Patrick Rothfuss: August 2007 Archives

I’m at the end of my maiden voyage here on Beliefnet, and I’ve had a great time.

In addition to the fun I’ve had chatting with Orson about the Harry Potter series, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the readers' comments. Not only is there a high signal-to-noise ratio, but even when disagreeing, people are generally very polite. As a result, reading the feedback has turned into an unexpected pleasure.

In fact, while reading the last series of comments about how different readers became disenchanted with books in the past, I realized that devoted readers and religious believers have something in common: Faith.

Llyralei suggested (very politely) that I was being a little lazy as a reader when I complained that Rowling’s rules of magic seemed ill-defined, or contradictory, or, in some cases, non-existent. She encouraged me to use my imagination. The implication being that I should work harder to invent explanations as to why everything in the books makes sense.

In general, I think this is good advice. It’s the reader’s job to take the pieces and put them together. The reader is supposed to draw conclusions and fill in some of the blank spaces in any story.

However, it’s the author’s job to make sure that there are enough pieces. And that they fit together. And that once they’re assembled, that a sensible picture is revealed, and not just a bodged-together mélange of Dobby-ex-machina.