Is it me, or has "Harry Potter" logic infected most forms of popular writing?

Is it me, or has "Harry Potter" logic infected most forms of popular writing?

Everything seems to depend on flashbacks of flashbacks of flashbacks. Taking a semi-respectable piece of popular writing, how interesting would this character's story be if it were told in chronological order?

I'm not talking about In Medias Res. When writers do that, they start the story about a third of the way through it chronologically to catch the reader's attention, then explain the beginning, and resume. That is just jumpstarting things.

What I'm complaining about is an endless sinking into the swamp of unrevealed, cobbled together, fanfictiony backstory.

The "Harry Potter" style of writing has old friends of your father's second cousin appearing out of the woodwork every time the story requires it.

Every second household item has a tragic role in a dramatically revealed piece of backstory about the protagonist's mother's dorm-mate's descent into darkness, or whatever, and how his mother's dorm mate orchestrated the whole whatever so that she could have revenge for having her cute pumps ruined, or something.

Prequels within prequels within fanfiction.

There's something deeply feminine about this helpless reliance on circumstance and history and predetermined events. Why don't popular (pulp) characters make things happen anymore? There's a slide into reactivity and lore, and it turns out that the janitor was a veteran in the war against the guy, and has been helping the protagonist secretly all along... No.

No, no, nope. I'd like to burn these cliches to the ground. I need to write a piece of popular fiction for economic reasons, but if I'm going to sell out, I also want to burn these cliches to the fucking ground while I'm at it.

What do you think, Veeky Forums? How would you do it?

It is indeed sad to see that the dullest franchise in the history of book franchises has turn this timeline of ours into the dullest timeline of all possible timelines. Seriously, each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of special effects, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody?just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-James Bond series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the books were good though r-right
"No!"
The writing is dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs."

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing. Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

give examples

Pop quiz to see if you can read.
Examples of what?

Make everything significant. Give every single thing some sort of backstory. Take this lazy haphazard writing technique and turn it into a phenomenologist's Bible.

Harry potter logic and what books you have observed it in, maybe start off with harry potter logic prevalent in harry potter.

>Everything seems to depend on flashbacks of flashbacks of flashbacks. Taking a semi-respectable piece of popular writing, how interesting would this character's story be if it were told in chronological order?

>The "Harry Potter" style of writing has old friends of your father's second cousin appearing out of the woodwork every time the story requires it.

>Every second household item has a tragic role in a dramatically revealed piece of backstory about the protagonist's mother's dorm-mate's descent into darkness, or whatever, and how his mother's dorm mate orchestrated the whole whatever so that she could have revenge for having her cute pumps ruined, or something.

I've heard people pretending to have read Joyce and bitch about it, but I've never heard of someone pretending to have read Rowling then bitching about it. That's an achievement.

Everything within this post is pure cancer.

Bloom pretends to have read harry potter.

le born in le wrong generation litpost
Classic.

You get a D because you successfully read the first line of my post.

However, I feel my dickishness waning, and my desire to pontificate waxing. Yes, it is time.

Harry Potter logic is a shitty term, but I needed to make my meaning immediately apparent by making an example of it. If I had to get more technical I would call it...

B A C K S T O R Y - T A R P I T

where the events of the actual story get subsumed and overwhelmed by the backstory.

The biggest issue is that the backstory seldom exists when these pieces of popular fiction start off their main storylines, and are rationalised into existence as the writing goes on, retroactively inserted into the world.

Let me put it this way: Sirius Black was being tormented by nightmare demons in prison for a crime he didn't commit for the first two years of the Harry Potter series, while Harry was eating candy. His introduction only makes sense as a major retcon.

This bullshit is very common in television writing.

I can't stomach even a parody.

Le ironic le reddit meme from le reddit website you never le read and thus never le know how to le parody.

If that was too subtle, I'm calling you a redditer because of your shamefaced familiarity with that website, when it's not on anyone else's minds.

born in wrong generation posts are Veeky Forums as fuck you pseud

Sirius Black isn't a retcon, he was introduced as a friend of the potters. What you mean is that narrative is purposefully skewed for shock purposes. Dumas was a fan of this, for obvious reasons in that his writings were episodic, just like the tv shows you lament and this has been a staple of writing for centuries. Try again and give better examples, and literary ones at that.

HP is the gift that keeps on giving as far as backstory asspulls go.

I'm not giving you any more examples, because the plot of every book is Harry muddling along while something is mysterious, and at the end the mystery is revealed to be an eruption from a decade-old piece of backstory that has recently been bullshitted into existence. If you have two brain cells to clap together the examples will give themselves up to you, hands in the air, begging for mercy.

Skewed for shock means unskewed, it's dull. Bullshit and padding are of course endemic, that doesn't mean they are desirable.

Why would I give literary examples in a thread about popular or pulp writing?

My intention, as usual, is to put my adversaries to shame. I'm going to write a piece of pulp fiction so tense, lean and efficient that their flabby paddlepools of auto-cannibalistic fanfiction will be burst, and something something more analogies.

