Season Four – Issue Five

The Wizarding World News

• Judges’ Picks
• Writing School with Ash
• Creative Corner with Hemlock
• Dear Severus Snape with Verity
• Beta How To with Accio
• League Table

Follow all important events of the International Wizarding School Championship here in the Wizarding World News. We also have a live Twitter feed, Facebook and an Instagram account for you to get day by day updates.

Judges’ Picks

Year 1: Shifting Moods by Lady Sloane – Beauxbatons

Sometimes, it feels like divides can never be breached. But this story showed that this is in no way true, that there is always a way to bridge and gap, literal or metaphorical. It’s a touching, realistic, and deeply emotional story about the process of finding trust and peace, and in doing so, finding yourself.

Year 2: Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs by smjl – Hogwarts

This story dives into the mind of an often disregarded or miswritten character. We see the vulnerabilities and confidence problems someone like Peter would experience, but also get an insight into his willingness to be a part of the adventures his friends undertake. The story is realistic and documents the actions of the group with added stakes in Peter’s multiple failures with the mandrake leaf to add some additional drama.

Year 3: The First Move by cheesyficwriter – Hogwarts

This was my JP this round, I didn’t have to think twice about it. The storyline is very simple, but because of the descriptions, the banter between Seamus and Dean made it brilliant to read. Right from the start, I was completely immersed.

Year 4: The Child’s Trust by KeepSmiling1 – Durmstrang

Told from the perspective of a well-known dragon, this story explores the relationship between humans and these legendary creatures. The author offers a creative and unique take on how trust can develop even during the darkest of times. With high stakes, surprising twists, and several heart-warming moments; The Child’s Trust is an enjoyable read. There is also some positive disability representation.

Year 5: A New Shade of Lavender by CutewithAcapital-Q – Hogwarts

Focusing on the unlikely friendship between Hermione and Lavender after the events of the war, this story examines societal expectations and lingering trauma through the lens of a fashion show. With humour, realism and sensitivity, the story explores how a physical injury can create psychological scars in even the most confident person. Despite this heavy theme, the story has an uplifting ending and carries the beautiful message that our scars might be a part of us, but they do not define us.

Writing School with Ash

Writing Technique: The Art of Talking

Dialogue is one of the five pillars of creative writing (the others being action, description, thought, and exposition). As such, your dialogue should always move the story forwards.

1. Bin the mundane.

Get rid of everything that isn’t interesting. This means small talk, greetings, repetition, etc. 

For every piece of dialogue, ask yourself:

• What is the purpose of this exchange?
• Does it stimulate the reader’s curiosity?
• Does the exchange create or heighten tension?

2. Focus on goals.

Like I said in issue 2’s article, each character has story and scene goals. If you know what each of your characters wants, you can tap into the best sources of conflict.

Let’s say we’re writing a one-shot about Lily inviting Snape to her wedding.

Lily wants to be the bigger person and go back to having a relationship with her childhood best friend, but she hasn’t forgiven Snape for what he’s said and done. Snape wants Lily back and wants to be a better person, but he can’t bring himself to apologise and sneers every time James is mentioned.

Even though both characters want the same thing, their inner conflicts get in the way and will make the situation worse before it gets better—if it gets better.

3. Fight it out.

Dialogue needs conflict. It can be explicit (an argument) or implicit (two characters working towards different goals and therefore getting in each others’ way whether they mean to or not).

No dialogue should be an easy exchange because your characters shouldn’t say what they mean. If they’re honest about their desires, motivations, inner conflicts, etc. you’re setting yourself up for boring dialogue with no tension.

To hint at what’s being left unsaid, use subtext, sarcasm, body language, etc.

If you want more conflict, add another character to the mix. For our example, the best option would be James. What does he want? What inner conflict gets in the way? How do his wants, needs, and insecurities clash with the other characters’? 

Answering those questions is how you write scenes with multiple characters.

4. Get the voices right.

If all your characters sound the same, if they use the same expressions, sentence structures, vocabulary, and speech quirks, their dialogue will fall flat and the characters won’t feel real.

Take another look at last issue’s challenge, and think about how the way your characters were raised has affected the way they speak.

Decide on their speech markers: 

• vocabulary (polysyllabic words, professional jargon, etc.), 
• throwaway words and phrases (e.g. actually, maybe, I think, you see, I dare say, anyway), 
• run-on sentences, 
• sarcasm, 
• poor grammar, 
• omitted words, 
• levels of energy and formality, 
• humour, 
• confidence, 
• speech quirks (e.g. ending every sentence as if it were a question, stuttering, etc.)

