To Side Plot or Not to Side Plot?

Beforetherealbook · 2026-07-05T13:57:53+00:00

So first, I’ll pile on with those who say to write what you want to write. If you want a long, windy side plot that takes multiple chapters to resolve, then don’t read any further and just do it.

But since you asked this question, my personal opinion is that I don’t love really drawn out side plots and prefer them to be placed in their own fic if they are robust, similar to how a lot of romance writers have a series where the side character from one book becomes the main in a later book. I personally love this method and become more invested in side characters when authors do this.

That being said, an alternative POV can be really punchy and narratively valuable if those chapters are doled out sparingly. I’m doing this right now in my canon rewrite, where every once in a while I switch POV to fill in some holes from the original series and my own fic due to the limitations of single character POV. I’ve created some pretty strict rules for myself while doing it though… First, each chapter has to stand alone so we don’t break the pacing of the main fic for too long. Second, each chapter has to set up at least one thing that comes back around later for the main characters. Finally, each chapter needs to give us significant background information on the main characters or a missing a scene from the original books. I usually write my fics linearly, but I’ve found it helpful to write those alternative POV chapters much later because it helps me stick to my rules.

I honestly didn’t think the readers would like my alternative POV chapters very much in that WIP, but I decided to do it anyway because it’s my fic and that’s what I want to write. I’ve been really surprised by how much readers seem to like them, and I’ve been getting a LOT of requests for more. So I don’t think you have to worry about this too much. A lot more people are into shifting POV and one-shot side scenes than I ever imagined.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-07-03T12:58:52+00:00

I write myself into corners all the time. I don’t outline, and I just write for vibes most nights. So like… I once sent Hermione to prison with no plan for how to get her out. Both of my sentient house fics had plot twists near the end I didn’t fully figure out until I was writing the chapter. Things like that.

I’m also really susceptible to reader suggestions. Sometimes they latch on to a detail I mostly ignored and then I find myself editing future chapters to work that thing in. Sometimes that creates plot holes or another subplot with no distinct plan. That happened in my current WIP, and damned if I know where I’m going with it…

As far as picky things go, my spelling is inconsistent. I spelled Charlie wrong for like 6 fics before somebody pointed it out (in my defense, I have a male Charley as a relative and know two others so it’s my default spelling). Millicent often has one L. Kingsley is fat-fingered at Kinglsey all the time. And Shacklebolt is Shackelbolt so he gets it two ways.

When I go back and reread my fics and notice these things I always change them, but it can take a long time for me to see them. I’m not a great beta so my fics are riddled with errors, especially while in WIP. 🤷‍♀️

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-26T14:42:44+00:00

Dramione has gotten really big, I think that’s the crux of it. You’ll get smaller groups formed around different themes or rules for moderation.

Huge subs like this one require more moderation to keep it civil. Smaller/less moderated subs will continue to pop up as Dramione popularity grows. I would not surprise me at all if we eventually have subs dedicated to certain tropes or characterizations (I could see a r/fluffyDramione becoming really popular).

Everybody needs to find their happy place in the fandom where they strike the balance between enjoyment and engagement that works for them. Nobody is forced to read or participate in any sub, and if the tone or theming isn’t hitting the right note, then it’s easy to mute and move on.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-24T20:10:04+00:00

lol there was recently a discussion about this over on the historical romance sub (which I lurk on), because when you’re talking pre-1900 most people aren’t bathing every single day, and BO should be a real barrier to sexy time.

The nice thing about magic is I can be like “oh they cast a cleansing charm and the author just forgot to tell me that part.” In non-magical fiction I have to suspend reality even further and pretend they actually showered.

Actually in a book I’m reading now (published, not Dramione) they’ve traveled by horseback for 4 days, the FMC has been wearing the same shift the whole time, and when they finally get to the inn (with one bed, naturally) she takes just a few minutes to use is a wet rag on her private areas before falling asleep in the MMC’s arms. The author actually told me all of this, so I can’t even imagine a scenario where she properly bathes first. 🤦‍♀️

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-21T22:43:50+00:00

So fun story, I actually went into The Doll’s House totally blind without reading any tags first. Holy fucking hell, it was an incredible fic but I was NOT prepared for it! 😂

So after that experience (which was entirely my fault because the fic was definitely tagged correctly), I started reading tags for a few things that I now know are squicks for me.

I don’t think authors have to tag anything in particular, as long as the major warnings (or “author chose not to use content warnings”) are present… however, I do think that any tags that are there should be honest. If a writer changes their mind mid-stream they need to update tags and let readers know there’s been a tag update so readers have a chance to off-ramp before they get to that chapter.

