More Harry Potter

The Weasleys are a huge family. There are established interactions: Fred and George are definitely the jokesters; Percy is definitely the uptight academic. It's fairly clear throughout that the twins have potential that they direct towards joking, and few people in the family actually like Percy as a person. Part of me is curious about how the lesser-known Weasleys interact. How does Bill feel about Ginny, since he's the oldest and she's the youngest? Ginny might not have even been around when Bill left for boarding school - how does he view her, as someone who only interacted with his sister on holidays? How often do Charlie and Bill see the rest of the family? What does Charlie think of his sister joining the Quidditch team? How does he feel about Ron being a lousy Keeper in Quidditch? What do they think of Harry and Hermione marrying into the family?

I feel like J.K. Rowling knows all these things, and I would love to know these answers.

On Harry Potter characters

I'm really into audiobooks. Lately, I've been listening to the Harry Potter series again, and it's kind of interesting to go back and relive the experiences. Right now, I'm on book 3 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Since I've read the series multiple times, there may be spoilers in here. You have been warned.

The first two books, I've realized, are very structured within themselves. Each scene drops hints and clues, explicitly or implicitly, about what happens. The Mirror of Erised shows the deepest desire of one's heart, for example. As it turns out, if the Deepest Desire of Your Heart is to get the Philosopher's Stone and do nothing with it (as opposed to make the Elixir of Life, create gold, cause severe head injury to one's enemies, etc), then you can get the stone.
In the third book, however, there are a few more subplots, and I think this is an area where character development shows itself. I know that there are other characters that are far more frustrating, but Ron is really bugging me in Book Three. Admittedly, it's easy to get defensive when a cat seems to be intent on killing your rat in particular (especially if that rat is one of the only things you can call your own), but I feel like he shouldn't have been so annoyed at Hermione over it. I feel like he should have had someone make him take a step back and think about Hermione's feelings. If Hermione Granger, the know-it-all who gets perfect marks in everything, is so disoriented that she misses classes, that should be a heads up. It could be everything from a first period to time travel, but picking on someone in that situation is not going to make it better.
I know characters change over time, and I'm definitely not the person I was at 13 (if only because I have a pixie cut now, as opposed to waist-length hair). I'm starting to see, however, why J.K. Rowling said that Ron and Hermione would have a very tumultuous marriage.

Plots

Plots are very important to a novel.  It can be anything, even a meandering journey of a person in high school or middle school or college.  It could be completely irrelevant to normal life.  It could only focus on a love triangle among a normal being and two supernatural creatures.  The point is, plot can fluctuate.  A lot.
Though your writing style can make or break your novel, your plot is probably what people are going to compare to other things (though your writing style is important in comparisons, too... but that's for another post).  For example, when I've noticed comparisons between the Twilight series and the Harry Potter series (or even Twilight and The Hunger Games), a main point that is raised is the plot - how Twilight lacks it, and how Harry Potter is abundantly rife with it.
I may lose a LOT of followers for this, but I will contest that Twilight does have a reasonable sort of plot.  Though I do not entirely like Bella (Sorry, Stephenie Meyer), she does participate in Plot.  How?

Twilight: trying to figure out who/ what Edward is.
New Moon: don't let Edward do stupid stuff.
Eclipse: Don't die, and don't let anyone get killed.
Breaking Dawn: protect your kids!

See?  That's plot!  Though the overarching plot is not something entirely to my taste, and all the action sequences only showed up in the climax instead of being spread out, it was not a terrible concept.  On the other hand, though the concept wasn't terrible, the execution may have been kind of lacking (I don't remember; the last time I read any Twilight book all the way through was in freshman year of high school; being a college freshman, it's been a while).

What the Twilight vs Every Other Novel debate raises is the difference of opinion.  What we can all gather from this is distinct evidence that, no matter how hard you try, you (and especially your novel) are not going to be able to please everyone.  Your novel may be popular with middle school girls and be scorned by the time they reach college.  Your novel might be considered the defining novel of a generation (well, if you write a multi-part series, probably).  Your novel might be rather obscure, and nobody might hear about it until some movie producer reads it, likes it, and decides to offer you a movie deal.  Your novel, like so many, may be rather good, but because there are so many novels out hitting every point on the "how good is this book" spectrum, it may go unnoticed despite the decent product you may have produced.

What draws someone to your book will probably be the little blurb on the back, and if you have a good plot to have a good blurb about, you'll have readers.  Also, if you have a publicity agent and a whole lot else.

But remember: your plot makes your novel.