My favourite author wrote my favourite stories. Shezza. His Dumbledore is the best I've ever seen, canon included, his OCs are cool, his writing style is captivating and both of his bigger stories have a good ending. If Denarian Series were a book, I'd definitely buy it.

Other than that, there are:

• Nuhuh, even if only for the epic Harry vs. Dumbledore duel,
• enembee, for his amazing AUs that seem to have nothing in common with Potterverse, yet still feel like it (and for the fanfiction quote),
• LittleChicago, for convincing me that there's nothing wrong with writing fanfiction of your own works,
• BigD, for giving believable emotions to the inhuman,
• nonjon, for Browncoat
• Santi, for making clichés work (and giving amazing depth to Krum),
• Oz, for his awesome HP/Twilight crossover

 

More or less everyone Silens named.

I'd like to add Taure to the list, because of the way his writing is so very engaging - probably more than a lot of the "best" authors out there - there is never a moment when you want to skip ahead, because you really just want to read every single detail.

While Amer certainly isn't my favorite author (that honor belongs to enembee ;P), I think that I'm going to echo Silens in his analysis of scene craft - I won't forget Harry's descent into madness and the dark arts ever, even if it wasn't the best technical writing.

And then there's enembee. I feel sort of bad for saying this (considering so many people here are so great), but I really think his work is far better than any other fanfiction I've ever seen before - from the superb crafting of characters (he ekes out Taure narrowly for my favorite Dumbledore ever), his sheer focus when it comes to writing in which it seems that not a single word is wasted, and his worldbuilding - the world of the Skitterleap will live with me forever even as the plot slowly fades from my mind and I have to reread it.

So yeah, nmb's my GOAT. XD

 

The world is far better than the plot ever was.

Also ego+1.

 

It's unoriginal at this point, but I'd have to say: Nonjon, Jbern, Joe.

Could never get tired of re-reading most of their work.

Also, a few that I think should be in the discussion:

Barb LP - Her story got me into fanfiction more than 10 years ago. And although I wanted to throw my laptop into a pool because of the ending, I can't deny that this story has probably stuck with me the most as a reader.

Inverarity - Writes the most original work in HP Fanfiction imo.

mira mirth - Just an awesome, awesome writer.

 

Shezza is probably my favorite Author as the Denarian Trilogy is my favorite fic period. It also got me to start reading the Dresden Files which I hadn't even heard of yet.

 

Far easier to quantify favourite stories, I think. Hmm.

Silens, Swim, Voice and nonjon are up there, just in terms of overall enjoyment of their work. Honourable mentions, though, for Tinn Tam, Enembee and Joe, who are very talented, albeit in different ways. Thinking back, Lori Summers is a favourite, for overall character work, world-building, coherence and cohesiveness. She's probably the best writer of fanfic that I can recall. So yeah, I suppose she is the favourite.

 

I'd have to go with Joe, nmb and Blank101.

 

Swim and Voice.

And then everyone else.

 

This is hard.
I'll list a few that I think highly of:
Silens-I think the plot that Silens crafts is really top-notch. His characters, world-building, etc. are good too, but his plot is superb. Complex, dynamic, doesn't slow down, engaging, etc.

Enembee-Characters and world-building are extraordinary. I like his writing too, but I think that he's better by far at building really cool worlds and people. His Harry in "Conlaodh's Song" is quite interesting as a character, and the creatures and situations like the stairs and Temporal Ghouls are just really fascinating.

Joe-He's probably one of the most fun authors to read. He's shamelessly epic, really good at fight scenes, has great characters, and always manages to surprise with his plotting.

Shezza-A bit like Joe in terms of the epic! factor, but I like Shezza's action scenes more. The fight scenes in the Denarian Trilogy are among the best I've read.

Inverarity-Alexandra Quick is just sooo good. The writing is great, the characters are awesome (even though Alex is a annoying in the first book), the plots are great, the world-building is absolutely stunning, etc. There's not much I can find wrong with his work. The attention to detail in terms of continuity and plotting (the 4th book has some real surprises that are foreshadowed nicely) is also admirable.

