Exploring Uncharted Territory
by DavidEastwick
Did you know that Pukwudgies were associated with the American side of J.K. Rowling's wizarding world seven whole years before the story of Ilvermorny was posted on Pottermore?
Well, unofficially at least, and all just because a budding fanfic writer decided to put them there.
I am that writer, and I apologize in advance for this how-to being rather Potter-centric and leaning heavily on my own experience of writing an American Potter spin-off novel. It's the one and only fanfic I've ever written, so it's a little hard for me to generalize what I've learned for other writers, but I will try my best.
If you've ever wanted to write a fanfic that explores uncharted territory in your chosen universe, this how-to is for you!
Exploring uncharted territory by definition involves creating new settings, and these settings must seem consistent and believable within your fanfic's universe. To do this really well, you need to know a lot about the universe's canon, especially all the little tidbits that touch on the territory you wish to explore.
Even beyond the setting, it's essential to learn everything you can about all the canon characters, storylines and other things that may relate in some way to your uncharted territory. And, as with all fan fiction, the more you know about the people and processes behind the making of your chosen fictional universe, the easier it will be to emulate them, and the more faithful and authentic your story will seem.
The Three Big R's
I think it all boils down to three key points, each of which conveniently begins with the letter R:
1) Research
2) Retcon
3) Revel
All three of these ideas apply to writing fan fiction in general, but I believe they are especially critical for fanfic writers exploring uncharted territory.
In reverse order, the most important point is always to make sure you're having fun with all this stuff! If you're not reveling in your writing, it just becomes work . . . and since fan fiction is noncommercial, it's work you can never get paid for. So above all, writing fan fiction of any kind should always be fun, and if it's not fun, there are a million better things you could be doing with your time.
Always remember though, if you're not reveling in your writing today, often you just need a little break — or perhaps a long break — and when you come back, you'll find your revelry restored. I've done this many times in my 10+ years of writing fan fiction. And again, this Big R applies to all fan fiction in general, but I think it's super important for "uncharted territory" fanfics, because with these kinds of stories the other two Big R's tend to require a lot of work!
If you've ever read my first (and so far only) fanfic, Jina Dare and the Emerald Tablet, you know it's very faithful to canon — even the parts that purposely veer away from canon — but here's a little secret: this is due in no small part to me rewriting large portions of the story following the release of new information by J.K. Rowling, i.e. retconning.
And thankfully, although it involved a lot of work, it's been relatively easy to retcon new stuff into the story, largely due to the amount of research I did before Ilvermorny was ever a thing. That research helped to ensure my pre-Ilvermorny vision of the wizarding world in America (which I started building in 2008) wound up looking a lot like Rowling's official version (which was released in 2016).
Maintaining a Research Repository
Here's another Big R for you. One of the most important parts of doing any kind of research is putting all the information into an appropriate repository. Your research repository could be a notebook, a shoebox full of cards and scraps, or perhaps a digital database. The key thing is not what form it takes but just the fact that it works for you.
For me, a web developer by trade, my repository of choice is a website of my own creation — essentially a database with a web interface that makes it easy to organize and look up information. The website is highly specialized for supporting novel writing efforts, and it's also (surprise!) pretty well geared for supporting my books in particular. (Although I've only finished just the one fanfic, I do have more books in development.)
As of the writing of this how-to, my Jina Dare project site contains bios for 177 characters, along with records for 26 places, 159 "things" (categorized with labels like "creature", "plant" and "spell"), a timeline of 101 historical events, and a digest of 27 historical plots (which are essentially collections of events with additional narrative context). Each item can be tagged as being canon vs original content, and several items in the repository are essentially just references to stuff from canon.
Indeed, one of the first things I did in my initial research phase (before I started writing) was to comb through all the Harry Potter books and tie-in books for anything that had anything to do with the Americas, and copy all the pertinent info into my repository. From that point on it was rather easy to get a sense of "what America looked like" as far as Harry Potter canon was concerned.
