Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Pre-draft Plan: Harry Potter

Okay, super duper fast...

My plan for the draft is to basically start condensing all my post-y note annotations and my gathered sources into actual coherent sentences. It's going to be messy, and it's going to be a bit bumpy, but it's going to be fun. My first drafts are always a bit scatter-brained, but it's basically just getting the word vomit out and then arranging those words so that they start to turn into something. 

The discussion in class was super great because Kayla and I were going crazy with all the sources we'd found. There is so much information, the trick will be consolidating it. I'm excited to let off the brakes for one hour and just sort of fly down the mountain of information I've been stacking up.


4:17

So I'll be honest... that first paragraph got me good! I erased and crossed out and erased some more until I finally threw my eraser across my apartment, looked at the time, saw I had fifteen minutes, and just went with something. I had SO MUCH information to comb through, searching for the quotes I wanted to use was taking forever, so I just wrote down what the quote was about and decided I would find it later. Lesson learned: when you find a quote, write where you found it before you close the window. Another lesson learned: don't spend twenty minutes trying to figure out your opening sentence. Final lesson learned: when your roommate is practicing the violin and you can't concentrate, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. #captainobvious

Here's what I got. I typed it up really fast so it would be easier to see/read than my handwritten mess. I totally give you permission to laugh at me for how little I got done.

It’s been said that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but to a nine-year-old boy who is searching the library shelves for a book he can write his book report on, the cover says quite a bit. Ignoring the princess-themes and the color pink, he manages to pick up a book that doesn’t look too thick and that won’t get him teased by his peers for “being a girl.” The book he has chosen is called “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” This novel is part of a seven book series, a series which has sold faster than any other series or book on the planet. The success of any book hinges on one thing: reader response. In the case of Harry Potter, it has had such an unfathomable success because of it’s appeal to the male gender first and foremost. By writing a story with the main character as a boy, J.K. Rowling sets up a relate-ability that would be unobtainable if she had chosen to change her Harry into a Harriet.
Although J.K. Rowling admits that she had toyed with the idea, she chose to keep her main character a male instead of changing mid-story. She stated that it just didn’t feel right, putting Harry in a dress. (go into detail here about this interview with J.K. Rowling that I can't seem to find right now but is somewhere in my notes) She felt comfortable enough with the role of Hermione as a representative of herself and the rest of her own gender. If she had, however, decided to write a story in which the main character was a girl, there would have been an extreme lack of enthusiasm in the beginning of the series’ existence. (source #6… go into detail about what boys immediately look for when they want to pick up a book)
Paragraph 3: Rowling’s being asked to change her name before publishing (power behind a name… why boys are drawn to books about them vs. girls... source #12)



4 comments:

  1. Hey! Totally forgot to comment due to an assignment I was rushing to finish yesterday haha.

    I am not laughing at all at what you got done! I think it is a huge feat to have most of the introductory paragraph written so well this early on! I didn't even bother with mine because it always takes me so long! But the introduction has a great hook and it went an intriguing direction! I could definitely feel an argument coming up in me while reading your thesis. I had many questions like, "a lot of books have a male lead, why is Harry Potter different?" or "how will she tie in female interest in the book?"

    I am super interested to see where else you take this! I like how you already have some paragraphs set up so that you expand on them later. That will be super useful! I think that, before you expand anything, you should continue this hodge podgey type thing and create for yourself a messy outline so that you can clean it up and make it pretty and perfect and wonderful later! Just a thought :) It always helps me get organized!

    This looks amazing, Sage! Keep it up!

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  2. BAHAHAHA oh no. I'm signed in on my husbands gmail I guess??? And his name is still Elder Estes? Fail..... This is Kayla. Sorry about that!!!!!! Hahahha.

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  3. Haha I was also super confused about why a random Elder commented and then I read it and understood haha.

    I thought that your introduction was really interesting. It seems like it would appeal to both a literary and a general audience. You have a strong, personable voice which makes the writing fun to read.

    Your thesis was interesting although I wasn't going to argue (does that make me sexist? But I mean, really, no one liked Harry after the 4th book anyway because he was super whiny, can you imagine what it would have been like if he was a girl and had started his period? I think it definitely would have driven away some of the male audience.), but I was wanting to know how you were going to support your claims.

    I think you've got a good start and I want to read your final product!

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  4. I think this is a great start. I think that talking about gender in Harry Potter can be a very interesting essay, since there's so much research in and debate about gender roles. I'm excited to hear that you have so much research, since that will be especially important to this paper. Great start!

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