Killing Dumbledore: Why main characters have to resolve plots

I couldn’t believe it when J.K. Rowling killed off the greatest wizard, Albus Dumbledore, at the end of book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Dumbledore was my favorite character in that series of books. He was not only the most skilled wizard, he was the perfect teacher for Harry Potter. Dumbledores was stern, a tough taskmaster, yet you knew that he had Harry’s best interests at heart and cared deeply for his pupil. Without Dumbledore’s abilities, how could the concluding book seven show Good triumphing over the forces of Evil, personified by Voldemort and his minions?

Michael Gambon as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies

But that is precisely why it was brilliant of J.K. Rowling to have Dumbledore succumb before the end of the Harry Potter series. She was not writing Albus Dumbledore and the Deathly Hallows, she was writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was essential for Harry and his friends to solve the problem of the Death Eaters themselves. If Dumbledore had just stepped in, out-dueled Voldemort, and finished off the chief villain, there would have been no challenge, no plot. It’s vital for the main characters of a story to resolve the plot dilemma themselves.

J.K. Rowling

If the author chooses to have a deus ex machina step in and pull strings from above to solve the problem in the narrative, the reader or viewer feels cheated. It’s as if two people were playing a chess match, and someone from the outside stepped in and gave Black a second queen. That’s simply not how the game is played. Whenever I’ve read or seen a plot where the main characters are extraneous to resolving their own issues, I feel deflated, and as if I’ve been cheated.

When you’re writing a plot, you have to keep in mind who your main characters are. They are the ones who have to untangle the issues that the narrative is following, even if you have to shove off the stage the most interesting, charismatic, powerful, or witty character. This is particularly true in literature for children and young adults, where the kids have to resolve the difficulties, and not the adults.

 

In any case, a larger-than-life character such as Albus Dumbledore is not necessarily the one readers identify with as strongly as the protagonist, and not necessarily the one readers root for most ardently. The hero/heroine, more like us, with our flaws and fears, is the one who has to face down the antagonist in the end, in order for the drama to work its magic.

Zack’s memoir about his father, the writer Lee Rogow: Hugging My Father’s Ghost

Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies

Other posts of interest:

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry?

Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle

Praise and Lament

How to Be an American Writer

Writers and Collaboration

Types of Closure in Poetry

Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1: Write More Than You Need

If you’re writing a book, no matter what the genre, you probably have a page length or word count in mind. 

If it’s poetry you’re writing, your target is probably 50 to 70 pages.

Estimates vary about how long a novel should be. According to Deborah Ritchken, an agent at the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, “There really is no set rule but the average novel runs about 110,000 words. Obviously, there are novels where the word count runs much higher!” 

If you’re J.K. Rowling, then the sky’s the limit. (Some might argue that the later Harry Potter books needed a good editor.) A book of nonfiction should also clock in around 100,000 words. I would think a collection of short stories should be closer to 60,000 words.

Whatever the genre, you should write much more material than you actually need. You want to have the luxury of cutting work that isn’t up to the quality of the rest of the book. For my collection of poetry My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, to arrive at 50 pages of published poetry, I wrote about 135 pages. I cut two thirds of it. That wasn’t easy for me. There are still poems in that 85 pages of crossed-off material that I get a twinge of regret when I read and remember that I couldn’t include them in the book. But I know the book is better off without those deleted pages.

The trick is to write more than you need but not to get so attached to what you write that you refuse to part with the sections that are weaker, or extraneous to the direction of the book as a whole. Ultimately, it’s the reader’s experience you have to prioritize, not your affection for your own words.

All writers create bad drafts, and/or writing that is not up to their best work, or doesn't mesh with a current project. The challenge is to keep that work somewhere private, rather than try to publish it.

I have a file I call “Uncollected Poems,” which is my euphemism for poems that never made it into any of my books. Ultimately they didn't make the grade or fit in the collection I was working on at the time. I’m not throwing those poems out. Some of them I continue to polish. I enjoy revisiting many of them. I occasionally will send one or two out to magazines or anthologies. But I realize they rarely end up in any collection of my work.

In the literary world, the quality of your work is judged not only by what you publish, but by what you don’t publish. If you establish a consistent standard for your writing and keep to that, readers will see that sheen in your work, and be drawn to it. If you don’t keep to that standard, you risk being judged by the worst of your creations.

Continue reading: Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies

Zack’s most recent translation, Bérénice 1934–44: An Actress in Occupied Paris by Isabelle Stibbe

Other posts on writing topics:

How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka, The Villanelle
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Writers and Collaboration
Types of Closure in Poetry