#marauderssequels

Third Tier: (137/140 positions open, twenty per book) reading and editing/review. you will be acting as a beta reader, periodically receiving a few chapters to work through and make suggestions for. minimum commitment needed is for one book, but readers interested in staying with the development of more or all books are absolutely welcome

Second Tier: (68/70 positions open, ten per book) direct writing involvement. you will be a writer for one of the books. you will work with a team of other writers specifically for that story, as well as the project managers. you’ll be held accountable for a schedule, as well as responsible for reviewing and editing the work of other writers on that book.

First Tier: (all positions filled, one per book) direct writing involvement. you will be a project manager, overseeing and synthesizing how all seven projects flow together while acting as director for one of the seven books. you will take charge of 2-3 characters and their arcs, working with other project managers to develop the relationships between characters. this tier is more big-picture, making sure characterization stays consistent throughout the stories as the characters grow and change.

to put this in an easier way to understand, imagine each story is an episode of a show. each episode has one showrunner (project manager) and a team of writers (tier 2). the writers only need to stay on for one of the seven episodes, while the showrunners are committing to seeing the whole show through.

as far as writers go, we want as many people as possible to have the opportunity to write for the series. that means there will likely be no repeat writers; you’ll only write for one book.

currently, we are accepting requests for tier 1, our project management team. once all seven positions are filled, the team will develop a vision and overarching story to be told throughout the series. when that stage of the process is complete, we’ll open up second tier positions with basic descriptions of each story, so writers can apply to write the story they most want to develop. next, the writers will work with their project manager to outline and create the full story. we’ll then open up tier 3 positions for beta readers, giving them an understanding of the premise and leaving room for any necessary changes. once the outline is finalized, the writing can begin!

Writers:

Book 1

Nia/Zayn, 14, she/he/they

Kaitlin, 15, she/they

Laura, 16, she/they

Moss, 16, they/fae

Taya, 17, she/her

Navya, 18, she/her

Esther, 19, she/her

Alex, 20, she/her

Kat, 20, she/her

Maddy, 20, she/her

Book 3

Cyprian, 29, they/them

Elli, 15, she/they/fae

Book 5

Murphy, 19, he/they

Book 7

Summer, 20, she/fae

Betas:

Book 1

Bella, 13, she/her

Bob, 13, she/they

Jamie, 13, they/them

Camille, 14, she/her

Harriet, 14, she/her

Annie, 15, she/her

Kayla, 15, she/her

Maia, 15, she/her

Annika, 16, she/her and Fae/faer

Embla, 16, he/him and she/her

Mijntje, 16, she/her

Nikki, 16, she/her

Ron, 16, she/her

Arunima, 17, she/her

Lyrik, 17, they/them

Stevie, 17, she/her and they/them

Grace, 18, she/her

Li, 20, they/them

Lynn, 21, she/her

Leticia, 25, she/her

Book 2

Kalis, 31, she/her

Book 3

Maddy, 20, she/her

Book 4

Esther, 19, she/her

Nia/Zayn, 14, she/he/they

Moss, 16, they/fae

Book 5

Kaitlin, 15, she/they

Sara

Book 6

Alex, 20, she/her

Book 7

Navya, 18, she/her

the basics each main character will have a seven-book long journey (for this post, we’ll refer to it as their 7J), as well as a main story they’ll get to feature in and tell completely through one book (their 1J). think of it as harry’s 7J being his transformation from innocent first-year to the man who killed voldemort, while one of his 1Js was discovering who wanted to steal the philosopher’s stone (his journey in the first book).

changing POVs from chapter to chapter seems to be the most popular idea at the moment, so while each book will focus on a different character and their 1J (for example, if the fourth book were to focus on James Potter and one main story for him), we’ll still be telling the story from multiple POVs and still have smaller storylines for different characters (for example, how even though harry’s 1J in the half-blood prince was learning about voldemort, ron still had his own storyline with lavender brown).

the protagonists this is our current list of main protagonists each book could feature: james potter sirius black remus lupin peter pettigrew lily evans severus snape immediately, you might notice that while we have seven books planned, there are only six protagonists on our current list. that’s one of the problems we’re looking into as we outline how to write each book.

