," silence, and "secret magic."
What is the proprietor of this shop going to be like?
And what about the single wand and the single chair? Those are melancholy, lonely images.
Really, she's so good at what she's doing.
How about Hogwarts itself? I was positive that her very first description of Hogwarts had been at least a page or two long, because my view of it was so detailed. And over the course of all seven books, we do get some very rich and detailed descriptions of the place. But that very first view the first-years catch of Hogwarts is simply described as follows:
The narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake. Perched atop a mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.
Look how generously J.K. Rowling is allowing you to make the exterior of Hogwarts to your exact specifications. You are enamored not only because of the words she uses to describe it, but because she knows just what to say to evoke some of your oldest memories of castles and magic and wonder. You are charmed by your own imagination! :)
And all the books inside your head (along with images you've seen) are talking to each other. Your Narnia is talking to your Lord of the Rings is talking to your Cinderella is talking to your Harry Potter is talking to your vacation photos from Disneyland or Neuschwanstein, as your brain scrolls through the database of castles and magic in your head. The more you read, the more you get out of the books you read. See how cool that is?
I haven't yet touched on any of the "cozy and disheveled" spaces Maxwell-Gillian referred to besides The Leaky Cauldron (unless you thought the cupboard under the stairs sounded cozy), so let's look at the Griffindor Tower Room and Hagrid's cabin.
Here is our very first view of the Tower Room:
At the top of the spiral staircase -- they were obviously in one of the towers -- they found their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep-red velvet curtains. Their trunks had already been brought up. Too tired to talk much, they pulled on their pyjamas and fell into bed.
I always like her descriptions of beds. They make me sleepy. :)
And here is Hagrid's cabin:
Hagrid lived in a small wooden house on the edge of the forbidden forest. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes were outside the front door.
When Harry knocked they heard a frantic scrabbling from inside and several booming barks. Then Hagrid's voice rang out, saying, 'Back, Fang -- back.'
Hagrid's big hair face appeared in the crack as he pulled the door open.
'Hang on,' he said. 'Back, Fang.'
He let them in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound.
There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire and in the corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.
I have long wondered if J.K. immediately thought about those two, simple details of "crossbow" and "galoshes" outside Hagrid's door, or if she struggled with them. They're so perfect. She always does such a lovely job of juxtaposing Hagrid's massive size and strength with his tender heart, doesn't she? A copper kettle and a patchwork quilt are as about as welcoming and domestic as you can get. And yet she keeps things from getting syrupy, because there is that crossbow and that boarhound and that game hanging from the ceiling.
Why do you think she chose to add so much detail, right away, to the description of Hagrid's cabin, which is such a small place? I think it's because she is relying heavily on the description of the cabin to help us better know Hagrid. He would have been an uninteresting character if he lived in a wimpy house.
How about the Gryffindor Common Room:
'Caput Draconis,' said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They all scrambled through it -- Neville needed a leg up -- and found themselves in the Gryffindor common-room, a cosy, round room full of squashy armchairs."
A few pages later, we get a bit more:
They pulled on their dressing-gowns, picked up their wands and crept across the tower room, down the spiral staircase and into the Gryffindor common-room. A few embers were still glowing in the fireplace, turning all the armchairs into hunched black shadows. They had almost reached the portrait hole when a voice spoke from the chair nearest them: 'I can't believe you're going to do this, Harry.'
A lamp flickered on. It was Hermione Granger, wearing a pink dressing-gown and a frown.
If you've read the books and/or seen the movies already, you're filling in even as you read this post, and fleshing these descriptive paragraphs out into a full-fledged universe. But pretend, if you can (it might be impossible) that you don't yet know about this world, and notice how much information a few carefully placed words that appeal to your senses can give you.
Reading is magic.
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