nb: this is the Sparknotes version of an essay I wrote for my MA last term.
Why do we love Hogwarts so much?
How can we strive to recreate the devotion readers have felt towards Hogwarts in our own writing?
These are the questions I asked myself last fall. I wanted to demystify the success of Hogwarts as a setting readers all over the world identify as a second home. To begin, I looked at a wide variety of fantasy books for similarities in settings I knew to be beloved: Hogwarts, Camp Half-Blood, The Shire, etc. (note: I had to narrow the field, and I found fantasy better at creating remarkable settings than contemporary fiction, with more well-known examples to draw from, but I would argue that the same principles apply to settings in contemporary fiction).
In my research, I identified six key elements for creating a setting that is sure to captivate readers.
THE HAGRID
The Hagrid is my own term for a maternal character who introduces the protagonist (and the reader) to the setting. The Hagrid is kind, nurturing, and, above all, very enthusiastic about the setting. Once the Hagrid has both the protagonist and reader excited about the setting, the Hagrid delivers the protagonist to the setting.
The Hagrid usually isn’t the mentor figure of the series, but can act as one before the mentor arrives. (Think Obi Wan versus Yoda)
Examples: Hagrid in Harry Potter, Grover in the Percy Jackson series, Obi Wan in Star Wars
Why might a writer want to include a Hagrid in their work? The Hagrid is useful for two things: building up the setting for the reader and letting us know that it is a place where we might find more friendly faces. The character is a subtle way of ensuring the reader trusts that this setting will be a good one.
A REMARKABLE POINT OF ENTRY
Narnia has The Wardrobe. Hogwarts has Platform 9 ¾. Camp Half-Blood has a magical barrier.
The remarkable point of entry separates the setting from the real world. It delineates the humdrum world the protagonist and reader are used to from the fantastical place they’re headed. It’s the harbinger of adventures to come.
Additionally, It lets both the protagonist and the reader in on a secret. Not just anyone can get past the RPoE. There’s an air of exclusivity around it. No one knows what lies beyond except we select few.
We who know to walk through the wall.
We who were told the day’s password.
We who opened the book.
The remarkable point of entry marks both the setting as someplace special, and the protagonist as someone special. Because the reader goes through the RPoE by way of turning the page, it marks them as special, too.
AN INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY
Readers like to see ourselves in books. Now that we have entered this setting, we must feel as though we can belong there. Few books truly succeed at diversity in regards to race and sexual orientation; however, authors have achieved an air of inclusivity by utilising a couple of different methods.
The first is by showing that different categories of people can live in this place. Think of the house system in Harry Potter. The cabins of camp Half-Blood. Include a system of categorisation in a place and readers will immediately sort ourselves into it and achieve a sense of belonging for it.
The second–and fiction’s favorite–method of showing that a setting accepts everyone is by populating it with misfits. Think of Neville and Luna in Harry Potter. In The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson has both ADHD and Dyslexia. Where in the outer world, these cause Percy trouble, in Camp Half-Blood, these traits help him excel. It utilises the trope of the ‘misfit’ to best effect: it transforms the setting into a place where the things that make us different and weird turn out to be our greatest strengths.
The settings in these books provide a place to belong for those who might not have any other place to belong. The settings become places where readers feel as though they could not only belong, but succeed in, too.
A SENSE OF SAFETY
The setting must not only provide a place where anyone can belong; it is almost always a place of great safety. Hagrid refers to Hogwarts as one of the safest places on Earth. Percy Jackson is told he’ll die outside of Camp Half-Blood. The Shire is known for being quiet and safe.
This makes sense as a feature one might want a home to have. It is the reason places like Panem and The New World in The Knife of Never Letting Go, although well-constructed settings, aren’t places a reader might ever wish to be “welcomed home.”
Because of this, safety is a crucial feature of settings the might ‘welcome a reader home.’ Without it, a reader may revisit a story for the plot, or for the characters, but never because we wish to return to the setting itself. The reader must know that whatever adventures take place, things will turn out alright in the end.
UNAVOIDABLE ADVENTURE
Although the setting must be safe, it cannot be boring. For a setting to truly enchant a reader, it must come with the sense that once there, adventure will find them. The Shire is the best example of this.
Bilbo does not want an adventure. He says so outright when one is first suggested: ‘we don’t want any adventures here, thank you’ (Tolkien, 5). Nonetheless, he finds himself in the middle of one: ‘Mr. Baggins… was beginning to wonder whether a most wretched adventure had not come right into his house’ (Tolkien, 11).
Although adventure is rare in The Shire, the reader would likely identify with Bilbo, and feel if they lived in The Shire, they would be picked out for an adventure, too. In any case, they’d be in the right place for it.
You see this with Harry stumbling across the Mirror of Erised, with the sybil granting Percy a quest.
It’s a trope of the hero’s journey: there must be a call to action, the hero must reject the call, and something must happen so the hero is forced to take action anyway. The unavoidable adventure that sets the plots into action, but it does more than that. It makes the setting a place where stories occurs. This allows the reader to imagine that if we were there, then, surely we would fall into an adventure worth writing a book about, too.
How could we not?
It’s unavoidable.
AN ELEMENT OF THE FANTASTIC
This element makes good on the promise set out with the remarkable point of entry.
It’s most important and indefinable feature of a beloved setting.
This is the talking portraits and moving stairways of Hogwarts. The round doors, under-hill homes, and second breakfasts in the Shire. The deadly serious games of Catch the Flag at Camp Half-Blood.
It doesn’t necessarily have to magical, but it has to be unique and larger than life. The fantastical element is the ‘wow factor’ of a setting. It’s what makes the setting stand out in the reader’s mind. What truly captures the reader’s imagination. It is crucial for making a setting truly effective.
I’m not going to claim that this list is either prescriptive or comprehensive, but hope it might prove a starting point in transforming your setting from a place your characters inhabit, to a place your readers inhabit, too.
A twenty-year-old college student from Canada with a passion for writing. I write fanfiction and am currently hoping to begin posting a supernatural crime story here. Eventually.
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MissWriteress 