5. Accents.

Writing accents is another way of differentiating one character’s speech from another’s, but you should avoid this unless you’re confident in your ability to convey an accent phonetically. Even if you are confident, many readers struggle with this method because it forces them to translate the dialogue instead of listening to the characters.

6. Said is not dead.

You want the dialogue to speak for itself, which means the dialogue tag needs to be non-intrusive. When you start using tags like hissed, grumbled, exclaimed, spurted, cautioned, lied, etc., first off, you’re telling instead of showing, and second, you’re proving that your dialogue isn’t good enough to stand on its own.

As a side note: Writing “said+subject” is now considered a little old-fashioned, and a lot of publishing houses favour “subject+said”.

7. Action beats.

Action beats convey more information than dialogue tags but don’t overuse them.

Ginny grinned. “I promised you a mystery, didn’t I?” 

Neville shuffled from one foot to the other, glancing around the corner at the courtyard. “I thought you meant a new secret passageway, not this.” 

Ginny chuckled. “Let’s go.”

Too many action beats will crowd the scene and take readers’ attention away from the dialogue.

Another thing about action beats is that a lot of you overuse some of them. The ones that come to mind are “sigh”, “smile”, “grin”, “shrug”, and “nod”. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use them; just make sure you aren’t using them too often.

Grammar and Punctuation Section:

Punctuating Dialogue

A dialogue tag uses “speaking” verbs like said, muttered, shouted. An action beat is a description of what the character does while they’re talking. Laughing, smiling, pacing, etc. are action beats.

Gasping and sighing can be used as either, but keep in mind lung capacity. A person can gasp or sigh a word, not a whole sentence.

Here are the punctuation and capitalisation rules for dialogue:

1. New speaker = new paragraph.

2. The punctuation between the dialogue tag and the dialogue should be a comma. If the dialogue is a question or an exclamation, use a question or exclamation mark.

3. The first word of dialogue should always start with an uppercase letter. If the dialogue tag follows the dialogue, its first letter should always be lower case unless the first word is a proper noun, like a character’s name.

She said, “It’s getting late.”

“How late?” he asked.

4. When the dialogue tag interrupts the dialogue mid-sentence, use commas on either side and keep everything lower case.

“The bank closes in an hour,” she said, “so we should have plenty of time.”

5. When the dialogue tag happens in the middle of dialogue but doesn’t interrupt any sentences, use a full stop after the tag and begin the next sentence with an uppercase letter.

“You don’t know that,” he said. “What if you’re wrong?”

6. If you’re only using action beats, use full stops between them and the dialogue.

She looked at her watch. “It’s getting late.”

“I know.” He stood but didn’t start towards the car. “This is a terrible plan.”

7) If an action or thought interrupts dialogue mid-sentence, use dashes without commas and keep everything lower case.

UK: ‘I wanted more’ – he threw the papers in the bin – ‘but you never cared!’

US: “I wanted more”—he threw the papers in the bin—“but you never cared!”

8) Use an em-dash to show an abrupt end to the dialogue.

“I told you this was—”

9) When quoting something within dialogue, use whichever quotation mark you aren’t using for your main dialogue.

UK: ‘Dad used to say, “Better to cry over spilt whiskey than spilt milk”, which should tell you everything you need to know about him.’

US: “Dad used to say, ‘Better to cry over spilt whiskey than spilt milk,’ which should tell you everything you need to know about him.”

The US places the punctuation that follows the quote within the quote’s quotation marks. The UK places it outside the quote’s quotation marks unless the punctuation belongs to the quote.

10) Use an em-dash and lower case capitalisation when your character didn’t hear the beginning of the dialogue.

“—and then he did something worse.”

11) When dialogue gets long, separate it into multiple paragraphs, but only the last paragraph gets a closing quotation mark.

“The heist is simple. You and I go in through the front while the others wait out back. When the fire alarm goes off, we meet in the middle, grab what we can, and get out. The getaway car will be waiting down the street.

“Once this is over, we never have to speak to each other again.”

Challenge:

Write a ficlet with plenty of dialogue.

Your story is not to be beta read by anyone other than you. This exercise is designed to help you improve, which can only happen if you aren’t relying on a beta reader to fix everything for you.

The upward word count limit for this challenge is 900 words.

Each school can submit only 4 writing school stories.

Optional Prompts:

[Animal] Cat

[Character] Lucius Malfoy

[First line/Last line] The door remained closed.

Points Breakdown:

2 points for participation.

Writing Technique

1 point for writing dialogue that moves the story forward.

1 point for using the narrative around the dialogue to slip in more information.

1 point for making each character sound distinct.

1 point for not using adverbs in your dialogue tags.

Grammar and Punctuation Section

1 point for punctuating dialogue tags and action beats properly.

