What is it about George Lucas and J K Rawling?

[xiphias]

I mean, let's face it -- both of them are, well, mediocre story-crafters. And the universes they create don't REALLY hold together all that well -- their world-building is, y'know, okay. Their characters are fairly two-dimensional.

But, damn, there's something there. Something about what they create just sticks with you.

What is it?!

I can point to the weaknesses in Star Wars, and in Harry Potter. But that doesn't matter. There's SOMETHING in those that works.

Are there other fictional universes that just, y'know, get you that way? Even if the people who created them are fairly mediocre in their craft?

And what IS it? Can it be learned? I mean, all of you who write for a living -- you've probably asked yourself this question occasionally, too. . .

Is it the same thing for Star Wars and for Harry Potter?

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I can answer that.

It's cool shit. And they create universes kids would like to live in, characters they would like to be, and wars they would like to fight.

And none of it's too complicated.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah -- but what MAKES it cool shit? WHY do we want to live in those universes? What is it about Hermione, Han Solo, Ron, Leia, Harry, and Luke that makes us want to be them?

Because, let's face it -- when I actually sit and THINK about it, the Weasley's standard of living is slightly below mine -- they have magic, but Mrs Weasley doesn't do anything with it that I can't do with a vacuum cleaner or microwave. I don't want to live on a desert planet doing moisture fucking farming. I don't even want to live on a giant city-wide planet.

My life is better than the lives of a lot of the characters in those works. Or, at least, it suits me better.

And yet, Star Wars and Harry Potter work for me.

Is what attracts us to these the same thing that made people join Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, or fight against Franco?

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Maybe it comes down to an insignificant person/kid, finding out they really matter? Isn't it the same ole' question: Why are we here? What is my purpose in life? If I had never been born, would the world really miss me? Stories like this are all "You're a special snowflake. Too."

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Again. It's cool, and it's not too challenging.

Not too challenging is important. If it gets too challenging it becomes uncomfortable.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Dude, you're complaining about Coca-Cola and Doritos. Yes, they've managed to tap in to some fairly universal tastes in people and can reach down and grab you by the woo-hoo, to get your attention. As to what is the hook, that can catch so many people, ya' got me. But yeah, that would be a cool power to have.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm not complaining: I'm asking for the recipe.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Yellow #7? Sweetened Corn Syrup?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i think the recipe comes from having spent really quite a lot of their points on bardic skills and having gotten lucky rolls for how many points they had to distribute.

me, i spent all my points on the "able to sing along with any song i've heard a verse and a half of" skill. well, that, and getting along pretty well with small dogs. ah, well. my choices in character creation do not make me rich, but they do keep me entertained.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I picked "not spill a beer while falling down stairs" and "able to negotiate slippery floors while wearing goat legged hooves." They're actually complimentary skills, when it comes to stairs.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

I would submit that if an author or filmmaker creates a work that grabs people in the way that Star Wars and Harry Potter have, then said filmmaker or author is anything but mediocre. It is the effect of the work, not adherence to others' standards of excellence, that truly distinguishes great work from average.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but both works are highly derivative and a bit clunky; why do they work, when other works don't? What's the caffeine equivalent?

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Part of it may be that the characters are just complicated enough; they're not, say, the completely interchangeable characters in the early Adventure Legion of Super-Heroes, but they're nowhere near Hamlet either.

Basically, what I'm going for is transferring a bit from Scott McCloud to writing from art. He makes the point that the less complicated an image of a person is, the more the viewer can read into it what they want to, whereas increasing complexity limits how much their perspective can read into it.

The Potter/SW characters are complicated enough to be of certain archetypes, with just a bit of a fillip via quotable lines or setting to not be completely cookie cutter. So people can both find something to identify with and feel that they're contributing to the characterization via what they're reading into it themselves.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Not-too-complex characters allow the reader to project themselves into the character and the narrative. They don't require too much brain space or effort.

And Star Wars and Harry Potter are hardly unique--if you poke around, you'll notice that nearly anything really wildly successful has some of the same

See also:

James Bond
Nancy Drew
The Hardy Boys
Jack Ryan
Piers Anthony
Lillian Jackson Braun
Dan Brown
The Bridges of Madison County
mid-period Elvis music

There's also a certain amount of luck in it. Not only do you have to put together the right formula, but you have to get discovered, and the viral thing has to happen. And then after a while it becomes self-sustaining: people read the new Harry Potter novel because *everyone* is reading the new Harry Potter novel.

The person upstream who said it was doritos and coke is correct. And the secret ingredients are corn syrup, salt, and grease.

[post-ecdysis.livejournal.com]

For me, the common thread seems to be an ability to imagine a series of events that leave the reader interested in knowing what the next event will be. I find that both, at least when they are at their best, grab me during the climactic scenes and make me care about the fate of the characters even though I rationally know that they will survive and even emerge victorious.

