back with Harry (part 6)

For an aspiring writer, a great workshop lesson from The Half-Blood Prince is that, with many and diverse supporting characters, an author can portray most inner conflicts externally, and can thereby render them more vividly and viscerally.

Harry is, in my opinion, a sophisticated and multi-layered character. At the same time he rarely has to torture out ideas or feelings from solitude. His frustrations surface through Draco, his loyalty through Dumbledore, his warmth and humor through the Weasleys...Luna carries his goofy moods, Hermione his better judgment...And Rowling takes this a step further, splitting even these supporting characters into sub-characters, rendering material those slippery, elusive, and abstract feelings, which lesser authors can describe only with fug.

Example: When Harry proclaims himself "Dumbledore's man through and through," Dumbledore is moved almost to tears, and "Fawkes the phoenix let[s] out a low, soft, musical cry." Here one character (yes, I'm counting the phoenix as a character) stands for and evokes the feelings of another, dramatizing an otherwise action-less scene along the way.

A problem with the novel as an art form is that it is susceptible to mires of rumination, to explanations and re-explanations that obsess over a character's soul or brains, and forget all about her guts. Rowling never does this. One of the thousand reasons to love her: she doesn't belabor thoughts and emotions, because her characters walk and talk them for her.