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About 120K fanfictions emerge when you directly type Harry Potter in the search bar at Wattpad.
While some of them are amazing and well worth every reader's time, there are a great many fanfictions which are either too cliché...
I understand that many fanfics on Wattpad are rated mature and for appropriate audiences.
So why, you would ask, is that a problem now?
Trust me, the content being rated mature is not a problem.
But what goes inside the content sure is.
Have you ever come across stories that are rated Mature under Wattpad's guidelines and yet have the writings of a nine year old except for the occasional (read frequent) smut scenes thrown in here and there?
There's more than a 50% chance that you might have encountered such fanfics.
Authors must understand that rating your story mature doesn't mean that you have to throw in such a scene or two every five seconds of the story.
No.
You don't.
Because that only makes the story worse and gives the readers a sense that perhaps you don't really have a plot to write about or a general concept, and you are just continuing with the story for the sake of making your two favorite characters have sexual intercourse or something.
Now, this really makes me wanna puke.
Honestly, I try to write stories which have no such scene at all because I do not feel comfortable writing or reading such texts. I just don't and that's pretty normal, I guess. True, I might make a character confess his/her feelings, they might even kiss but that's the limit I have set.
In our ethics, all this is considered wrong so yeah, you get it why I don't do a lot of that.
But still a few of my stories are rated Mature (you might not see them on my profile because I am a nutcase who won't publish the book until 100% sure that it has been read and reread to perfection with no errors at all, which usually never happens so all my stuff is chilling in the drafts).
But I am not asking you to follow in my footsteps.
If you want your story to have mature scenes, then go ahead but please don't make it too often because that will only exude off a desperateness and that certainly is not the aspect good writers opt for in their books or among their characters.
The main problem which occurs with such stories is that the plot is going on smoothly until the author gets Writer's Block and can't decide what to do next or sometimes the author starts thinking that the whole plot is too dull and boring so he/she include such a scene to spice up the story line.
And if you want your story to be quality material, then take my advice and please don't do that.
No one wants to read a story where two random people are having a formal conversation and then all of a sudden they are all over each other.
No. Just don't do that.
It doesn't seem realistic.
Let's consider the Harry Potter books. Have you ever seen two random people having a formal conversation and then suddenly they are all over each other? And then some Professor, probably Snape, catches them in one of the broom closets?
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Nope.
But I can understand, Harry Potter books were written for all audiences so obviously Miss Rowling had to take such stuff into account. But while writing, you should take the following things into consideration:
1. Don't make it come out as a shock to your readers.
2. Make sure that the setting is appropriate. By setting, I meant the time and the place.
[For example, if your characters are at it in the middle of the Battle Of Hogwarts, then this certainly is the biggest mistake they could ever make in life].
3. Also, if you're writing about the school days, then keep in mind that this is Hogwarts we are talking about and obviously there are security enchantments. What do you think the talking portraits are there for?
Keeping an eye on the students and alerting the authorities whenever necessary, that's right.
Damara Dodderidge (to Basil Fronsac): Code Red in the unused classroom number 546 left to the staircase. Alert McGonagall.
[Damara and Fronsac are both portraits at Hogwarts, while Damara is located on the Grand staircase and can switch between her portraits on the Clock tower and the Gryffindor Tower, Fronsac has a choice to switch between his portraits on the staircase, the library and the Headmaster's office. So they are both likely to be the prime messengers].
***
Summarizing this whole chapter, a fanfic can be rated mature but that doesn't mean that it must have a scene once every two chapters.
Mature stories are those which deal with a mature concept such as killings, murders, things related to blood or stuff.
It does not usually mean that the story must contain pornography, graphic depiction of such sort, sex scenes and all.
True it is classified under the category Mature but that doesn't mean that you have to use it up in your story.
For more info please read the Wattpad guidelines https://www.wattpad.com/guidelines
So if you want to write a story and you are rating it as Mature, be a bit mature yourself and analyze when and where to place scenes, how to take on with the story and how not to desperately include just because you totally wanted to see that happening.