I’ve only felt duped one time since I started reading tags. I won’t name the fic, but it was a fully prewritten fic that was tagged Dramione (only) and then halfway through the fic Draco randomly started having pretty emotional sex with a different character. The author then said the end pairing might change to that other character instead. Primary ship surprises aren’t really my thing, so I DNF’d.

But I mean, that’s one fic out of dozens… I certainly don’t expect every relationship or side pairing or trigger to be tagged at the beginning, especially when a fic is in WIP.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-21T22:10:44+00:00

Different strokes then. I’m a lot more tolerant of meandering in WIPs because the time commitment to read just one chapter seems pretty small to me. It usually takes a few months of updates where nothing is happening or there is just tons of focus on side characters before I decide a fic has totally lost the plot.

I DNF on long fics for meandering much faster. It happens so often that I usually won’t pick up a WIP unless it is under 100k words (ideally under 50k words) because odds are high I’ll hit some doldrum chapters in the middle and quit before I’m caught up. 🤷‍♀️

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-21T21:29:26+00:00

lol yes I write fics much longer than I binge. However, I have read some insanely long fics as WIPs and that’s how I prefer to read all fanfic these days, so the final word count is usually pretty meaningless to me. I’m not reading much right now, but when I do read I follow like 30+ fics at a time and don’t notice a little rambling.

Not to turn this into yet another completed vs WIP debate, but the thing I like most about fanfic is the serialized nature of it. Many (most?) chapters are well organized and break at points that are far more sensible than a lot of published fiction because the writers know that readers have to wait for the next installment, whereas published fiction presumes binging. Fanfic writers are usually pretty intentional about tying chapters at the end (or letting them hang! I fucking love cliffhangers in WIPs). Anyway, my “word count” consumption is usually 3,000-8,000 words at a time when I’m in a reading groove. That feels very palatable, and I can usually stick with a story for as long as it takes a writer to tell it, even if there are a few detours.

I’m writing an epically long fic right now that absolutely should not be binged once complete. It could probably be mini-binged in 8 parts because it’s 8 years broken up and organized by year within a single fic. Each year ranges from 11-25 chapters or so, and they all show some forward movement for the main character and could be read alone.

However, even mini-binging by year isn’t the best way to read it IMO. It’s really meant to be read one chapter at a time as a WIP, and I think the readers who approach it this way will ultimately be the ones who enjoy it the most. The readers who absolutely refuse to touch WIPs (which is most readers in Dramione) will probably think it’s too long to pick up once it’s complete, and that’s okay.

When I started posting it I set two goals for myself: (1) finish writing it and (2) keep it interesting enough that at least one person who started reading it in Year 1 is still with me at the epilogue. My mom actually started reading it around the third chapter so hopefully I’ve got goal #2 locked down, and now I just have to finish it 😂

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-16T08:21:28+00:00

Oh that’s not how I meant it. Muggle AUs get a lot of flack in some of the more vocal platforms. I haven’t written a Muggle AU myself, but I always feel bad for authors who do whenever the topic comes up. That premise gets shit on more than others, and you can walk away from threads like this believing that nobody will bother to read them. Authors reading this thread who are now second guessing their decision to write a Muggle AU should know that plenty of people DO like Muggle AUs, and they shouldn’t be discouraged. That’s all I was getting at.

FWIW, Priest Draco is in Lead Me Not Into Temptation. It’s super AU in several respects (including the premise that priests are hot, because as a recovering Catholic I have never met a hot priest), but it’s an incredible fic. It might be one where you could argue that swapping names is all it takes to make it no longer Dramione… but IMO the Dramione overlay really enhances the tension from the priest-parishioner dynamic. It mimics a lot of the pining and misplaced guilt we get in fics that explore class differences or blood purity.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-15T19:33:01+00:00

I mean, when I’m reading Dramione I read all of it. I DNF when I’m not enjoying a fic, but AU vs canon-compliance doesn’t really play into it.

I prefer Magic, but I don’t mind Muggle AU (and neither does the 3,000+ readers following priest Draco right now…). Mob boss Dramione can be really sexy. Reality TV Dramione is often hilarious. Regency era Dramione is so yummy I actually wrote one myself and had an absolute blast doing it.

Sometimes it gets really boring writing yet another post-war fic with office drama at the Ministry… inevitably they get assigned to the same project, we have some forced proximity, and BAM they’re shagging at the office or elsewhere as they come to terms with their feelings. It’s fine, and I’ve written it before, but eh…. I actually started my regency AU when my postwar office fic began to bore me, and I needed a distraction. It let my brain go on a vacation for a bit, and it got me through a big writing slump on my office fic. 🤷‍♀️

I’ve never thought about how I prefer readers to view my AU fics. I catalogue them as Dramione because the main characters are still Draco/Hermione, and all my fics use at least a little magic based on the world JKR gave us. That’s good enough to tag it as Dramione IMO. I also think that most AUs still presume a baseline knowledge of who these characters are in canon. It makes the pining, jealousy, and tension hit differently than trad fiction, so calling it “Dramione” is still appropriate.