Amerision-I found his writing to be the most engaging fiction I've read on going mad...his Harry in "Equal and Opposite" smoothly turns evil and fucked up in such a subtle way that you can't help but be impressed. Great writing too, I always thought. His fight scenes, especially in the fic he posted in the WBA a long time ago (with the magic ash or something like that) were always great.

Taure- An author who writes very little compared to the others on the list, but whose work has impressed me so far. Some of the coolest ideas in fics I've ever seen (Essence Divided and Lords of Magic come to mind as ridiculously creative in terms of worldbuilding), and nice writing too.

Swim-Some of the best writing I've read, published or not. His writing isn't so much flowery as it is sleek. It does what it needs to do beuatifully and unobstrusively, with great descriptin, and then moves on. I like his Harry in Circular Reasoning a lot, but I read that a while ago, so I can't remember him that well.

Lamora-Best Pokemon fic out there. One of the most engaging in terms of characters and worldbuilding. Made the Pokemon world one of the most interesting to me. Now, if he'd only update that fic more often

Nuhuh-Every fight scene ever. 'Nough said.

 

On top of the usual DLP big names (Shezza, Joe, NMB, Voice, Swim, Silens, Nuhuh, The Santi, nonjon) that have been mentioned loads in this thread:

Inverarity for sure. Even though I jumped the shark a few stories into Alexandra Quick (no doubt I'll pick them back up again one day) his writing and plotting is superb.

Though he's a guilty pleasure author, I love Kieran Halcyon's stuff, in particular Harry Potter and the Ancient's Journey.

Rusty Red is also an amazing author. A prize goes to her for writing the kind of contained adventure story that I think is worthy of emulation.

Darth Mars deserves a mention, just for his sheer ability to start and finish so many fics, even if they are rather lacking in conflict.

Grinning Lizard, like me, has problems with finishing things, but his AC crossover is stunning.

Master Slytherin, like Rusty Red, is great at writing self-contained action/adventure/mystery fics. Keep your eyes peeled for Ressurexit.

Outside of the Harry Potter fandom, blank101. Anyone who's read his stuff knows why.

...man. All but two of these authors are from DLP. We're so damn awesome.

 

Commencing circlejerk.

http://www.dakota******/forum/images/smilies/circlejerk.gif

 

Who/what isRessurexit?

 

I like myself, but I need to write more. Damn my laziness.

Shezza and nonjon for memorability and nmb for style.

 

From Master Slytherin's ffn page. First I've heard of it actually, but it sounds promising. Of course, I don't think he can top What Lies Beneath. Very awesome fic.

 

Still wishing I'd had the time to Beta that :| Should be fucking awesome.

 

Darth Mars is on my "Most depreciated Fanfic authors" list.

 

Enembee has the highest percentage of good fics out of anyone mentioned, so he gets my vote. Actually, his hit rate is 100% on ffn since skitterleap part 2 isn't there. A lot of the writers stories really are unremarkable when you compare them to each other, and they all start to blend together after awhile because they all follow the same premise of: attempt make Harry awesome in a believable manner. Enembee goes beyond that and makes really memorable stories that stand out, consistently. There's a lot of others that have a really awesome one-of story, but that having a sample size of one good story doesn't qualify in my opinion.

 

I'm way too hypnotized by your avatar to read anything you just said. She just keeps spinning... and spinning...

 

Now that I'm no longer being raped by Filius Flitwick's monster cock, I'm going to give this some serious thought.

Within HP: The usual suspects. Joe, Swimdraconian, enembee, Shezzam nuhuh, and among non-DLP authors, Sanction. They're the best writers because they are the most complete writers.

Atmosphere, immersion, characterization, plot creativity, dialogue, scene construction, themes, prose, and more - the four I named are so good at each of the major elements of writing. I think they're actually better than the usual published fiction and approach literature.

Joe's An Unfound Door is really something you'd expect out of Mervyn Peake, if he turned his hand to HP fanfiction.

