#151. How Rowling Built A World Ripe For Life Or Death Conflicts (An Interview With Savannah Gilbo & Abigail K. Perry)

Speaker 1: 0:00

When you're looking at context like where actually is the value, we don't need to go over complicated and currency and sorcerer's stone, but it's worth understanding that Harry does have piles of gold that his parents left him, because that is what actually matters in the story. When you see the difference between Wal, between Draco Malfoy, who is a major snob and uses that against, and I think that's more what is important. But when you go into things like mythical creatures in the Forbidden Forest, that's going to have a block point that we're going to see play out.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming, so each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So, whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.

Speaker 2: 1:00

In today's episode, I'm sharing part of an interview that Abigail K Perry and I did with Tim Grawl, who is the CEO of StoryGrid, and in this interview we're talking about worldbuilding, which is a hot topic for any science fiction or fantasy author, but it's also one of my favorite things about the Harry Potter series. You'll hear us talk about things like how Rowling made every worldbuilding detail count, so how she made every detail pull double duty and actually matter to the plot and the characters we talk about. How she planted clues to the big plot twist at the end within her worldbuilding details, and how she distracted us from whatever clues she planted, like a true master of misdirection, and so much more. We cover a lot in this episode and it's all based on the section I wrote about worldbuilding in the introduction of the StoryGrid Masterwork Analysis Guide to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which is officially available for pre-order right now. You can learn more about my brand new book at savannahgilbocom forward slash masterwork. But for now, let's go ahead and dive right into the conversation.

Speaker 3: 2:08

Yeah, so one of the things I also have thought a lot about and showed up in your book a lot, was how the world of Harry Potter plays a role, and it made me think about how I was actually, before we got on today, I was scripting out another YouTube video comparing a couple different movies and how the one that is going to stand the test of time and is a masterwork how much the world became a character in the story instead of just like a place to tell this story. And so can you talk a little bit about how JK Rowling used the world that she built as a character in the story? I don't know how else to say it, other than it wasn't just like the setting she created to tell the story, it was like constantly throwing stuff into the story as well. And so as, especially from the fantasy point of view, what made this such a strong world to tell this particular story in?

Speaker 2: 3:07

Yeah, and sometimes, when I think about it as the world, as a character, that to me gets blurry. So I just think about it as, like, how does the world do more than just be a world, right? Like how do we make use of every single piece of this? And if you're writing something that is an action story or a story with life and death stakes, how does the world give rise to those stakes or opportunities to have life and death situations? And again, there's multiple layers of how she does this in the story. So, you know, in general, there's a bunch of kids using magic and they all have various experience.

Speaker 2: 3:39

We see, I think it's in the movie where eyebrows blow off, right. So it's like things are dangerous if we don't use them properly. And there is also three-headed giant dogs on the third floor guarding something that could kill you, dragons that actually do harm Ron. A forbidden forest that God knows what is in there, right, it's super told not to go there.

Speaker 2: 3:57

Hagrid creates his chaos in a very dangerous way. Full contact sports like Quidditch, like there's so many different things. It's not just Harry going to school and playing football, it's Harry going to school and playing a sport that takes you, however many feet up in the air that we see him almost fall from his broom, and that could be really dangerous. And it's very interesting because, we said earlier, voldemort isn't in his body right, so he's limited to the kind of life and death situations he can create. So what did she do? She gave him a proxy where he could ride on the back of his head and create chaos and then also really amped up the world to fill some of that gap. And yeah, it's just in every scene there's something, whatever layer you want to play on there.

Speaker 1: 4:39

So Savannah is the mastermind behind worldbuilding. I learned a lot from her about world building and how to explain this and analyze it. But one of the things that she's always talked to me about is that when you're world building, you want to go narrow and deep. So the wizarding world is huge and there are so many layers to it. But I also think I've been going back to the shallow learning curve. With each book we go narrow and deep.

