#fanfic tips

I had somehow, in my memory of the books, turned Snape into this misunderstood figure who just needed the right person to see past his walls. You know the trope—damaged man meets understanding woman, he softens up and shows his real feelings, they heal each other. That's what I wrote. He was more expressive, more obviously conflicted, more emotionally available than he actually is.

Then a few months ago, I rewatched the movies with my stepdaughter (she'd never seen them), and halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban I had this horrifying realization: I'd written him completely wrong.

Snape isn't misunderstood. He's exactly what he presents himself to be—he's just hidden half of it away and shoved it down so deep he can barely access it himself. He's not going to open up with "the right woman" because he's not even open with himself. That was the thing I'd completely missed.

So I scrapped everything and started over, this time actually trying to understand his psychology instead of projecting what I wanted him to be.

That's what this post is about. Not some definitive guide (I've been writing him for three months, I'm hardly an expert), but what I've figured out so far and what I got catastrophically wrong at first. I've had a lot of readers tell me they like how I write him now, and I think it's because I finally stopped trying to make him something he's not.

A note: I saw the criticism that my first version of this post looked AI-generated because of the formatting and some canon errors. That's fair. I got overconfident, didn't double-check my canon references, and formatted it like a textbook instead of, you know, a person talking. So I'm rewriting this entirely—in my own voice, with my actual experience, and without pretending I know more than I do.

The Thing I Got Wrong (And Maybe You Are Too)

Here's what I thought when I started: Snape has all these feelings buried underneath his cruel exterior, so the goal is to get him to express those feelings. Get him to open up, be vulnerable, show his soft side. Right?

Wrong.

The problem is that Snape already feels everything. He's not emotionally stunted—he's emotionally overwhelmed. He's been feeling too much his entire life, and he's built this elaborate filtering system because feeling things has only ever hurt him. His mother couldn't protect him. His father abused him. Lily abandoned him and chose his bully. Dumbledore used him. Every time he's felt something deeply, it's destroyed him.

So when you're writing him, you're not writing someone who needs to learn to feel. You're writing someone who desperately needs to learn that feeling things won't destroy him—and he absolutely does not believe that. He believes the opposite. He has decades of evidence that feelings are dangerous.

That changes everything about how you approach his character.

How His Brain Actually Works (As Far As I Can Tell)

After three months of writing Snape and really paying attention to how he operates in canon, here's what I think is going on:

He defaults to analysis, but bias can override it.

This is his preferred mode. When something happens, he assesses it, categorizes it, looks for angles. But here's the thing: his analysis is colored by pessimism and trauma. If something can go wrong, he assumes it will. If someone's being nice to him, his first thought isn't "they're being nice," it's "they're being nice... why? What do they want?"

Does this mean he never reacts without analyzing? Obviously not. Prisoner of Azkaban is basically one long trauma response for him because Sirius Black (who tried to murder him) is loose and Remus Lupin (friend of said attempted murderer) is teaching at Hogwarts. He's triggered constantly. In the Shrieking Shack he's beyond reason—shrieking, spitting, with a mad glint in his eyes that shows he's completely lost control.

But that's my point—when he reacts explosively, it's because his control has failed. That's not his preferred state. His preferred state is cold, analytical assessment. Strong emotion overrides it, and he hates when that happens because it means he's lost control.

And here's where I think the person who criticized my first post had a valid point: Snape's analysis is often poisoned by bias, especially with Harry. He does analyze Harry constantly—he's always watching him, noting his behavior, comparing him to James. The problem isn't that he doesn't analyze; it's that his analysis confirms what he already believes. He sees Harry through a broken framework where everything looks like arrogance and rule-breaking because that's what he's determined to see. His trauma has made him incapable of seeing Harry clearly.

So yes, his default is analytical—but with certain triggers (anything James-related, basically), that analysis is so biased it might as well be pure reaction.

He's confident in his own judgment, often because he's proven right.

Snape doesn't think he's smarter than everyone always—that would be ridiculous, and Dumbledore exists. But he does have high confidence in his own judgment, and he's frequently validated. He was right about Quirrell being suspicious. He was right about Lockhart being a fraud. He was right about Lupin being careless with his werewolf transformations. Even when he challenges Dumbledore with "you've been raising him like a pig for slaughter," he's not wrong.

