The Ultimate Guide to Harry Potter Fanfiction

Disclaimer

I was fifteen when I started writing this book. Some of you might be fifteen now, and some of you might be young enough that fifteen sounds terribly grown up. Some of you, though, might be older than fifteen, and you'll understand what I'm about to say with all the love in my heart:

Fifteen year olds can be stupid.

And by fifteen year olds I do in fact mean myself. Shocking, I know. I've grown and changed in the past five years? I've realized that some of the things I firmly believed were kind of ridiculous? I've realized that a lot of the things I saw as black and white are actually a lot more blurred than that? I know now that I was simply wrong about a lot of things? Wild.

Sure, yeah, that can apply to politics or broccoli or the fact that the popular kids at school never actually hated me, but right now I'm talking about the way I've grown and changed when it comes to writing fanfiction. Of course, my writing skills have grown a lot; I've been writing Star of Gryffindor for over five and a half years now. But the way I look at fanfiction, what makes a story good or bad, that's changed a lot too.

I guess my point here is that you're about to read a book where (especially in the earlier chapters) you're going to see a lot of my own opinions about what tropes or cliches should never be used in a story. While I do hit on some very common and overused things in this book, and it's easy to find hundreds of stories like the examples I had way too much fun creating, I'd like to put your mind at ease.

A cliche plot won't make or break your story.

An overused trope is not always something to avoid.

An overpowered character isn't always a bad thing.

What makes a story good or bad isn't the cliches or the tropes. Those exist in literally every book. Every story has already been told a thousand times, but it's never been told by you. That's the important thing. At the end of the day, it all comes down to you.

So, my disclaimer is that I'd like you to take everything I saw in this book with a grain of salt. I mean, sure, there are some things that are just bad and harmful, like misrepresenting abuse or mental illness, and you can check out my chapters on those topics as a starting point if you want to write about that.

I point out overused tropes in this book, and if you want to avoid them, be my guest. But that's not to say you can't write a very good (and even a very successful) story including overused tropes. If your characters are relatable and realistic and lovable, your readers will forgive anything (trust me on that one).