The next phase in my research involved adding references to various creatures from American legend and Native American lore, then inventing a bit of American history, and defining important stuff like the wizarding government and various schools of magic. All of this stuff went into the repository for easy reference.
Which brings me to another Big R that I didn't mention earlier: references.
In my research repository, all "open text" fields can contain special markup to indicate source references, which can be books, website URLs, or even internal references to other records in the repository. My events tend to have lots of internal references to stuff like characters and things, and my plots have lots of internal references to events. This makes it easier to avoid duplicating information (which is a real pain to deal with when stuff changes!), plus it makes it very easy to search, sort, and otherwise peruse all the information in the repository.
Do consider using references in your repository to remember where external information came from, to establish relationships between pieces of information in the repository, and to avoid maintaining duplicative information. Also a little tip for URL references: if you're not 100% sure that a web page will continue to exist in the future, or if you think the content might change, check to see if a copy exists at archive.org/web, and save the archived URL in your repository instead, just in case.
Perhaps someday I'll make a more generic version of my novel writing website and toss it up on the web for all to use. In the meantime, if a digital repository is your cup of tea, I would highly suggest using Google Drive, particularly the "Docs" feature for writing out bio details, event descriptions, etc, and "Sheets" for lists of stuff like people, places, things and events. Google Drive is easy to use and 100% free.
On a related note, Google Docs can also be a great option for composing your manuscripts . . . or if you are super-serious about writing and have some money to spend, you really must try Scrivener!
A Case for Thorough Research
Consider the thing I mentioned at the beginning. . . .
In 2008, after doing a bit of research into the creatures of American legend and Native American lore, I decided to make one of the book's main characters a Pukwudgie. With a cursory peek into Native American lore (I purposefully avoided diving too deep out of respect for tribal cultures), I had learned that the Pukwudgie is one of relatively few sentient humanoid species in the catalog of American "fantastic beasts", and with such fascinating personality, powers and traits, it just made sense to feature one as a main character in my story.
Then in 2016, the story of Ilvermorny was posted on Pottermore, and wouldn't you know it, J.K. Rowling's story also included a Pukwudgie main character! She even went so far as to name a school house after the species! While I like to think that this might have been a nice little nod to my book, which I had first posted online in 2012, I think it's far more likely that this was just a logical, even somewhat probable result of her and me doing the same kind of research and drawing the same conclusion, i.e. being charmed by the idea of Pukwudgies and therefore featuring them in our stories.
Of course, not everything lined up quite so well.
My research into the US population and the presumed numbers of students at Hogwarts had led me to believe that America needed five schools of magic, not just one. . . .
My research into the history of American government and the British Ministry for Magic led me to put the seat of the "M.A.G.I." (my original version of MACUSA) in Washington DC, with the President being called "Supreme Mugwump". . . .
My reading of Fantastic Beasts and research into the (at the time) undisclosed reason for the creation of the International Statute of Secrecy led me to create a historical plot in which a jovial giant and his blue re'em openly befriended frontier lumberjacks in the early 19th century and risked exposing the magical world to No-Majs. . . .
Oh, and after a lot of discarded attempts at coining a decent new term, I decided it was perfectly reasonable for American wizards to also use the term "Muggle" — so much for that idea!
But all in all, things did line up pretty well, and all (in my opinion) because of my research.
By reading Quidditch through the Ages, I knew that Quodpot was the magical sport favored by American wizards, not Quidditch. . . .
By considering the ties between British and colonial American culture and delving deeper into why Rowling made Hogwarts the way she did, I knew that any longstanding school of magic in the USA was likely to follow a similar model — a magnificent castle with a central hall, a library with a restricted section, a greenhouse full of dangerous plants, a sports arena where exciting ariel games are played, etc. I knew it would mimic a traditional British boarding school, with a quirky sorting ceremony that placed students into one of four houses, each of which had prefects and common rooms, and all of which together alluded to some arcane concept of fourfold unity. . . .
By learning more about J.K. Rowling's writing process, I learned about the importance of planning and putting lots of thought into the simplest of things, like character names. . . .