This is more pronounced with students and incompetent adults. Of course he thinks he's smarter than a classroom of teenagers—he is. Of course he thinks he sees things more clearly than Lockhart—he does. The confidence isn't entirely unfounded, which is what makes it so entrenched.

With genuinely competent adults like Dumbledore or McGonagall, it's more complicated. He respects their abilities even while disagreeing with their judgments. But he still thinks his read on situations is accurate, and honestly, he's right often enough that this belief is reinforced.

He filters every emotion through sarcasm or anger.

Any feeling—positive or negative—gets immediately processed through his defense system. Sarcasm is his go-to because it lets him seem unbothered. He can feel superior and detached at the same time, maintaining control while deflecting whatever made him feel something.

Anger is his fallback when sarcasm isn't enough, and he hates resorting to anger because it reveals he's been affected. It means something got through his defenses. The calmer and more sarcastic he seems, the more in control he actually is. The angrier he gets, the more you know you've genuinely rattled him.

When you see him losing it in the Shrieking Shack or bellowing at Harry to get out of his office after the Pensieve violation—that's not calculated. That's control failing entirely.

He believes he's fundamentally unlovable.

This is the core wound that affects everything else. Snape operates from the belief that nobody will ever truly care about him, that anyone who tries has ulterior motives, and that pushing people away is survival, not cruelty.

And here's the devastating part: he creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone tries to get close. He pushes them away to test them or protect himself. They leave (because that's a natural response to being pushed away). He interprets their leaving as proof they never really cared in the first place. See? He was right all along. Better to push people away first than let them leave later and hurt him more.

It's devastatingly effective at keeping him isolated, and it confirms his worst belief about himself every single time.

The Contradiction Thing

One thing I really struggled with early on was trying to make Snape consistent. Is he cruel or is he caring? Is he brave or is he a coward? Is he selfless or selfish?

The answer is yes. He's all of those things simultaneously.

He saves Harry's life repeatedly while also making Harry's life miserable. He's brave enough to spy on Voldemort but too cowardly to face his own feelings. He's capable of immense love (Lily) and immense cruelty (basically everyone). He protects students but also traumatizes them. He's loyal to Dumbledore and resentful of Dumbledore's manipulation.

When I first started writing him, I kept trying to smooth out these contradictions. Make him consistently one thing or another—consistently cruel with hidden kindness, or consistently protective but with a sharp exterior. That's not Snape. Snape is walking contradiction, and the reason is that he's never processed any of his trauma. He's just shoved it all down and kept going, so he's fragmented. He contains multitudes and he hates every single one of them.

Don't try to reconcile his contradictions. Let him be unfair. Let him save someone's life and then be needlessly cruel to them five minutes later. Let him care deeply about something and then mock someone else for caring about the exact same thing. That's who he is. The contradictions aren't a flaw in his characterization—they are his characterization.

Why Control Matters So Much to Him

Something I didn't understand at first: Snape's obsession with control isn't about power. It's about survival.

His childhood was chaos. Spinner's End, poverty, his father's abuse, his mother's inability to protect him, being the weird poor kid at school, being sexually assaulted by James Potter in front of a crowd while teachers did nothing. He couldn't control any of it. He was powerless, humiliated, and helpless.

As an adult, control is the only thing standing between him and that childhood vulnerability. If he can control the situation, he can't be hurt the way he was hurt as a child. If he can see everything coming, he can prepare. If he can manage every variable, he's safe.

This manifests in everything he does. His intellectual superiority means if he's the smartest, he sees things coming and can't be caught off guard. Emotional suppression means if he doesn't feel it, it can't control him or be used against him. Anticipating worst-case scenarios means if he expects the worst, he's prepared and can't be disappointed. Cruelty as a preemptive strike means if he hurts you first, you can't hurt him—he controls when and how pain happens. His rigid environment means predictability, and predictability equals safety.

When Snape loses control of a situation—when someone surprises him, when things spiral beyond his management, when someone makes him feel something he didn't authorize—he doesn't just get angry. He gets vicious. And it's not proportional because it's not really about the current situation. It's about that childhood powerlessness surging back up. It's panic dressed as cruelty.

