Wilde_Guess

See, this is why writing fanfic is not easier than writing original stuff. You can’t play with someone else’s toys without playing by their rules. Or you can, but then they’ll take their ball and go home, or...Where was I going with this?

Thanks for the laugh, @GeorgeGlass.  If anyone said that fanfiction was easier than original work, it sure wasn’t me.  It’s not harder, either; but the challenges to write well in either one can vary.  Fanfiction for “non-episodic” canon stories almost always involves changes, along with either following canon, or explaining why you took a different path through the story itself. 

That’s why I’m working on Chapter 12, and I’m only putting Charlie Weasley on the Hogwarts Express.  While I’m effectively having to write a compressed story just to get to the ‘Harry Potter as lead protagonist’ part of my story, the other alternative would be a literal cosmic ass-pull, since Harry, Ron, and Neville will have changed that much by September of 1991.  It was tricky enough demonstrating that Petunia Evans had changed that much in Chapter 1, simply by choosing a different husband.

A serious fanfiction requires some level of effort… heck I consult the above even in my originals too.

For instance, lots of canon characters are very underdeveloped, so you gotta flesh them out into fullness that’s in line with canon (or in line with your premise).  Original characters… I actually have those developed better in my story than some of the canon!

However, if it’s a short fluff bit...well, you don’t have to work too hard if you’ve got something of Fred’s & George’s backfiring to fill all of Hogwarts up with daffodils.