Speaker 1: 5:03

So there are things like we're going to spend quite a bit of time at Quidditch and understanding the rules and understanding the positions, because those dates are fun when we're in a school setting. Right, we start off going to Diagon Alley and we're going to see Greengroth and we're going to learn currency right, and there's that aspect of the world. But we don't really need to know the complicated governmental decisions yet. Right, we do see how, in a different way, wealth impacts the story, because we see wrongs and securities coming from a poor background and we see Harry always feeling a little bit uncomfortable because he's super wealthy and that kind of being an unsaid topic between the two of them. Right, like, even like when you see Christmas in, like the sweaters, but to Harry that is what has meaning to it. When Mrs Weasley sends him the sweater and you're on the six sweater, that I always get.

Speaker 1: 5:53

So I think that when you're looking at context like where actually is the value, we don't need to go over complicated and currency and sorcerer's stone but it's worth understanding that Harry does have piles of gold that his parents left him, because that is what actually matters in the story. When you see the difference between Wal, between Draco Malfoy, who is a major snob and uses that against, and I think that's more what is important. But when you go into things like mythical creatures in the Forbidden Forest, that's going to have a plot point that we're going to see play out in a key scene of the story History Nicolas Fomal. We learned this through context, through unraveling of the mystery. We're going to learn that. I think you talk about it in your introduction, savannah, when you talk about the chocolate frogs and the cards. That's really important. It comes out as a plot point because we learn who Dumbledore is and how he is part of this. He paired up with Nicolas Fomel to create the Sorcerer's Stone and that's going to be how they discover what the Sorcerer's Stone is when it comes, when he gets the card again, when he gives Neville his chocolate frog and Neville gets the card back, like we're thinking about how to use the world as chess pieces to play the game, right, and I think that is what is really key.

Speaker 1: 7:05

Now, I remember talking to an agent at a writing conference and she said one of the main reasons harry potter is because we put it in a school setting, so we understand what it is like to go to school and have different classes and have your friends and all that. But we get to learn about magic here and that's way cooler, right. So I think that there's fun to that. But even even in that, we're learning about Lingardium leviosa, because that means to pay off of the troll In herbology. We're going to learn about devil's snare, because that's going to come back, right. So even if you look at the trap door, once you go through the trap door and how the adults have set up major pieces that are challenges.

Speaker 1: 7:43

Mcdonnell has transfigured the chess pieces. We see Ron and he's an expert of chess, but this is a wizard's chess, right. So we understand the stakes when we get to the big chess, because Hermione thinks that's barbaric, right? So I think that's where we see all of this in a fun way, where we are experiencing the world as the characters experience it, but then it pays off in higher like-and-death stakes when the story comes into play. So again, no line is wasted, no plot point is wasted, because what we learn about the world is important to learn about the world for that book. And then you take that lesson into the next book and into the next one, and that's the beauty of it.

Speaker 2: 8:20

And one thing I like to talk about a lot here in worldbuilding that I could probably get on my high horse about a little bit no-transcript, little tie to the end. So I think with the writers I work with who are world building, just do what you have to do to get to the end of the draft and then go back and look to how to weave these things together and make the pieces match and set up each other and things like that. For me, when I started looking at this and breaking it down, it became less overwhelming to think that maybe I could create a world like this someday. But it takes work, it takes the layers, it takes the thought after the draft is done.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Yeah, exactly, and I think that's the thing it's like sometimes, people, because world building is really fun for fantasy writers, so you can spend a lot of time in the world. I don't know if it was story great or someone else that told me the length of time I might. I hope I don't say this incorrectly, but with daryl tolkien, I believe it took him something like 20 years to come up with middle earth and, like he loved language, loved it, created languages, multiple languages. But with Middle Earth, you can spend 20 years developing your world. Just be okay that you're developing your world. Or you can develop your world and what you need to know and then spend some time with the drafts and figure out how that is, and you can learn as you go as well. And I think that's just the big thing is like you don't have to have all the answers.