How I Actually Write His Dialogue Now

This is probably the thing I'm most proud of figuring out, because it came from analyzing why my early drafts felt so wrong.

Snape filters everything before it comes out of his mouth. Every thought passes through multiple layers, and understanding this process has completely changed how I write him.

Let me show you what I mean.

Let's say Snape sees a flower he likes (a lily, perhaps—too soon?). A normal person's internal reaction: "Oh, that's a really pretty flower! I'd love to have one."

Here's what happens in Snape's head before he speaks:

Layer 1: Analysis: Why does it appeal to me? What specifically am I responding to? → "That flower looks well cared for—it's bright, healthy, colorful. I would like one."

Layer 2: Intellectualization: Remove casual language, add precision and formality. → "The plant appears well maintained and visually appealing. I believe I would want one for myself."

Layer 3: Emotional Removal: Strip out any indication of personal desire or feeling. Make it observational. → "The plant is well maintained and visually appealing."

Layer 4: Minimization: Use the fewest words possible. Add careful pauses where he's selecting words. → "The plant is... adequate."

And that's how you get Snape dialogue.

He's gone from "I love this and want it" to "adequate"—but if you understand his filtering system, you know those mean the same thing. When I'm writing his dialogue now, I actually run it through this process. I write what he's thinking or feeling first, then filter it down layer by layer until it sounds like him. It's made a massive difference in how authentic his voice feels.

The key is that each layer removes vulnerability. By the time something comes out of his mouth, it's been stripped of anything that could be used against him.

Body Language: What I'm Still Learning

I'm going to be honest—this is something I still struggle with. Snape communicates so much through body language, and I keep catching myself making him too verbal when he should be expressing things physically instead.

I'm still working out the specifics of how he moves. From what I can tell, his movement is purposeful and controlled—in Philosopher's Stone, Rowling describes him "sweeping around in his long black cloak," watching students. He's not a fidgeter, not an anxious pacer. The text says he has "the gift of keeping a class silent without effort," and that seems to come from his presence and voice (barely more than a whisper, but everyone catches every word) rather than from standing perfectly still or from shouting.

His hands tell the truth more than his words do. When his hands are clasped behind his back, he's restraining himself—stopping himself from acting on impulse. When they're clenched, there's barely contained emotion. When he touches his wand, he's grounding himself, checking it's there, preparing for threat. When his fingers are steepled, he's thinking, calculating, judging.

And his voice works on an inverse scale: the softer he gets, the more dangerous he is. Shouting means he's lost control. That silky, quiet drawl means he's in complete control and enjoying your discomfort.

When Snape's control is slipping, his body betrays him before his words do. A hand moving too quickly. Standing too close to someone because he's feeling invaded and retaliating by invading their space. His voice going too soft because he's overcorrecting for emotion. A sharp intake of breath. Eyes widening fractionally before he can stop it. These are the things I'm constantly trying to catch and include, because they're how you show what he's feeling when he'd rather die than say it.

What Actually Matters to Him (And What Earns His Respect)

This is important if you're writing him in any kind of relationship—friendship, mentorship, romance, whatever.

Snape doesn't respect desperation. He doesn't respect people who need his approval or who fold under pressure. He doesn't respect blind optimism or people who coast on charm, looks, or privilege. These things repulse him because they remind him of everything he's never had and everyone who's dismissed him.

So what does earn his respect? These are patterns I've noticed, not absolute rules:

He respects competence without arrogance. Do good work, don't brag about it. Let your results speak for themselves. He recognizes capability when he sees it, even if he'll never voice approval.

He respects people who stand up to him with facts or logic, not emotional appeals. Challenging his conclusions with evidence might intrigue him, even if it also infuriates him. Challenging his authority with feelings will get you destroyed. The distinction matters.

He respects people who see through his bullshit and call him on it without backing down. This only works if you're also competent—otherwise you're just annoying. But if you can see what he's doing (deflecting, testing, pushing away) and refuse to play along, that gets his attention.

He respects people who genuinely don't care if he likes them. Desperation repulses him. Indifference intrigues him. If you don't need his approval, you're automatically more interesting than ninety-five percent of people he encounters.