1 point for using a variety of tags and beats.

1 point for placing tags and beats before, during, and after dialogue.

1 point for not using “laugh”, “smile”, etc. as dialogue tags.

Deductions

-0.75 for SPaG errors.

-1 for submission errors.

Creative Corner with Hemlock

The winner of issue four’s challenge is Adenei from Hogwarts!

Create a Spell

There are loads of spells in the Harry Potter universe, and I think we can all think of a few that we would use on a daily basis if we could. But let’s say we all had Snape’s skill for creating new spells. What’s the first spell you would invent?

I want you to come up with your own. Make it creative, fun, interesting, useful, whatever you want.

• Use whatever artistic medium you want (collage, song, woodwork, architecture, etc.)
• 100 words max. Use wordcounter.net to check your word count.
• Fact sheets and descriptions are not artistic mediums.
• It should be your own work. No plagiarism!
• No more than 1 submission per student.
• No more than 3 submissions per school.
• Submissions with a profound lack of originality or effort will not receive points.

Each school is allowed 3 submissions. Each submission will receive 3 points, and the winner will earn an extra 2 points. Deputies will vote for their favourite submission (excluding submissions sent by their school). Heads and admins will only vote to break a tie.

Dear Severus Snape with Vee

Greetings, this is the romance edition of Dear Severus Snape. Beware, you may require the use of a sick bag. Many of the letters received were nauseating, particularly the letter from McGonagall regarding the sexual exploits of the population of Hogwarts!

Welcome to the seventh circle of hell.

Dear Severus,

You have no idea how happy I  was when I saw this: ‘In the next edition of Dear Severus Snape, we will be delving into a dark and disturbing topic. A topic that none but the bravest wizards could tackle.’ 

Romance! in the paper!

Romance!!! I am in desperate need of your help! I think I have a crush on my best friend! But he’s a Slytherin, and I’m not. And our fathers were rivals…

Help me, please! I get butterflies when I think of him, and he looks so handsome…

Signed,

Rose Weasley

Dear Miss Weasley, 

Firstly, I would like to mention all the reasons you won’t last in a Slytherin relationship. No, not because you are a Weasley, but because you are far too chipper. What makes your ecstatically cringey mood more disturbing is that it centres around the distasteful topic of romance. The second reason is your overuse of exclamation points; one is frivolous, five is frankly absurd.

Now, to the issue at hand. Ask Scorpius on a date. If he says no, you’re punished for the above; if he says yes, your father is punished for everything between his first year and his sixth, and when you inevitably break up, you’re punished for the above. 

Yours Sincerely 

Professor Snape 

P.S. if you take note of the points in the first paragraph, the relationship has a shot. I will be testing you periodically. 

---

Dear Severus Snape

I was wondering if you could give me some hypothetical advice. What would you say to someone who—in a completely fake reality that isn’t the slightest bit real—recently realised they fancy their mate’s little sister. Not a normal mate; their best mate. There’s a code that I can’t go near his little sister, right? The problem is, she’s funny, smart, fierce, and her hair is like fire… 

I mean hypothetically flamey! 

This isn’t a real situation, but even if it was, it would be happening to someone else, and not me.

I don’t fancy anyone. 

Back to the point, would you make a move?

Hoping for a speedy reply, 

Hot and Bothered and Thinking About Crossing the Line

Dear Mr Potter, 

You are just like your father! You don’t care about other people, do you? What if there was someone else that was in love with Ginny Weasley? What if Lily’s flaming red hair made someone else’s heart skip a beat? You’re not worried about them, are you? You think because you’re a Potter, you can have any girl you like! Well, you can’t! Why can’t you let someone else get the girl for a change!!

Snape

---

Dear Uncle Sev, 

I can’t believe they sucked you into doing this. You’ve always told me that only weak wizards allow themselves to be fooled by something as ridiculous as romance. I wonder if my father has heard about this?

My completely unrelated question is, what do you do when you hate someone so much that every time you see them, you feel the urge to kiss them? I’m sure they’d hate it, which is the point, of course. They drive me insane, and I only want to hex them so hard that they require me to hold them close as I walk them to the hospital wing. 

Sincerely,

Demented in the Dungeons

Dear Draco, 

Your father was good enough to listen to me complain extensively but a few nights ago. Post coitus chatter is something he feels is necessary. I don’t get it myself. 

As for your infatuation with one of the three Gryffindors. I’m not entirely sure which one you want to hex and hold, but my advice is to bury the urge with actual hexing and running away. I could not abide you getting in a relationship with any of them, and therefore, seeing them about the manor. 

