Make Banana Pancakes | HELP, RANTS ETC.

Tips on Instagram AUs

Okay, I bloody love Instagram AUs and Social Media AUs in general. They are literally an author's dream in the sense that they are easy and fun to update and don't take literally hours to write and you guys seem to like them too, so they are literally my favourite things in the entire world. Anyway, I thought I'd give you guys some tips on writing them that I hope you find useful!

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► Give your Instagram AU a plot. It really helps to write it and keep it interesting as it gives you a guide of where to go next. It doesn't have to be one continuous plot, even a bunch of mini plots like in Highly Antisocial can make it more interesting to read and help people get more into it. It also helps give it a clear end to as I can often find myself drifting if I don't have an end goal in sight.

► Try and keep a rough idea of time passing, it doesn't have to be as specific as Highly Anti-social where I did it to the day but then that makes it more realistic and allows you to do fun stuff like New Years or Christmas posts

► Okay, with the usernames, try not to do too many complicated ones or if you do make sure the character can still be identified. Try not to make them too complicated especially if you have a lot of characters as it can get really confusing and also remembering a bunch of names to write can be hard. Also on the topic of remembering things, it's probably best to stick to either full stops or underscores as I'm constantly forgetting which ones I've given to my character

► You don't have to introduce your characters at the beginning but if you do introduce a new major character, make it really obvious where they come in and who they are. Like with Emmeline Vance, her username was quite obvious who she was and I introduced her meeting with James in DMs so it was clear who she was and how they'd met

► Make sure to show your character's posts (If you can't be fucked to do a fake Instagram, just use do one of those 3 x 3 aesthetic grids) and bio at the beginning as it can be good way to introduce your character. Like the bio can show whether they're sassy, clueless, smart, loves puns (Aha me...) and the posts can show their aesthetic, they're interests etc. It's also good to introduce their age and house too, just so people can get an idea of it all

► Don't get too fixated on the hair lengths and stuff. This seems kind of random but at first I wouldn't use an image if the hair wasn't perfect or something but now I will, purely because it's not real life, it will never be exact and sometimes it's best to just get the concept across rather than having the perfect image. It's good to keep a consistent aesthetic but if Marlene's hair is more chin length than shoulder length yet the picture is great, fuck it, use it!

►The best way to find posts is pinterest or to use an actual instagrammer. For Mind Games, I used mostly models and aesthetic instagrammers as my Face claims as they have lots of selfies to use. For Highly Anti-social, I used pinterest, just depends on what you're going for.

To find good images on Pinterest just search for the type of picture you want and add aesthetic at the end if nothing comes up. Like with Lily, most of her posts were found with 'Lily Evans Aesthetic' and with Sirius, I just searched 'Edgy aesthetic' to find nice posts

►Try and make your posts a consistent size. I always use a 400 px X 400 px box for mine as it keeps it aesthetic and consistent

► It's a small thing but you can still show personality through the comments. Like with Lily Luna, she uses a lot of emojis, always writes lowercase and will do things like 'heyyy' and add extra vowels at the end which kind of makes her seem more excitable and childish. Whereas Elijah Shacklebolt hardly uses emojis and usually uses correct grammar and replies rarely. Snape always writes in lowercase and is usually quite moody. I don't do this with all the characters but it can show a lot about the characters

► When using DMs, make sure to align one character to the right, and one to the left just to make it clear. Also if you're in a group chat, pick one character to align to the right as if you're look at it from their phone, it just makes it clearer

► Putting the characters and their Instagram usernames in the cast box can be helpful for larger ones like mind games as you can copy and past usernames and it helps your readers to remember who they are

► Don't be afraid to add little sections of writing and stuff to add context. I personally don't but it can help add context and is just overall fun to do. Also combine it with snapchat, texts, whatever! It's an AU, you can do what you want!

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Is there anything else? If you guys want any more help, just send me a private message or comment or something and I'll try and help! Also if you guys do write one, let me know, I love Social Media AUs as they're great to read (I have literally no time right now so it works well) and I hope this helps - E x