McGonagall is probably the clearest example. She's competent, she doesn't need his approval, she'll call him out when necessary, and she's not trying to fix him or get close to him. He respects her even when they disagree.

The absolute worst thing you can do when writing someone trying to reach Snape is make them desperate for his approval or trying to "fix" him with patience and love. He'll destroy that person. Not just because he's cruel (though he is), but because desperation repulses him and pity is humiliating. Nobody wants to be someone's project.

If you want to write someone who actually gets through to him, they need to earn his respect first. Be genuinely good at something he values. Stand their ground when he pushes. Not need him. See through his defenses without making it their mission to tear them down. Then maybe—maybe—over a long period of time, with some form of forced proximity that prevents him from just cutting them off entirely, he might let them in.

Slowly. With frequent backsliding. While hating every minute of it.

But here's where I need to be honest: I'm figuring this out as I go. My fic requires Snape to eventually be vulnerable with someone, and writing that in a way that feels like natural progression rather than "he's vulnerable now because the plot needs him to be" is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do as a writer. I'm constantly second-guessing myself. Does this feel earned? Is this too fast? Is this in character? I don't have definitive answers. I'm just doing my best and hoping it works.

The Lily Question (Because People Always Ask)

"Wouldn't Snape feel like he's betraying Lily if he moved on romantically?"

No, and I think this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Lily represents to him.

Snape's devotion to Lily's memory isn't romantic loyalty. She wasn't loyal to him—she dated and married James Potter, the person who sexually assaulted him, who tormented him for years, who made his life hell. That's not just moving on. That's choosing his abuser's side. She didn't just leave Snape when he called her a slur (which was unforgivable, and I'm not defending that)—she erased their entire friendship by ending up with James.

His obsession with Lily is about guilt, debt, and Dumbledore's manipulation. He told Voldemort the prophecy. He got her killed. Keeping Harry safe is how he atones for that. And Dumbledore used that guilt masterfully, turning it into a leash and calling it redemption.

Lily represents Snape's lost happiness, his biggest mistake, his last connection to who he was before he became what he is. But that doesn't mean he's incapable of caring about someone new. It means he'd need someone patient enough and compelling enough to let him hold both truths at once: I loved her and I lost her, and she's gone, and I can still care for someone new.

Moving on doesn't mean forgetting her or stopping his protection of Harry. It means accepting that he can honor her memory and build something new. These aren't mutually exclusive unless he makes them so.

But again—I'm writing this in a fanfic where I need him to eventually be capable of a relationship, so maybe I'm just justifying what I need for my story. I genuinely don't know. Canon gives us almost nothing about how Snape would function in a healthy relationship because he's never had one.

What I'm Still Figuring Out

Because I'm three months into this, not three years, and I don't have all the answers:

Vulnerability is hard. My story needs him to be vulnerable at certain points, but doing it in a way that feels like natural character progression rather than plot convenience is something I'm constantly reconsidering. How much can he let down his guard before it stops feeling like Snape? What circumstances would actually force vulnerability from someone this defended? I don't know. I'm just trying things and seeing what feels right.

The formality balance is tricky. Sometimes I make him too formal or too wordy. There's a sweet spot for his voice—precise but economical, formal but not archaic—and I don't always hit it. He's not going to say "I suppose one might consider" when "perhaps" works. But he's also not going to say "yeah" or use contractions constantly. Finding that balance is ongoing.

Romance is really hard. There's basically no canon basis for how Snape would behave in a healthy romantic relationship. His thing with Lily was one-sided and obsessive. So I'm working backward from "what would it take for him to even allow this" and building from there, but I'm genuinely just guessing. Maybe I'm getting it completely wrong. I won't know until it's done and I can look back at the full arc.

Body language versus dialogue. I mentioned this earlier, but it's worth repeating: I still catch myself making him say things he would only show physically. He's not going to say "I'm angry"—his jaw is going to tighten, his hand is going to move to his wand, his voice is going to go dangerously soft. Getting that right consistently is something I'm still working on.

The Misconception About Love

Here's something I want to address directly because I think it's fundamental to understanding him:

Snape is not incapable of love. He's terrified of it.