By reading scholarly analyses of Harry Potter, I knew that a truly authentic homage needed to be written from a certain point of view, that it needed to have a "ring" structure, and (getting super deep) it needed to employ symbolism and other literary devices associated with the ancient art of alchemy and related philosophical ideas.
"Holey cloak!" you might be thinking. "Do I really need to go that deep with my research?"
Well, no, not really. I'm sure you can write a perfectly fine story with just the right amount of good research, even minimal research. But the key point here is that you can never do too much research. Plus, the more you do, the better your story will be, and the more authentic it will feel.
Of course, this is not to say that my fanfic is somehow great and wonderful just because I did a ton of research. Ultimately the worth of my work is up for readers to decide. But nobody can deny: I did my homework, and I think that's pretty important for fanfics that explore uncharted territory.
And then there comes the retcon phase. . . .
Retcon: The Neverending Revelry
I can't stress enough that, in my opinion, all the research I'd put into my fanfic was the biggest reason why the whole thing didn't blow up in 2016, when the story of Ilvermorny went up on Pottermore.
If I hadn't done the research, my vision of the wizarding world in America probably would have looked very different from J.K. Rowling's. And if that had been the case, I probably would have just thrown up my hands, cried out in anguish, and abandoned the project, rather than spend a ton of time retconning my story.
Thankfully, after spending so much time doing research, I found my vision was largely in line with Rowling's, and so the task of retconning was relatively easy, although it still required a lot of work. And this, again, is where it all comes back to revelry.
I could have just as easily saved myself the trouble and left the story as is, but I still reveled in the task of rewriting Jina Dare and revising related material to make the story (and the greater planned series) as good as it could be. And that's essentially what retconning is: rewriting your story and revising related material (e.g. stuff in your research repository) based on new information that gets added to canon.
See how I snuck another two Big R's in there? I didn't include them with the original three because anything more just seemed excessive. Plus, I think rewriting and revising are really two key parts of retcon, just as your repository and references are two key parts of research. Also, it's worth noting that, along with revelry, I think rewriting and revising really apply more broadly to writing good fan fiction in general, or just writing well period. They just also happen to be two big key parts of retcon.
And such is the process of retconning: first, always keep an eye out for new information that affects your story (i.e. never stop doing research!) and then be ready and willing to incorporate that info into your story, even if it involves changing or discarding large chunks of your work (i.e. rewrite and revise).
It's not easy, and it often requires a lot of work, but if you've started out with great research, you (probably) won't have much to retcon when new stuff gets added to canon . . . or at least it should be possible to retcon without a complete rewrite of your story. And if you've still got revelry for your fanfic, any and every amount of rewriting, revising and overall retconning will be an enjoyable labor of love.
As for my fanfic, I've kept up with all the latest Potter news and jumped on every opportunity to incorporate new nuggets of info, not only just to fix parts of my story that break with canon, but also to make my story better jibe with canon, to better reflect J.K. Rowling's greater vision, and to better align with her plans for expanding the wonderful wizarding world even more in the future.
In Conclusion
I must admit, at this point in time, I am personally struggling with all the advice I've just written above. My first fanfic is as done as it needs to be for the moment, and I'm still undecided on whether to continue on with its sequel. The second book is all planned out in great detail — indeed, the entire seven-part series is outlined — but, honestly, I'm a little hesitant to start writing another big fanfic novel manuscript.
Again, I think with "uncharted territory" fanfic, as with all fanfic, it ultimately all comes down to that last Big R . . . and for me, for now at least, the revelry is just not there. I think it probably will be again, someday later — in fact the act of writing this how-to has kind of rekindled a bit of the old spirit — but for now, I am taking a break, and that is perfectly fine.
If you are currently writing an "uncharted territory" fanfic, I hope you've found this how-to useful. May your endless hours of research and retconning bring you myriad moments of unbridled revelry!
Thanks for reading.
Have you ever written a fanfiction based on a mostly unknown part of your fandom?