Speaker 1: 10:09

I think that one of the challenges with the masterworks, when writers are studying it, is they look at it and they're like I need to figure this out all at once, I need to do all the things all at one, and it's like no, no, no, like you, don't you gotta? If anything, my advice is just embrace the layers, even when I give manuscript evaluations, I always tell them like one layer at a time is how you're going to win this book. You don't have to do characters and plot and dialogue and prose all in the next draft. What is the most immediate thing that you need to change and just focus that on that in a draft and I believe I interviewed Kirsten Chen.

Speaker 1: 10:47

She wrote Counterfeit and she said that by her book was it was like 14 or 15 graphs, something that and she embraced the layers and that's where I was like ah, that sounds much more manageable, though, just like you can't write like the idea of writing 90,000 words super overwhelming, the idea of writing 500 words a day not as overwhelming. Just embrace knowing the best you can where you're going and why you're going there, but that you also can be open to learning how things evolve as you develop them and look back and think to yourself because you're going there. But that you also can be open to learning how things evolve as you develop them and look back and think to yourself because you're going to get ideas for different angles of how you can use different tools in your story as you go.

Speaker 3: 11:21

Yeah, this was something in the book that I have coming out soon that really it was the first time I really understood it, because I experienced it myself of this idea of like I put something later in the book and then that was really important. And then I'm like, okay, let me go back and see if there's ways I can set this up, so like in my book there's soccer kind of keeps showing up, and so then I'm like, oh, I can slide it in here and slide it in here and slide it in here. And it almost feels one of those movies where, like you're going back in time and like putting something where it was supposed to be and that's what a lot of this feels like is like, oh, okay, maybe who knows, because we'll never know but like maybe she had them opening the pack of cards on the train but then later went back and changed who was on those cards and what was on those cards, because she had figured something out later in the story. I think I've been sitting on this the whole time we're talking, because my favorite part of your book is how you address type plotting and I would say, as a writer, this was the thing I learned the most by reading your book was these things that like seemed magical to keep using that word.

Speaker 3: 12:34

Like when you read the book and there's so much of it because it's done so well that you just kind of gloss over. It just seems so natural. But can you talk a little bit about the idea of type plotting, how this shows up in all of Harry Potter, but obviously particularly Sorcerer's Stone. And then how you, when you're working with writers, how do you get them to think through this idea of tight plotting?

Speaker 2: 12:59

Yeah, when I hear you say that, I'm like maybe we should have called it like tight revising or tight editing, because it's not something you do when you're plotting, it's just something we see as every plot detail matters. So the question is like how do we get to that point? How do we make it so that it feels like Abigail always says there's no detail wasted, there's no line wasted, everything means something. And what's to open a whole nother can of worms? What she's so good at is things in this book matter for future books. And who knows if she had that planned or if she's in hindsight going back and saying I need a character to do this. So I'm going to pull this random person from book one and make it magical.

Speaker 2: 13:38

And I think you read interviews with her and you see how she's like a big fan of studying mystery and crime stories. So they do a really good job of laying out the clues and misdirecting and things, and there is a big misdirection in this story. So I think it's just something she's just so good at. And it's the chocolate frog card thing too. Back to what you said. She might not have even had them opening chocolate frog cards on the train and then in hindsight, in revising, she could have said this is a great opportunity. They're not really doing much in this train scene other than talking. I'm going to plant a big clue here and then distract them, because you'll see through the analysis in our scenes we talk about, look how she did this. She planted a giant clue and then Ron's distracting Harry with this brand new sport called Quidditch and it's so cool and I know all the teams and you're going to love it, right? So she's so good at that and that gives off this experience that everything.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Yeah, I think that's again it comes to the art of revising, because you can look at those details and I always say, when you spend more description on something, it better have importance, right, and it might be subtle, like that idea with the cards or something like that, but we spent time with it.