He loved Lily. He clearly has some kind of complex attachment to Dumbledore (whether you call that love or loyalty or dependency, it's a deep connection). The man is capable of profound feeling—that's actually his problem. He feels too much, and every time he's loved someone, it's destroyed him.

His mother couldn't protect him. Lily left him and chose his bully. Dumbledore used his love for Lily to manipulate him into a life of servitude and eventually death. Love, for Snape, equals devastation.

So he's not emotionally unavailable because he can't feel. He's emotionally unavailable because he can, and it's never ended in anything but pain. He's convinced himself he doesn't deserve love and that nobody would love him anyway, and he has decades of evidence supporting that belief.

The tragedy of Severus Snape isn't that he can't love. It's that he can—deeply, painfully, all-consumingly—and he's convinced himself that nobody will ever love him back, and his life has more or less proven him right.

What I've Learned From Writing Him

The biggest thing: stop trying to make him nicer than he is.

He's cruel. He's unfair. He holds grudges forever—he's still bitter about things that happened when he was eleven years old. He makes students cry. He's bitter and sharp-edged and will say cutting things just to watch people flinch.

And he's also capable of immense bravery, sacrifice, and love. Both of those things are true at the same time.

When I was writing those early blurbs a year ago, I was so focused on showing his "soft side" that I sanded down all his sharp edges. That's not Snape. Snape is the sharp edges. The soft parts are buried so deep that even he can barely find them, and he's certainly not showing them to anyone else.

If you want to write him well, you have to be willing to let him be genuinely unpleasant. Let him say things that hurt. Let him be unfair to people who don't deserve it. Let him hold grudges. Let him be cruel to someone he actually cares about because he's too damaged to know how else to behave.

Then show the complexity underneath that—not instead of it, but in addition to it. He saves Harry while also tormenting him. He protects students while traumatizing them. He's loyal to Dumbledore while resenting him. He loved Lily while calling her a slur. All of it is true. All of it is Snape.

The contradictions are the character.

Some Mistakes I've Made (That You Might Want to Avoid)

Based on my own failures:

Don't make him suddenly emotionally articulate. Even when he cares, even when he's trying, he's not going to say "I care about you" or "I'm worried" or "that hurt my feelings." He'll say "don't be idiotic" while actively protecting you. He'll assign you extra work that happens to address a gap in your knowledge. He'll make sure you're safe while insulting your intelligence. Learn to read the subtext, because he's not going to spell it out.

Don't make him warm. His version of warmth is the absence of active cruelty. A comment that's slightly less cutting than usual. Allowing silence instead of filling it with sarcasm. The corner of his mouth twitching—not quite a sneer, but not quite not a sneer either. That's as warm as he gets in most circumstances.

Don't make him apologize easily. He's not going to say "I'm sorry I hurt you" or "I was wrong." He might change his behavior. The next day he might be less cutting, or he might do something that indirectly addresses the harm he caused. That's his apology. If you're waiting for the words, you'll be waiting forever.

Don't forget he holds grudges forever. He's still angry about things from decades ago. He doesn't forgive, and he doesn't forget. This is important. If someone wrongs him, that's it. They're on the list forever. The only exception seems to be Dumbledore, and even that relationship is complicated by resentment.

Don't make him a different person in private. Some characters have a public persona and a private self that's softer. Snape doesn't work that way. He might be slightly less performatively cruel when there's no audience, but he's not secretly soft. The walls don't come down just because you're alone with him. If anything, he might be worse because there's nobody watching him maintain appearances.

Why I'm Even Posting This

Here's the truth: I got Snape completely wrong for months. The stuff I wrote a year ago is embarrassing. He was too open, too available, too ready to be "fixed" by the right circumstances. I didn't understand him at all.

When I started getting comments from readers saying they liked my characterization of him, I realized I'd figured something out that I desperately wish I'd understood a year ago when I started. Maybe this will help someone else skip the "writing him completely wrong for six months" phase that I went through.

Or maybe you'll read this and disagree with all of it. That's fine too. I'm three months into actively writing him, reading the books with him specifically in mind, taking notes every day about his patterns and speech and behavior. That's a lot of focused attention, but it's also nowhere near the expertise of someone who's loved this character for decades. I'm not the definitive authority. I'm just someone who made a lot of mistakes and is trying to share what I learned from them.