There doesn't seem to be much else like it. Indiana Jones, I suppose. Perhaps 24, although I haven't seen much of it. I think that JKR deserves particular praise because I can only imagine that it's much harder to create a roller-coaster ride of a book than doing it with a passive visual medium. Although I think that writers like Tom Clancy and James Clavell also have that gift. Can it be learned? I don't know, although I suspect that story-telling is an art that can be practiced more easily around the campfire than in front of a typewriter.

And I agree with you that aside from this talent and a whimsical eye for amusing candies and esoteric modes of communication and transportation, JKR's writing is uninspiring. Sensible people might disagree on whether she has emerged from mediocrity over the course of the heptalogy; I suppose we'll ultimately have to wait until she writes something other than HP to see.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, where is her Great American Novel?

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

She is British. Unless she pulls a T.S. Eliot and converts to American she ain't gonna write a Great American Novel.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

Joseph Campbell wrote a rather lovely book called The Hero of a Thousand Faces which is about what succeeds in mythology I beleive Lucas used as a basis for Star Wars. From what little that I know JKR uses these same methods. As does LOTR. Although LOTR doesn't use them as much and is more intellectual.

[nextian.livejournal.com]

... My god, I'd say something completely different. I'd say it's because, as Diane Duane says, they give the Darkness a tangible shape.

This is one of the great high points of fantasy, even children's lit in general, that you have the Darkness and it is fundamentally opposed to the Light and you can, easily, be on the right side.

But you can also make mistakes and screw around and be a kid and still come back to the Right Side. It's just never a hard choice, because one of them's calling themselves Death Eaters or the Dark Side and the other set is calling themselves the Order of the Phoenix and the Rebellion.

There's also a powerful anti-establishment thing in there. Both of them are books about revolution. Most kids love that stuff, because they dream about overthrowing their Great And Terrible Oppressors, the Entire Adult World. But grownups love that stuff too, especially in this era, when so many of them grew up during the Vietnam War and Watergate.

I'd also say they tapped into the needs of an age. I wrote a paper on this once, because I am a loserface, but: in times of prosperity and wealth and protection, people do not need fantasies. People need fantasies when they feel their world has gone somewhat awry. During the late seventies, the world was still reeling from Nixon, from Vietnam, from the Cold War which was ongoing. We needed someone to say: No, look, it's black and white. It's easy. You are good when you save kittens from trees; you are bad when you strangle dudes on spaceships. I think to some extent the same thing happened to Harry Potter -- maybe not in the first two books, although I don't know the political climate in Britain at the time, but everything in the States went straight to hell at around the same time Prisoner of Azkaban made the books really popular with adults, too.

And finally: they have cool shit. Bizarre, funny, amazing worldbuilding details, hundreds of them for people to remember and seize on and cling to as fascinating and make trading-card games about and dream about at night. They are both genuinely good works of world creation.

[nextian.livejournal.com]

... and apparently "different" mostly means "wordier.*

*hides*

[yardlong.livejournal.com]

Now that made me LOL. Are you hiding from yourself? Hehehe.

[yardlong.livejournal.com]

#1 Luck

#2 Outside support

#3 Enough intelligence/cleverness to not be one's own obstacle

#4 An audience eager to be entertained and jump on a bandwagon. Inquiring minds want to know and be a part of what is the latest craze.

[ookpik.livejournal.com]

Are there other fictional universes that just, y'know, get you that way?

Fionavar.

I love, love, love the Guy Gavriel Kay trilogy. I've read it umpteen times, and I always love it, and the death of one character in particular makes me cry every time (though not cry buckets as I did on second or third reading).

My husband tried to read it, was bored, and gave up.

Somebody whose opinion I generally respect a whole lot spent a blog post or two detailing the ways in which the books are an unholy mishmosh of mythologies, politically Wrong, and generally sucked.

Doesn't matter. Doesn't even matter that I can see some of Kay's other books (esp. Tigana) are probably better written. I just...love the Fionavar Tapestry.

(Hm. It's been at least a year. Time to reread again!)

[goljerp]

Interesting. I read the Tapestry when I was in Israel, borrowed from a friend there who LOVED it, and... well, when I found out that [SPOILER] was [SPOILER], it really ruined it for me. Plus, it was painfully obvious that [SPOILER] was going to be used to [SPOILER]. And while I can certainly read books which take place in a pantheonic or pagan setting, there was something about the pantheon that just... didn't work for me. Kept on getting in the way. I don't know.

In a way I wish that GGK had written a draft of Fionvar, and then put it aside and done more writing... and come back to it. Because I really like some of his other books, like A Song For Arbonne. And Lions of Al-Rassan. Tigana.... well, the whole [SPOILER] thread bugs me, because I really fundamentally don't understand why [SPOILER] just didn't [SPOILER][SPOILER][SPOILER] and at least [SPOILER][SPOILER]. But I still like it better than the Tapestry, I think. I just read Ysabel, and liked that.

Although I don't know if it's fair to call what he does in Song or Lions world building, because of course he's doing a fair bit of filing the serial numbers off of actual events (I was especially aware of it in Lions)... but it's well written and I like it.