Chapter Summary

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General Resources

1. Recommended Resources & Changelog. You can expect some items to move out of here as the Guide expands

• Changelog: It's a changelog.
• Potter Canon: How this guide uses the term "canon," resources for finding canonical information, and a few deep dive analyses of canon that others have written.
• Potter Fanon: General worldbuilding and other resources which set themselves in the HP universe but aren't canonical. This includes maps, theorizing on the locations of different things, etc. 
• IRL: Useful stuff that isn't tied to the Harry Potter universe, like old maps, an 1828 dictionary, and several databases of edible plants, mushrooms, and etc. in Scotland.

2. Writing: General Tips

• On Chapter Length: In short, “Don't be too long.” 
• On Foreshadowing: Especially important in Harry Potter ficdom, where fanon and disagreements of interpretation of canon are common, and your reader may therefore have a very different understanding than you of what is possible.
• On Writing Descriptions: My personal techniques for writing visual descriptions (which may be helpful for aphantasic writers in particular), considering point-of-view when you decide what and how to describe, and avoiding overly-generic words like “it” when you can be specific.

3. Writing: Harry Potter Fic Tips

• Genre and Trope Advice: Thoughts on soul bond fics, Indy!Harry, etc. 
• Style Guide: Correct capitalization, formatting, hyphenation, formatting, etc. for Harry Potter terms.
• On Dialogues and Monologues: Speech patterns for various characters, advice for writing Quidditch scenes.
• On Duels: Writing magical duels that feel magical.
• On the Stations of Canon: Writing a story about Harry's Hogwarts years without hitting the same beats in the same way as everybody else.

4. Writing: AO3 Meta

• General comments on recursive fanfiction, beta reading, and writing a fannish autobiography.
• Reading (and Commenting): Advice and support for commenting on other people's fanfiction, and how to block stories that you don't want to see.
• Formatting: Guides for everything from centering images and making tables to mimicking newspapers, stationary, and even text messages (your fic wouldn't be the first in HP fandom to feature text messages). 
• Posting: Some things to keep in mind when you're posting your story, like how to provide content warnings without annoying readers who would prefer to not see a warning.
• Tagging Guide: General guidelines on tagging and more specific advice and explanations for character, relationship, setting, and other tags.

5. Common Mistakes. Common mistakes related to canon (character traits, Hogwarts, magic, etc.) and history (Tom and the Blitz, orphanages in the U.K., etc.). 

6. Britpicking. Britpicking resources, cultural mistakes commonly made by American readers, and an overview of the Peerage of the United Kingdom. 

7. Thorny Questions. For example, "How can Barty Crouch, Sr. speak more than 200 languages?" I offer no certain answers, only possibilities. 

Hogwarts

8. Education and Life at Hogwarts

• How different writers have approached the student population and demographics of Hogwarts. What might be going on in some of the classes that we don't see much about, like Arithmancy. Resources for making class schedules. 
• Location, Location: Maps for Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and the Forbidden Forest, and speculation on where Hogwarts might be. 
• Departments: How you might organize Hogwarts by looking to British universities as a model (and why you might want to do so).
• Study Materials: Why students write on parchment and how they might organize their notes.
• The Board of Governors: What we know about the Board of Governors at Hogwarts, and what we can infer from real boards in the U.K. 
• Hogwarts Library: How various monasteries organized their libraries in Medieval Europe, and other ways that the Hogwarts Library might be laid out. 

Magical Britain

9. Law and Disorder

• Wizard Crime and Punishment: What we know about the legal system of Magical Britain, and what some writers (including a lawyer) have inferred. 
• Wizengamot: Thoughts and theories about the Wizengamot, beyond those described in "Wizard Crime and Punishment." 

10. Wizardnomics. 

• Symbols for British wizarding currency. Thoughts about how a magical economy might function, and the assumptions that go into that, as well as speculation about the role that Gringotts plays in all of this (and why it plays that role at all). 
• The Price of Transfiguration: How the magical economy handles the existence of (canonically permanent) transfiguration.
• A Matter of Sport: Different figures on the number of Quidditch players in Magical Britain, how many of them are professional players (and what that might mean in a magical economy), and how less-popular sports might function.

Beyond Britain

11. Countries and Nations

• Four basic approaches to international worldbuilding, and what we already know from canon.
• Further suggestions for where to look and what to consider when worldbuilding a magical country. 
• Ways to use all kinds of real maps for worldbuilding inspiration. 
• Resources which may be useful for replacing MACUSA with a Magical America of your own.