humpolec comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Unnamed 14 January 2011 06:49AM

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Comment author: Raemon 25 January 2011 03:50:28AM *  15 points [-]

Something I've mentioned before, but usually as part of a reply to something else: I strongly believe that the work would benefit from being officially divided into different books. Chapter 63 was incredibly cathartic to read, partly because it was a very intense chapter that resolved a lot of stuff, but partly because at the time, we knew a hiatus was coming and that it was the Endâ„¢ of a particular section. That, in combination with the fact it touched upon every single plot thread, made it feel more potent. And the PDF version, at that time, was a little over 1000 pages, which is about right for a Harry Potter book.

It's also a daunting to get new people to read something when there's a bajillion chapters. I don't know if you're planning for two parts or three, but presumably there will be at least 120 chapters when this is done, if not 180+. I had better luck getting new people to read it when I specifically said "book 1 just finished, I can give you the PDF of that," and I think that's in part because "one book" is a friendlier way of measuring length than some large number of pages.

Fanfiction.net might have specific rules, or you might want to just keep things consistent there. But I'd like it if when the next section is finished, you do a PDF that gets treated as its own separate book.

(I also feel like Part I could benefit from being divided into subsections. For instance, the first 20ish chapters end with Harry sending the letter to his parents, which felt like a good stopping point, as did the Christmas break which gives us a pause before the events leading to Azkaban kick into overdrive. I'm less concerned about that, but I do feel like having discrete chunks to show to people makes it less daunting to begin reading).

Comment author: humpolec 28 January 2011 06:04:08PM 2 points [-]

To go with the TV series analogy proposed by Eliezer, maybe it could be an end of Season 1?

Comment author: Raemon 28 January 2011 06:24:51PM 5 points [-]

Yeah, that's exactly how I'd think about it.

I actually think that usually, books should be turned into TV shows, not movies. A thousand pages of book translates into approximately a thousand minutes, so making a movie requires you to gut the book down to the equivalent of 200-300 pages, whereas making a tv series would allow you to actually flesh things out further, giving the director time to actually do something interesting with the material. I firmly believe Harry Potter should have been a TV show, not a movie. At least from an artistic, if not economic standpoint.