Yours sincerely 

Uncle Severus Snape

---

Severus,

I caught some Slytherins shagging in Filch’s favourite broom cupboard again. I understand your own romantic relationships were lacking when you were a student, but that is no excuse to delay the discussion regarding safe sex with your house. However, I will be glad to continue taking points from those students who are careless enough to get caught. 

I trust you are teaching them how to brew the appropriate potions since you condone this behaviour?

Please stop using your students’ love lives to make up for your own.

Minerva

Dear Minerva, 

I actually have a talk about safe sex with all students every year. I thoroughly enjoy it. I have slides that show the effects of even the most brutal STDs; the fire lice photograph is particularly disgusting! One year, I managed to make a first-year vomit. It was my proudest moment as a teacher. 

I do not condone, and I do not teach the brewing of potions that make it easier for them to “get off”, as they say. The issue is your delay in fixing the room of requirement. When it was fully functioning, we didn’t have to go through the ordeal of walking in on them. 

Yours Sincerely

Severus Snape

P.S. Speak to your Gryffindors. There isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t find a couple of them doing it on my desk!

And that concludes this excruciating article on romance. As a nice palette cleanser, the next issue will be focused on the delightful art of revenge!

Beta How To with Accio Broom

In my previous two articles, I discussed how to prepare your story for a beta reader by self-editing. Whilst you’re waiting for your beta’s feedback, why not take a look at one of your teammates’ stories and have a go at editing theirs?

I’m a firm believer that you can only get better if you keep at it. If you’ve never beta read someone’s story before, you might wonder what you could contribute. But every pair of eyes brings a fresh perspective, and although you might not be strong at grammar or spelling, you could be an expert at visualising stories, and be able to point out where a character’s actions don’t make sense. Or perhaps your strengths lie in scene setting, and you can find opportunities to add in extra descriptions. It all helps build a strong story.

Here are some helpful tips for being a great beta reader:

Understand the writer’s goals

Has the writer given a list of questions or points they’re struggling with in the story? Keep these in mind by jotting them down before you start. It’s important to understand what kind of feedback the author is looking for, and if they haven’t given any areas to look for, you should ask the writer directly, and inform them about the type of feedback you can / want to give so they can consent to it. This helps the medicine go down.

Don’t be afraid to step back if what they’re looking for isn’t your strong point. As mentioned above, we all have strengths and weaknesses as writers, so it’s important we focus on what we’re strong at to help our teammates. For example, my students aren’t going to rely on me for SPaG issues, but I’m great at pointing out character flaws and for spotting opportunities to add in more descriptions.

Write notes as you get to them

Most of us use Google Docs or Microsoft Word which come with the handy tool to add comments on the side of the text. This means you can add detail to your suggestions, explaining why you’re making them. You can also use this function to add your more neutral or positive thoughts about the story. It’s good to add your interpretation of situations to your suggestions so the writer can understand if the meaning of their story comes across. 

It’s not very helpful to the writer if you skim read then say “that was great” at the end. How are they supposed to make their story better? Likewise, just saying “this doesn’t make sense” isn’t very helpful if the writer isn’t told why.

So, if you’re reading and the plot points aren’t adding up or if you have a question, add it as a suggestion straight away in the place where the issue occurs so the author can easily refer to what you’re talking about. I also note observations or thoughts that pop into my head as I read, such as, “Where’s Hermione? She entered the room with Ron but we haven’t heard from her since. I’m not sure she’d be quiet if she was listening to this conversation.”

Mull it over

Beta reading isn’t something you can do if you’re pushed for time. It needs space to digest what you’re reading and to consider all possibilities. At the end (and especially with competition stories where you’re writing to meet a theme and a number of prompts), it’s important to take a step back and consider all aspects of the story. Sometimes there are things that stick out that aren’t on the page. Are there any remaining questions that haven’t been answered? Does everything that happens within the story make sense? Add a summary at the end of a google doc if there are aspects of the story you think need fleshing out.

Be honest, but don’t forget to be kind and constructive

Facing a page full of corrections is difficult, so if there are sentences that put a smile on your face or a plot point that makes you laugh out loud, note these out too. Remember about the feedback sandwich—start and end with a positive comment to soften the blow.

But at the same time, you’re not doing the writer any favours by hiding or reducing any negative criticism. The whole point of doing a beta read is to catch flaws within the story. So don’t hold back. It’s much better to hear negative criticism from your teammate than a judge!

The International Wizarding School Competition League Table

School	Place	This Round	Points	MVP
Hogwarts	1st	191.25	771.75	Cheesey
Beauxbatons	2nd	181.25	745.25	Janie-Ohio
Ilvermorny	3rd	166.25	674	Leprechaun
Durmstrang	4th	127	533.75	KeepSmiling