Stuck on the Romance of Harry Potter

Odd title aint it? Why in the world would I get on here talking about the romance of Harry Potter? Don't worry. It has everything to do with writing. Well, I was reading some criticism of J.K. Rowling's works and one of the things that came up was the horrible romances and the lack of development of the romances in Harry Potter. It was just like she decided in the fifth book, "Hey, my people are teenager and so Harry's going to be with Ginny and Hermione with Ron and that's it." Admittedly, it drove me batty in the book because to be quite honest, she built up more towards Harry and Hermione (they really did have more of a basis for a relationship and Ron and Hermione were always fighting and then Ron goes to get a book to tell him how not to be a git, not that I have anything against him). It got me to thinking though, why didn't she at least try to put more focus on the romances of her characters to make them more believable and fleshed out.

Well, it all goes back to the point I made to some of my fanfic readers and something that I'm ever conscious of when I write my novels. The writer has to be aware of whether their story is a romance with adventurous subplots or an adventure or fantasy or whatever with romantic subplots. Let's face it. J.K. Rowling intended it to be the latter. I have to defend J.K. Rowling on this even though the romance sucked and was unbelievably and terribly melodramatic etc. But it wasn't the romance that was important. The important part was that Harry had to defeat Voldemort and she was treading a fine line there. She could have bombed it like so many television programs and forgot about the adventure completely and let love be the thing that ended up saving them and though love did drive Harry and it played it's role, that wasn't the only thing.  So while the romance was poorly executed and got on my last nerve and Ginny just came out of nowhere for me and there was no real basis for a relationship between her and Harry, J.K. Rowling didn't really have the time to deal with that and it's a pitfall new writers or even old veteran writers don't need to fall into.

I had to deal with it in my own writing and solved the problem by making my MC oblivious to the fact that someone likes her. In fact, she's pretty much oblivious to romance because she doesn't have the time but that doesn't have to mean the people around her have to be.

A good published example of juggling romance and adventure together would be one of my favorite anime and manga of all time called Card Captor Sakura. Go look at it. It suggested so many pairing you can't even begin to count them, but the adventure never got lost in the romance however the show wouldn't have been the same without it. The emotional connection between all the characters complimented the adventure, never overcame it.

My point is that while J.K. Rowling may have just been too overly conscious of it or maybe just sucked at romances, she didn't fall into the pitfall that so many authors will and do fall into. If your story isn't a romance, then we don't need to know how every single person got together and every single person doesn't have to get together with someone. Hint at it. Give a little proof that it could happen and keep the story moving. Don't get stuck on the romance