Storytelling and Its Secret Ingredients

The Harry Potter phenomenon prompted questions of deep yearning and greed to understand the magic behind its success. World wide, people have been asking with demanding desperate force, "How?", "Why haven't other wonderfully written stories reaped the same fate?". I ask, Is it really that mysterious? Can they really not figure it out?

My piano teacher always said, "Simplicity is beauty, simplicity that is well done." The simplicity in Rowling's writing is demonstrated by the fact that she can paint a universally viewed picture in three sentences or less. World wide, everyone shares her vision. Her ability to communicate universally is an extremely rare trait (for any human being). Not only that, but the magic behind the hero Harry lies in nothing more or less than his creator. The books have a soul. Her soul. Everything in the tale illustrates an extraoridary person of virtue, wisdom, humor, wit, cleverness, love, commitment, discipline, and passion. Most writers can, sure, string together some clever metaphores, or come up with a good one-liner, or even invent some unique, clever plot, but what most writers fail to do, where Rowling did not, is deliver a plothole-less, seamless, consistantly charming, character driven masterpiece.

Dialog is key. Never has a story come to page with such vivid, bio plotted, three dimensional characters such as Rowling's magical descendants. Each character speaks in their own manner, giving them an individuality that readers can relate to. The only other author that has ever mastered character development this profoundly (and possibly more so, in my own personal opinion) was the King of Fantasy, JRR Tolkien himself.

Good vs. Evil. Age old no doubt, but nothing is more powerful than the absolute darkness battling the absolute light. And when you churn in the love values, and friendships, and the tragedies and the triumphs, and then put it all together with characters that feel so real to you that you become completely, entirely, utterly engrossed in the destiny of their fate, you have the components of something extremely, terrifically awe-inspiring.

Humor and comic relief is an absolute necessity, no matter what story one is trying to tell. And truth be told, not all writers have this gift. In fact, a majority don't. Being quippy and abstractly silly can only take you so far. Being over the top clever, using your humor as your only compensation for your lack of story-telling talent isn't going to do the trick either. Gimmicks. Stay away from gimmicks! Rowling has an imbeded gift for laughs in her own person, and it's a natural part of a human being that can't be formulated or re-created or borrowed.

Passion. For me, this is where it gets personal. Not all writers are passionate. Just because one may be published, does not mean that one eats, drinks, and breathes their craft. There is something almost (dare I say it?) supernatural about true passion and its driving force. Some people plough through college, turn in A+ papers, have people telling them how good their writing is and that they should, "Hey! Write a book!". Some people pick up a pen during mid-life year and decide, "I should write a memoir." And then there's those of us who have been writing, in a sense, before we even knew our letters. Storytelling comes in all shapes and forms, through make-believe, playtime, acting (giving personalities to dolls and stuffed animals....). All of that is important to honing the craft of writing, of storytelling. I, myself, have known nothing else all my life other than creating, inventing, and producing stories in some shape or form. (Told you this was where it got personal...) The written form came to me young, age seven. And as I grew older, it became clear that it was my purpose. By seventh grade, I was working on my first novel. It was horrible, no doubt, but that's how serious I was. And ever since, I couldn't live without it. When I picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for the first time and read that first line, something completely unexplainable moved within me. I felt connected. I don't mean this in an arrogant way; please, please don't misread me! I am in no shape or form putting myself up to par with the great JK Rowling, but there was something there in her writing that I related to. I could sense and feel and know her passion. I knew instantly that she had a deep, personal relationship with her writing, and because of it, because of that driving force, she dedicated nearly her entire life to her pen and ink hero. She commited to the story. No plot holes, no loose ends, notebooks upon notebooks of bios, a plethera of details that never even made it into the books. But it was because of all those details, those backstories, that breathed life into the entire thing and made all of us, ALL of us believe that it all could, very possibly, just maybe, be real. That was the magic that sucked us all in to her world.

So, why haven't other well written stories made this much of a bang into our culture? Writing, itself, is easy. Being imaginative, not that unique. Having virtues such as discipline, humility, confidence, being commited, and understanding the wisdom of love, humor, and having a keen perception of human character, all play their role in story telling. There are just some things that books and colleges cannot teach you about writing. It comes from a much, much deeper place. You either got it or you don't.