The person who criticized my first version of this post was right about a lot of things. I got canon details wrong. I relied on memory instead of checking the actual books. I presented some fanon interpretations as if they were canon fact. This is my attempt to fix that—to make this actually useful instead of just confidently wrong in places.

If you take one thing away from this, let it be this:

Snape isn't cold. He's afraid.

Every wall he builds, every cutting remark, every person he pushes away—it's all fear dressed up as superiority. He feels everything, and he's spent decades learning to show nothing because feeling things has only ever destroyed him.

The tragedy of Severus Snape isn't that he can't love. It's that he can—deeply, painfully, consumingly—and he's convinced himself that nobody will ever love him back. And his entire life has basically proven him right.

Write him like someone who's already been hurt as badly as a person can be hurt, who's determined never to let it happen again, and who's built elaborate fortifications to make sure of it.

Then watch what happens when, despite his absolute best efforts, it starts to happen anyway.

If you want to see how I'm trying to write him (and whether I'm succeeding or failing spectacularly), the fic is called Wandless and it's on AO3, FFN, and Wattpad. Fair warning: it's a very slow burn. Like, glacially slow. Because that's how long it actually takes for someone like Snape to let anyone in.

I am by no means an expert on this subject. Please don't assume I am. This is just me, talking about a character I've been obsessed with for three months, trying to help other people avoid the mistakes I made.

Thanks for reading.

Dividers by strangergraphics-archive

Ernest Hemingway (Repression) "He did not say anything. He looked at the girl and then at the ground and then at the girl again. He picked up his glass and drank it and it was a long time before he spoke." Hills Like White Elephants (The silence and the repetitive, aimless physical action convey the heavy friction between the characters.)

Gabriel García Márquez (Obsession) "He began to search for her in every face he saw, in every sound he heard, in every shadow that fell across his path, and he did not find her, but he did not stop looking." Love in the Time of Cholera (The obsession is defined by the endless, rhythmic repetition of the search.)

James Joyce (Dread) "He turned suddenly and looked at the door. It was closed. He turned back to the window and saw the gray light filtering through the glass. He felt the cold air on his neck." A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Focusing on the physical sensation of cold and the awareness of boundaries illustrates a creeping, existential unease.)

Fyodor Dostoevsky (Guilt) "He walked along the street, his heart beating so loudly that he was certain everyone passing him could hear it. He kept his eyes fixed on his boots, terrified that if he looked up, the street itself would accuse him." Crime and Punishment (The guilt is externalized through the hyper-awareness of his own pulse and the projection of judgment onto the world.)

Franz Kafka (Helplessness) "He tried to turn his head, but his neck felt as though it were made of lead. He wanted to call out, but his throat was dry, and the sound that emerged was merely a thin, dry scraping." The Metamorphosis (The psychological state of being trapped is translated into a rigid, failing physical body.

Virginia Woolf (Loneliness) "She went into the room and the air was still holding the ghost of his tobacco. She touched the chair he had left behind, the fabric still smooth where he had sat, and she stood there until the room grew dark, not moving, not breathing." To the Lighthouse (The absence of the person is conveyed through the lingering physical presence of their objects and the character’s statuesque immobility.)

Toni Morrison (Despair) "She walked on, and when she got to the bridge, she did not look at the water. She did not look at the sky. She kept her eyes on the cracks in the pavement, one, then another, then another, counting them as if they were years." Beloved (The crushing weight of sorrow is handled by narrowing the character’s focus to a tedious, mundane task to avoid the vastness of her pain.)

Shirley Jackson (Paranoia) "She found herself holding her breath, listening. The house was quiet, but it was a heavy quiet, a breathing kind of silence that made the hair on her arms stand up." The Haunting of Hill House (The fear is projected onto the house, making the environment itself seem sentient and predatory.)

George Eliot (Regret) "She did not weep. She only stood by the window, her hands clasped so tightly together that the knuckles turned white, staring at the carriage as it disappeared down the drive." Middlemarch (The internal turmoil is anchored in the physical tension of the hands, contrasting with a calm, stoic exterior.)