>Let me put it this way: Sirius Black was being tormented by nightmare demons in prison for a crime he didn't commit for the first two years of the Harry Potter series, while Harry was eating candy. His introduction only makes sense as a major retcon.
Because he didn't escape by then? Even the Weasleys thought he was guilty, why would they mention him to Harry?

I don't even see how that's an over-abundance of flashbacks. I can see that in the sixth book where they had Harry jumping into people's heads constantly but why this?

>If that was too subtle, I'm calling you a redditer because of your shamefaced familiarity with that website, when it's not on anyone else's minds.

Oh my god you are such a massive faggot.

Easily explained by the fact that the narrative follows harry who is oblivious to the rules, customs and mythology of the wizarding world. Meaning readers can be clued into the happenings at the same time as harry, voiding the need for an overbearing omniscient narrator. Rowling knew what she was doing when writing a teenagers book, even if you don't want to give her credit.

And of course you don't have any non-hp examples, it's because you are so full of your own shit that something something septic tank analogy.

holy fuck you seem like an insufferable person and, judging by how you styled and formatted your posts in this thread, you will fail to write anything publishable

Godspeed, user.

>Because he didn't escape by then? Even the Weasleys thought he was guilty, why would they mention him to Harry?
They don't mention him because he is not on their minds at all, effectively not existing in the narrative, as if he only later re-materialised in people's minds when the plot required him to exist.

Like the werewolf guy who is Harry's honorary uncle. I guess he was working odd-jobs or something and chaining himself up in a boiler room every month while Harry ate candy. Except he didn't exist until the plot required him to materialise.

HP actually has merits, but plotting is absolutely not one of them.

>I don't even see how that's an over-abundance of flashbacks. I can see that in the sixth book where they had Harry jumping into people's heads constantly but why this?
The first example that came to mind was Mad Men; Don's life story relies on it being a series of bite-sized mystery flashbacks that would be dull if shown chronologically.

Then my wandering eye settled upon Harry Potter, and saw a connection. The prose poem on inadequacy and vileness that is the OP resulted from that.

HP books are mysteries: this is fine. But why are all the mysteries emanations from ten, eleven, twelve, etc. years before? It's insufferably mired in its own half-assed backstory.

>Oh my god you are such a massive faggot.
Ahahaha.

one of the worst posts ive ever seen on here

>They don't mention him because he is not on their minds at all, effectively not existing in the narrative, as if he only later re-materialised in people's minds when the plot required him to exist.
Well yeah, basically. She wrote the first book then only really constructed a prop world by book four. Doesn't mean there isn't a narrative reason why he wasn't around.

>Like the werewolf guy who is Harry's honorary uncle
Pretty sure he was in hiding and they explained this.

>The first example that came to mind was Mad Men; Don's life story relies on it being a series of bite-sized mystery flashbacks that would be dull if shown chronologically.
Don't know who you are talking about

good shit OP, completely agree.

what he's saying is in this new fantasy world, when the plot stalls, people just go uhhhh, no there are seven horcruxs and the bad guy is actually still alive. a similar thing happens when you just add in a new backstory, conceived after you've begun writing - it's a trope of soap operas i believe, and is now maybe re-acceptable because of trash like harry potter.

there is nothing inherently wrong with flashbacks, or telling a story that way. but as a crutch they are weak and easy to spot

yall are acting like any of this is new to literature. harry fucking potter is not as influential as you're making it out to be. are you guys just really young and were born into a world where harry potter seems like some great monolith or some shit?

>he hasn't figured out all of contemporary writing after watching an episode of mad men and correlating it with harry potter
nigga what are you doing with your life

It's harder to summarise the horrors of television writing because it's so forgettable, and I don't read much pulp. I am mostly left with an absent-minded hangover of disgust for bad writing. And of course, it's the not-completely-vile stuff like Mad Men and HP that I can actually remember.

...I don't want to give her credit? Her characters are memorable; this is rare. That's quite enough credit, and it's irrelevant to the asspullery that is her plotting.

The Hunger Games is of course dogshit, but at least it has forward momentum. It's actually a good counter-example of backstory-tarpit writing. I think I read the first chapter and watched some of the films so that I could get my finger on the pulse of the average pleb. It turns out that they are always right and never need to learn from experience, but whatever, that was already obvious from a bird's eye view of their internet arguments.

>holy fuck you seem like an insufferable person
It's a common sentiment.

I'm tempted to make an atheist joke just to trigger the ex-redditers, who are just so over all that, but thanks.

Yes, you certainly said things just now.

It's impressively formulaic. Formulas have to come from somewhere, and she even shows people how to do it by ripping herself off within the series.

Flashbacks are a consequence of Cinema's influence in Literature.

>something deeply feminine about this
100% top shelf post user, laffin

I'm a big fan of "Show don't tell", and would like to see it used more often, I find if done correctly it could be pretty amazing writing depending on who is doing it. For example, write something about a horrible nuclear war, the survivors living in a bunker or something but we don't need to see the horrible conditions that has effected it or the questionable things it has made people do like turn to cannibalism via a radio broadcast.

>"Show don't tell"
Go back to >>>/sffg/

>show don't tell
Shitty MFA level advice that ignores centuries of literature.