Enembee. The Skitterleap bombarded me with memories of scene upon scene upon scene, one after the other, reminding me of how groundbreaking, how memorable they were. I remember everything so well. I'm not kidding. I can replay fifteen, sixteen different scenes in my head from that story. The airplane crash, the shelling of the city, the Skitterleap chamber, the fight with Chernenko, the church fight with the Russian soldiers leading up to it, the phone call with Fleur, meeting Riddle, the opening in Leipzig, Dumbledore's last meeting with Grindelwald. It's an achievement, even though I personally thought it broke down a little toward the end. But for the first half, I thought nearly every single possible thing was done perfectly. The Skitterleap was an event in fanfiction, on the same level as The Denarian trilogy.

Swim needs no words. In terms of sheer style, I think he's the single most skilled writer in terms of language mastery. In For Review in the thread for The Fire Omens by chass glasslace, there was a small discussion about writers who can write at amazing heights over one-shots and shorter works. And how they might fall apart when writing longer stories. But the depth of Swim's resources as a writer is such that he actually is able to write like that on a full-scale story basis.

The dull scenes, the exposition scenes and the transition scenes and the setup scenes, that usually force authors' level of writing down, don't, for Swim. One way I've looked at writers is through this principle:

What you write affects how you write.

A measure of an author's skill is how you can write as you wish without conceding to these more mundane, unavoidable scenes. Even famous authors are made to look very ordinary when writing these scenes, but Swim still shines. Swim is the unit of measurement for whatever that is.

The others have this too, but I think Swim has it most of all.

Shezza's a no-brainer, right? On top of all the other things, he had the mastery of the long, long overarching storyline. The Denarian trilogy is really the pinnacle of... something. It's a real feat. Coming up with hundreds of thousands of words' and worth of plot arcs spanning years of Harry's life, weaving them together, developing so many characters like Amaris and Amanda and having so many powerful moments.

Nuhuh's heartbreakingly good. I think he and Swimdraconian have the same skill - in his later works I just can't bring to mind so much as a dull paragraph. Reading his works made me thankful they existed. The way he writes his stories, there's that hint of epic poetry and grand romanticism. Like in Retsu's Folly, Harry meeting Retsu for the first time, mistaking her for a damsel in distress. The imagery and deeds in his stories belong on tapestries and deserve to be sung of in ballades. I mean this literally. Read some of the tales of the Arthurian knights, or in folklore like the Rose Knight or in Wagner's operas, you'll see what I mean. There's some of the same essence in Nuhuh's writing, but in the medium of the novel. The same thing that gives stories like The Dark Tower by Stephen King that special aura.

Sanction has the epic The Phoenix and the Serpent. Writing is great all around and has the all-encompassing gift for plot, characters (including original characters), description, the whole deal.

I think writers like Amerision and Voice of the Nephilim have reached that level of writing in certain stories, but not consistently. Amerision in Lost Time is peerless, but didn't recapture that in the other stories that came after.

I think there's several other writers who are notable because they are strong in some of these areas, but not as complete overall. RustyRed's and Taure's worldbuilding and originality are top drawer, but their actual writing styles aren't on the same level. So there's that unevenness.

So there is some kind of hierarchy that begins to take shape. I don't care much for it, I don't think it's productive.

I think there are three more writers that belong in the conversation. One is Ryuugi Shi. He deserves to be noted for Master of Death and Changing Tides. Some of the best style and imagination that's I've seen, particularly with the genius of the train ride.

Another is Zennith. He has such a unique poetic sensibility that I've never seen anywhere else. Great beauty of language and ability to capture a nostalgic, melancholy mood. His writing can be magical. I think the fandom is a little bit worse without more of his work. I really thought he'd be one of the writers as well-known as Joe or Shezza, his writing was that good. Is that good, I should say. He should write a lot more.

The last is chase glasslace. His body of work is small, and he hasn't really tested his writing in a longer story... but his writing is exquisite. Makes you turn green in envy.

 

I also have to give Shezza props for introducing me to the Dresden Files. Heck, if not for the Denarian Trilogy DLP probably wouldn't even have a Dresden Files section/fanbase.