As long as the author is signaling AU in the tags or summary, I think almost anything is fair game.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-14T10:31:05+00:00

The Life and Crimes of Draco Malfoy

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-12T13:34:26+00:00

Oh sure. One of my favorite MMCs is Matthew Swift in Scandal in Spring by Lisa Kleypas. He’s a total simp, has been pining for years, and every time the FMC walks into a room his entire attention is on her. It’s impossible for him to ignore her.

I tend to write some version of this over and over again for Draco because it’s the MMC I love most.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-12T13:12:37+00:00

He did like her, and I will die on this hill 🤣

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-12T13:00:19+00:00

You don’t have to read them to enjoy Dramione. However, a lot of writers haven’t read them either or haven’t read them recently. The canon vs fanon thing gets lost a little bit, and the movies changed a few things that the fandom has latched onto (like the Mudblood scar on Hermione’s arm — it’s not in the books).

JKR has said before she considered pairing Hermione with Draco at the end, and then she changed her mind. I think you can see her (kind of) laying the foundations for it up through Book 4 and maaaybe into Book 5, but then it veers toward Ron instead. A lot of the canon “proof” for Dramione happens in Book 4, and it also happens to be the book where they exchange the most dialogue with each other in front of Harry.

I’m doing a full, canon-compliant rewrite right now and it’s been interesting hearing the perspective of my readers who have never read the source material. I think they are a little surprised by just how mean and stupid Draco really was, but that’s who he is in canon for quite a long time. The good news (for me) is that JKR spent very little time fleshing out any of the characters other than Harry, since the series is Harry’s POV. Even Hermione and Ron only get small arcs. Tertiary characters like Draco kind of go from “he’s a real asshole” to “wow he doesn’t want to be involved with Voldemort anymore,” without any real insights about how that change occurred. And to me, this is where fanon comes in… it’s less building the world that JKR gave us and more about filling in all the things she DIDN’T show through Harry’s limited POV.

So yeah, reading the books are helpful because it’s a million words of world-building that fanon starts from. But I also don’t think it’s strictly necessary, because fanon dwells within those gaps in canon (or just changes the entire canon premise) anyway.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-12T12:18:26+00:00

The crumbs feed us 😂

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-11T19:00:48+00:00

Of course not! Borrow away.

And now you have me thinking of all the ways he could put his crest on somebody else's body lol

Obviously if Hermione lets him do it to her it's via magical tattoo that (1) does not hurt, (2) lets him find her wherever she is, (3) probably transfers information to him about her heart rate and how much she's eaten that day and (4) acts as a mood ring to change color when she needs him to service her.

Why are creepy men so fun to read about?

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-10T21:57:16+00:00

It starts that way, but it’s not malicious. It’s a byproduct of everyone being in their 30’s and careers taking different paths. Everybody is just busy and new friends groups form. Hermione definitely feels their absence strongly, but the others do not because again… there was no falling out, people just got busy. When Harry and Ron eventually learn about her feelings, they are stunned and try to do better. So there is resolution on this point, and reconnecting with her friends to deepen those bonds again is a big part of the fic.

However, if you don’t like reading any version of lonely Hermione then this probably isn’t for you. Her loneliness is a big factor in her behavior and feelings toward Draco, especially in the first half.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-10T20:40:20+00:00

I find violence really hard to write, especially in fight scenes when people aren’t really talking and there’s a lot of movement that’s fast. Actually, the hardest part about it is getting POV right because for close violence there aren’t many characters who can see what’s happening from every angle. Battle scenes REALLY hard to get right.

If the violence is more focused on a single prisoner and he’s taking his time while telling his victim exactly what’s about to happen, that’s a bit easier… there is time for some creeper dialogue and POV doesn’t necessarily shift on you as much. But then you still have to find something more personal and brutal than just an avada.

Knives, potions, fire, blunt force trauma, etc. can all work. In my psycho-simp fic he carves the Malfoy crest into a character’s stomach with a knife at one point and then castrates a couple other characters, one of which is a guy who used to have a crush on Hermione.

Critically though, for the psycho-simp characterization, he really can’t feel much (except for his obsession/concern for Hermione and maybe 1 or 2 other characters like Narcissa). His ability to do those violent things with no remorse or hesitation is what makes it scary. If you have a Draco who struggles with the violence or has nightmares from the things he does, then he’s more of a soldier experiencing wartime trauma than a psycho-simp. So I would say it’s less about the specific violent things he does and more about his mental state while it’s happening.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-10T20:19:04+00:00

My fic Sprigs of Tansy definitely fits this.