considering how each character’s 7J plays out, we also have a few restrictions on who should be considered for telling each book. these restrictions are both a result of the polls as well as the way we want to tell these stories.

james potter - 1st, 6th, or 7th book. the 1st book is an open option for james’s 1J mainly because he would be an excellent character to introduce the series with. it would parallel harry’s first year at hogwarts quite well, and it feels like a very natural option for the first book. however, his 7J features the most change and growth from him in his sixth and seventh years at hogwarts. for this reason, we’re mainly considering him as the protagonist for either the sixth or seventh books. current polls indicate a higher level of interest for him as the protagonist for the seventh book, likely because this is the year that he and lily become a couple. however, the largest steps of his transformation are taken during his sixth year, as he’s changed enough by the seventh for lily to want to date him. this makes the sixth year possibly the more interesting time for his 1J to take place.

severus snape - 2nd, 3rd, or 4th book. one of the best references from the original series we have for what the marauders’ years at hogwarts were like is snape’s flashback in order of the phoenix, when he’s being bullied by james and his friends and subsequently loses his friendship with lily. this takes place at the end of the year, right after the fifth-year students have taken their OWLs (or at least during this time). the fallout of his and lily’s friendship would make for a very depressing end to a book, and there’s really not much to explore even if we were to take this route. snape calling lily a mudblood was the final straw, but the groundwork was already laid. a snape-centered story would likely be better employed in the first few books, but probably not for the very first in the series. the introduction we’re having to the marauders era should come from a marauder, not snape. to fully explore his friendship with lily and the growing influence of the death eaters and their beliefs, our personal favorite for now is the 4th book, as some of the beliefs and mindset that shaped the course of his life will be solidifying around that time, and it would be the most appropriate of these options for discussion of the romantic feelings he was developing for lily. still, we’ll be leaving the 2nd and 3rd options open for his story.

these two are the only characters we’ve started to draw hard restrictions around. for the fifth book, we (and the poll results) are highly favoring sirius black. he leaves his family the summer after his fifth year, and following the traditional harry potter series formula, that event would take place in the sixth book. however, keeping in mind that no hard decisions have been made, we’ll present the argument to be made for sirius taking the fifth year 1J.

anything concerning the black family (besides andromeda and possibly his uncle alphard) will be practically inaccessible to sirius after the fifth book. the best time to explore a story that includes them will be books 1-5. taking into consideration his relationship with remus (as wolfstar will be canon for this series), the fourth year is the time in the original harry potter series that romance and relationships really began to affect the characters and stories. for any 1J looking to focus more on romantic themes, books 4-7 are the most appropriate times. for sirius’s options, that leaves books 4 or 5 to be the best time for a sirius-centered story. the tensions building with his family and their beliefs would be most prevalent in the year right before he breaks away from them. in terms of confidence and identity, fifth-year sirius is also likely to have himself a little more figured out than fourth-year sirius.

we’re hoping to put together a new team of writers for each book as we move through the series. there are a lot of fanfiction writers who love harry potter and plenty who even focus on just the marauders era, and we want to have as many opportunities as possible open for any and every interested writer to have a hand in the story. we’ll be writing book by book, so as more people learn about the project and gain interest, we’ll have a new pool of creative minds and writers to draw from with every new book in the series.

we also want to include artists as well, for creating chapter illustrations and book covers. this is an even more tentative idea, as there’s a lot of chapters to cover in seven books and we don’t know yet how many people will be interested. everything really depends on the amount of people passionate about the project, and because it’s only been a few days since we’ve announced it, this is a really difficult point to gauge if there will be enough interest. still, we want to involve as many parts of the fan community as possible, so in the next few weeks, we’ll be developing a clearer vision for what path we can take.

in terms of POV style, the current plan based on polling results is to use a third person omniscient voice and cycle the point of view through different characters. as more people take the polls, we’ll gain a better understanding of what the community wants to see from this series, and we’ll be able to better determine which characters will be included in the POV lineup. the Alternate Options: Series POV survey is our least-taken poll, as it’s the most recent, so it’s still too early to draw conclusions. the only definite one we have so far is that this series will indeed be told from multiple perspectives rather than one single main character.