Who's flying this thing?

I read this article because the teaser headline had a few magic keywords that will hook me every time:

It got me to thinking about how much (or how little) control an author has over a story once it's on the page. Don't get me wrong, I am and will probably always be one of the first in the digital lines to soak up any and every interview and Q&A session with the authors of my favorite works. Once I fall in love with a story or setting, I want to hear every detail and new tidbit the creator is willing to share. That being said, I felt a little defensive of the book when Rowling said she should have had Hermione and Harry end up together.

Her "I'm backtracking" expression

Once a writer releases a story for others to read, it's no longer solely the writer's story. It's in the world. It's a shared experience. That writer has given birth to their story baby, and there's no getting it back into the womb to change how it turned out. Not the best analogy, I know. Parents have a lot more influence on how babies turn out after they're born than writers do their stories after they're released, but you get what I mean. 

The point I'm slowly approaching is that it seems somehow insulting or disrespectful of the book for an author to say she should have done something different. I got defensive of The Deathly Hallows because I've read it, and reading a story is almost as personal and private an experience as writing one. As a reader, you feel ownership of the story you lived in your mind through those pages. And when you hear someone speak ill of it, even the author, you naturally want to defend it. 

But, I understand what Rowling meant when she said she had trouble shaking her original thought of how that part of the story should turn out. She had the feeling early on that Ron and Hermione should end up together and she grew attached to it. Dreaming up a book is a very intimate experience. The characters and their stories become a part of your life, a deeply personal and private part, especially while they're in the early stages of development. You can't help but become attached. And when you consider that most stories cook in the author's imagination for years, sometimes decades, before they end up on the page, the attachment to those early ideas can sometimes become a tie that's not easy to break. When, as a writer, the story starts to go in a way you didn't anticipate and characters start to develop away from your original vision, it's hard to fight off the instinct to drag them back to your original concept. 

Sometimes holding to your original vision for a character or a relationship might be the right call. Many times, it's not. Writing a story can be as exciting for the writer as the reader. I know a goodly number of the scenes I plan turn out far different from what I imagined. Characters develop in ways I didn't anticipate, and relationships sometimes just start to form where I didn't plan them. That's more than OK. That's perfect. That's the story developing the way it naturally should. 

Still, there are limits to how out of control your story should grow. At some point, you have to bring it back to the framework or you run the risk of telling a different tale than the one you started. 

So was it wrong for Ron and Hermione to end up together when the logic of the story was trying to take them in another direction? Maybe. Maybe not. That's not for me or anyone else to say aside from the author. But I do know that once the story is written and shared, it's too late to second guess. Ron and Hermione's relationship already happened for millions of readers. It's out of Rowling's hands. She's no longer at the helm.