Clever, cunning, ambitious, resourceful, determined, proud, self-preserving, self-serving and shrewd. A student Salazar Slytherin would be proud of. Also I would like to make him a magical prodigy on par with Dumbledore, Grindelwald and Riddle. I don't want him to be unethical though like Riddle.

So my current plan is to first COMPLETLEY MASTER the Original Seven Books. That will serve as my Canon. By "completely master" I mean, read, comprehend, retain, critique and analyze each and every line of the Original Seven Books.

There are some problems though. I have never written a fanfic or any sort of story before! I'm a complete noob at this! So how do I go about learning proper technical writing first? is there some guide out there? or do I just need to read, read and read and write, write and write random stuff until I master it? I would really appreciate some help here.

Also I would like to write 2 essays, one on "The Complete Theory of Harry Potter Magic"(Like @Skeletaure did) and one on "What makes a Slytherin?"

Would love to hear all of you guy's thoughts on this project of mine! please help a stupid, retarded noob like me!

 

Going by the book characters, the archetypal Slytherin is cruel, nasty, petty, small-minded, spiteful, and mean, so you're already off the to wrong start.

What's this essay you want to write? If Taure has already written the magic theory guide, what's the point of writing another? Essay writing and novel writing are two different styles, one will not help you much with the other.

Have you ever written anything long-form that wasn't imposed on you by school/college? I'm not saying that you can't write 7 novels with no experience, but know that a full 7 book rewrite is a hog of a project that few in the HP fanfic community have ever completed. It's much more likely you'll just run out of steam at some point (probably rather early into it) and your stuff will join the pile of abandoned fics. Do you have a plan? Are you writing a canon rehash or an original plot? DLP members have been there, done that. The barrier to entry is probably pretty high in terms of producing something of sufficient quality to hold people's attention, which means technical quality, or a really good hook.

What are you gonna analyze and retain? Maybe it's useful to rearead in terms of worldbuilding details, but what's your analysis gonna do that a few video essays on YT won't? This just makes it more likely that your project will end before you even start writing.

As for writing experience, there is no golden ticket, short of having a natural talent for it. Doesn't mean you need the proverbial 10k hours, but yes, you just need to write, and then write more, until you git gud.

 

I'm reading the books again but don't Snape and Malfoy get a redemption arcs? I think I can write a convincing non-caricatured straight up non-cruel, non-nasty, non-petty, non-small-minded and nice Slytherin. Why not?

As a Theoretical Physics student I have the annoying habit of trying to rediscover everything by myself. So my goal is to out-do @Skeletaure's essay.

No I haven't written anything long-form non-imposed that was outside of school/college. I sorta have a plan. No I'm ABSOLUTELY NOT going to write Canon rehash. It's going to be original for sure.

Well I'm going to analyze canon magic and the personalities of the main characters(especially the Slytherins). Well, my analysis is hopefully going to be original and better compared to someone on youtube because as someone who is training to be a Theoretical Physicist and has read MANY 20th century honest-to-goodness cold, heartless, logical machines like Pauli, Dirac, Landau and Feynman to mention a few, I just feel my ruthless intellectual honesty gives me an edge over other critics. I think I will come up with a much better analysis of canon than other people.

Cool I'll try my best!

 

Not sure if troll or just r/iamverysmart but either way, thanks for the laugh.

 

whatever

 

@ScottPress Looks like the latter to me.

 

lmfao

 

I am sure this will turn out to be great

 

If you’ve never written a fanfiction before, or really any long form writing, it might be best to set a manageable first goal- something like entering one of the dlp contests, or writing a 3-5k oneshot. It can be in the vein you’re looking for (Slytherin Harry) or not, but I think setting small goals for writing can really help build momentum.

As someone who had some cool ideas for a 7 year Slytherin Harry fic and wrote about 60k before getting bored and abandoning it lol, take it from me that it can be very annoying to start from year 1.

 

Reminds me of Less Wrong not going to lie.

But if this isn't an early April Fools and you are serious, just start writing. It won't be perfect even if you are training to be a Theoretical Physicist. One massive project best of luck.

 

I actually understand the philosophy of science unlike that idiot. I'm a well trained Logical Positivist.

Thanks! I'll try my best

 

This is certainly one of the threads on this site.

 

That looks like a big time investment for something that isn't likely to yield a commensurate reward, since you can't monetize the results directly. At the very best, you'd improve your skill as a fiction writer and gain some positive reputation, which are both fine things but perhaps not worth that many hours of effort when you could direct them towards original, marketable content, instead.

@Inverarity has written some of his musings about being the author of a long, fairly successful and widely acclaimed HP fanfic series in his LiveJournal:

https://inverarity.livejournal.com/tag/writing

Maybe you'll find something useful there about the art of writing and fanfiction specifically.

If you're academically-minded, there are plenty of books on the subject, like "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", and plenty of institutions offer courses in the subject at different levels. Or you can just binge TV Tropes.

Good luck!

 

Ignoring the rest and going to the question at hand, I think this is the key. Technical ins and outs, there are couple of books that are worthy reading in my opinion, but at the end of the day they won't make you a good writer on their own. Practice, I believe, and feedback, and thick skin so you can accept them - or dismiss at times, is what makes you better at it. Some things work, others don't, and that's why I'd start with publishing anything, really, a short story of couple of thousands words would do, just so you can see where you are at through the feedback you get.

 

Know yourself and try to be even handed when evaluating your own writing and receiving criticism of it.

If you’re prone to being overly self critical, perfectionist, and/or take all criticism to heart… Well, try to be fair to yourself and don’t give up. A significant part of learning anything is making mistakes. Also, not all criticism is an objective truth and you are allowed to disagree sometimes.

On the other hand, if you’re prone to being overly proud of your work and lean towards disregarding criticism, this is just as important of a tendency to manage.

Writing hundreds of thousands of words but never improving because you ignore advice out of pride isn’t much more helpful than getting too discouraged to write by overfocusing on mistakes.