Speaker 1: 14:55

We spent time with the card and not the taste of the chocolate, right, and there's a reason for that taste of the chocolate, right, and there's a reason for that. So I think that's what's important is that, when you're dealing with these details, what are you spending time to detail, to actually detail, and that's the difference between the writer and the reader, because the writer, who is learning how to read like a writer, needs to understand when an author is spending time on something and then looking for how this pays off, where the reader can just experience and just have fun with that. You know, just because that is the art of it, it's the art of saying, hey, this detail is really important and whether or not you know that this is going to pay off or not, because of your, how much time you spend storytelling, it's going to pay off and it's been really satisfying. That's what creates the surprise and but inevitable because you spend time. It's going to pay off and it's been really satisfying. That's what creates the surprise and been inevitable because you spent time with it.

Speaker 2: 15:45

And I have two things I want to say to this. So the reason that I feel like I was able to finally get to the point of seeing all these pieces that she puts on the chessboard and then makes use of is because I had to do this presentation a while ago about red herrings and I picked Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to piece apart and say how did she make us think that Sirius was the bad guy? But really there's scabbers working in the background and all that. So that's kind of what made me see this stuff for what it was, and I think that's a really great exercise for any writer with any craft. Thing they want to learn is pick it apart and say, like, how do the mechanics work? That's really how my brain works, which is why there's not really ever too much time spent on these masterworks, because I could pick it apart all day long.

Speaker 2: 16:27

But the other thing I want to say to that, abigail, is you mentioned that the amount of time we spend on things you'll see too in our analysis that we talk about how you can layer in backstory and world building details and get the result a feel of a tight plot when you let things in the scene prompt what you're including. So with the world building details, it could be a character like Ron bringing up Quidditch, and then that gives us some time to bring in more of the world. Or it could be Harry at Diagon Alley hearing something and asking Hagrid about it. Or they're walking to the Forbidden Forest next to Hagrid's hut and they see creatures, and then that brings up something. It's also about finding the right times to put things in the story and not just info dumping or going crazy, and that also comes out through revising.

Speaker 1: 17:14

I like to look at bookends of a story too. If I were to say that, if you needed to know anything, if you're going to figure some stuff out with these details in the middle of the world building, but know the beginning and the end and I know for Panthers in particular, that's a really hard truth to take, but that's what I always try to encourage is know the beginning and the end. I am not JK Rowling. I do not know the exact details of everything that she knew and how she was plotting. I do believe, if I remember this correctly, that I saw her one time speaking about how she knew the last line of the series, which means and I hope I'm not speaking out of context here, but I believe I remember when I because I was so fascinated by this it was her intention actually to kill Harry in book seven, but by the time that she got to book seven she realized I can't kill him People. But by the time that she got to book seven she realized I can't kill him big thing.

Speaker 1: 18:21

It's like when you look at Sorcerer's Stone. If you were to look at the beginning and end, I'm sure she knew. I'm not sure because I'm not her, but I would guess very strongly that she knew that Voldemort was on the back of Quirrell's head and that something with the mirror. Maybe she was going to figure out how the mirror works with all that, but the sorcerer's stone in some way was going to work with that and she knew that lily's love was going to protect him. So because those are like the key pieces that kind of come out in the climax and how we get there is the story, but like knowing, like this is where we're at, this is where we're ending, this is the information that we had very little of, this is the information that we are going to wrap up in the end. All the muddle from the middle and what we experience is to help us understand how those two pieces make sense, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 19:09

All right, that's all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes look at what went into writing and editing the StoryGrid Masterwork Analysis Guide to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. If you want to grab a copy of the book, go to savannahgilbocom forward slash masterwork to get all the information, including where to purchase, and to see the bonuses I'm giving away for free with proof of purchase. So that's it for today's episode. As always, thank you so much for tuning in and for showing your support. If you want to check out any of the links I mentioned in this episode, you can find them in the show notes listed in the description of each episode inside your podcast player or at savannagilbocom forward slash podcast.

Speaker 2: 19:53

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