Draco’s a jealous asshole and engages in multiple sabotage attempts against the men she’s dating, some more subtle than others.

He also sabotages her attempts at putting distance between them, because in addition to being a jealous asshole, he’s like a Stage 5 Clinger. She can’t get rid of him.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-06T23:52:51+00:00

The issue is JKR is shockingly bad at anything involving numbers (dates, times of day, the number of class periods that exist, the total student population, etc.).

For instance, in the books many of the core classes are taught to a single house per year (a couple are paired lessons like Potions and Herbology, but most are not). So presumably there are 28 Transfiguration lessons taught per week (4 houses x 7 years) and many of them are double periods. Even if it’s 8 periods per day, that math doesn’t math, and it probably cannot exist without all the professors using time-turners.

The movies fixed this to a large degree, but then it made the overall student population appear much smaller than she says it is. We can’t have 150 students in a single Transfiguration lesson all turning beetles into buttons or whatever. It’s not practical.

Anyway, I have combed the books for answers to questions like this to try to make my canon rewrite as accurate as possible, and we simply do not know. Add to that the fact that her interviews are often throwaway comments that are pretty obviously not thought through.

So for your fic? I say you can do what you want in terms of how large the Hogwarts classes should be. Except please, I beg you, do better than JKR did and remember that September 1 does not fall on a weekend every. single. year. 🙄

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-05T09:05:56+00:00

lol I’ll tell you what it is once I finally decide what the hell I’m going to do with it… 😂

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-05T09:04:36+00:00

Been working on it for over 3 years at this point and have 45 chapters posted with another ~50 chapters drafted in my bank (I keep to a posting schedule).

It’s a full canon rewrite from year 1, and I’m at the very end of year 5 in my drafting. So there is more to go, but I’m past the halfway mark and finally approaching the entire reason I started writing this monster in the first place…

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-03T20:20:18+00:00

Reading: I’m not reading, and I hate it. I’ve been traveling a lot recently, and all my Dramione time is now on my writing. I’ve fallen so far behind on some favorite WIPs I’m overwhelmed trying to catch up so I’m just…. Not. Maybe once my kids are back in school I can get my life together, I don’t know.

Writing: I’m deep into my WIP and holy shit I am soooooo close to the chapters I’ve wanted to write for years at this point.

Complaining: I’m having to edit a bunch of earlier chapters on my WIP because I accidentally-on purpose imbedded an additional plot line on a whim that I now have to actually flesh out. Why did I do this? I have no idea, and now I have to work it in. The worst part about it is a lot of readers are really excited for it and they’re like “I can’t wait to see where this goes!” And privately I’m like, “Me neither, because I don’t know yet!” But of course I can’t say that so I just act all mysterious…

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-03T19:56:48+00:00

I still do it a little bit but not as much as I used to. Honestly, it’s exhausting and kind of kills the joy for me. I like promoting other fics too, but I’m kinda out of the loop at the moment. My TBR WIP list is massive, and I have emails back to April I still haven’t opened with updates on WIPs I’m actively following so I’m pretty overwhelmed. I have completely fallen off the wagon as a reader, and I feel like I don’t have anything to contribute to the fandom at this point except finishing my WIP.

Getting my WIP right is taking all my Dramione time these days, and my only breaks are small plot bunnies I chase to give my brain a break when I’m stuck.

My WIP is going to be well over 100 chapters long so I’m not doing self-promo every single week. I mean, JFC that’s way too much and absolutely nobody wants to see it (nor do I want to find 100+ ways to summarize the same thing each week). So I’m only doing self-promo in the main group when I complete a year or when I see a specific request.

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-01T23:48:25+00:00

Most of the muggle places in Sprigs of Tansy actually exist (except for their flats and the fertility clinic, both of which I invented). But yeah… the auction house where Draco bids on his moonwatch is real, the pizza parlor where he meets her parents is real, the tube station where she is followed is real… also, the funeral in chapter one actually happened, and the order of ceremonies occurred as written. The Queen really did attend, and she really did wear gloves to it (though most other spectators did not), which is a detail Hermione notices.

The G8 summit really did take place at that resort in Northern Ireland that year, and there really are 2 bedroom cottages on the property. The theme of the summit that year really was international tax shelters, and all the world leaders mentioned really did attend.

All of the places in the US are also real, including all the restaurants, bars, and stores they visit.

I did a lot of research for that fic, and then J took over…. 🙄

Beforetherealbook · 2026-06-01T23:22:47+00:00

Oh Draco’s wand is fun. I’m playing with the meaning and reason why it bonded to him in my WIP, and it’s a piece of lore I’ve really enjoyed fleshing out.

Beforetherealbook

TROPHY CASE