Turns out Ginny wasn't the only Weasley sister, nor was she the first.

I'm going to be honest, I haven't been reading actual fanfics (besides yours that you ask me to look over) for months. I've grown a lot busier over the past year and a half, what with getting a job, preparing for my N.E.W.T.s and then college, and trying to focus on Star of Gryffindor and my revamp project of it. So, I definitely had to take an afternoon and skim a bunch of these types of fanfics.

The things I do for this book... I hated it. I wanted to rip my hair (or my eyes) out multiple times. I purposely went for the ones that sounded cliche and horrible, and now I want to bleach my eyes (and maybe drink some of it while I'm at it). However, that's good, because that means not only do you get a chapter packed with cliches to avoid, you also get something I haven't done in a long time: an example.

The Eighth Weasley

Hello, my name is Victoria Arabella Marilyn Rose Weasley. I am eleven. I have beautiful red hair that's curly and long. I have a very large family but they all hate me, and no one knows that I exist. 

I woke up in my room in the attic like I always do. There is a ghoul who lives in the attic, too, and he is my only friend. I walked downstairs, and Mum started to scream at me. "Why are you downstairs! You aren't supposed to be down here!" She hit me, and then my twin Ron came down the stairs and started laughing at me. 

"I'm sorry, I'll go back upstairs," I said, crying because Ron had kicked me in the stomach when I had fallen over because Mum had hit me. 

"No, make breakfast," Mum said. "And then you can't eat any of it and you can go back upstairs because we can't afford to feed you even though we have a younger child than you and we can afford to feed her."

"Hey look, Hogwarts letters!" Ron said, and the owls flew through the window. All my other brothers came downstairs and got their letters. Ginny came down, too, and started crying because she didn't have one. 

When my brothers had all gotten their letters, there was still one left. It had my name on it. "Nooooooo!" shouted Mum. 

I picked it up. "I'm going to Hogwarts!"

"Well I guess there is nothing we could possibly do about that! It's not like we have to power to not let you go!" Mum said. "You'd better be a Gryffindor, though, or we will never speak to you again! Except to bully you, of course."

"You'll be more of a disappointment than you already are," Percy said. 

"You'll be more of a disappointment than Errol!" Ron said.

"You'll be more of a disappointment than Ron!" Fred and George said.

"You're already a disappointment, but this would be worse, because apparently the Weasleys do not love their children," Dad said, because he had appeared at some point.

"I have no character traits other than crying and wanting to go to Hogwarts, so I hate you, and I want to go to Hogwarts," Ginny said. 

"Maybe you could if you weren't such a baby," I said sassily. 

"You'll never be as good as us," Percy and Fred and George and Bill and Charlie said to me. They all started to hit me and suddenly I had a new scar, very pretty and swirly on my shoulder.

"I wish we had never had you," Dad said. "We don't have enough money for you. This is despite the fact that we do have a child younger than you, who logically would be the one we all hate because she costs too much because she came after you, but what would be the fun in that?"

~End of Example~

Oh my goodness, I don't even know what I'm doing. Like I honestly couldn't even get through most of the fanfics I read and this is a combination of all the worst things I saw. That was painful to write, and honestly I'm beginning to see why I put this off so long. This is such a broad, broad topic, as well, because these books shoot off in so many different directions. I saw some where the kid was abused by her whole family because... they... they didn't want another kid...? And of course there are the ones where she's put in Slytherin and ends up being disowned or something. A lot of the time, she ends up being Draco's love interest or Harry's (in which case she entirely replaces Ginny and I'm left wondering why people didn't just do what I do and write a book from Ginny's POV, cutting out the extra character?), but not all the time. She's often grossly overpowered, but sometimes she sucks at everything. There are prophecies about her or there aren't, she's Ron's twin or she's Ginny's or she's Fred and George's triplet or she's the youngest of them all. There are so many different paths and part of why I felt like tearing my hair out is because I can't find just one common cliche thread. No, there are countless cliches, all in the different subgenres of this one type of fanfic. I can't possible cover all of that, so I'm going to stick with the very, very basic stuff, and what you should avoid.

1. Names

Oh my gosh, and I thought Harry's Twin fanfics had bad names? I saw everything from "Genevieve Jewel" (she was nicknamed Gen? When there's already Ginny?) to "Rosetta Ruthie Ann." There wasn't one name that stuck out to me as The Cliche, either, so this heading is literally just to tell you not be stupid when picking a name. How do you do that?

Well, first, take a look at the names of the other Weasley children. William Arthur "Bill" Weasley. Charles "Charlie" Weasley. Percy Ignatius Weasley. Fred and George Weasley. Ronald Bilius "Ron" Weasley. Ginevra Molly "Ginny" Weasley. Yes, most of them have at least normal sounding nicknames, but (excluding Fred and George) they all have formal, if not downright strange full names. I mean, Ginevra? A really good tip I'd say is to look at the British royalty or Arthurian legend. William, George, Percy, Charles: all of these names are pretty commonly associated with British nobility, and Ginevra stems from Guinevere, who was the wife of the mythical King Arthur. Go for your Victorias, Elizabeths, Vivians, and Elaines, your Thomases, Tristans, Lionels, and Olivers, and you'll be fitting right in. And you can give more normal-sounding nicknames to most of these names, because they're long and stuffy, which fits right in with what the Weasley family already does. You could do Vic or Tori or Toria, Liz or Beth or Elle, Tom (okay, maybe not Tom), or Ollie.

What should you avoid? Popular names, things like Madison and Macy and Kylie and Emma. Exotically strange names, things like Diamond and Neveah and Juniper and Topaz. Foreign names, things like Lucia and Mercedes and Demetria and Francois. Both weird and popular names can have the same affect on potential readers. If I see a name like Madison Emerald Weasley, I'm not going to read the book, because it is clear to me that this person does not understand the Weasley family. Perhaps other readers won't be able to articulate what they're thinking when they read those sort of names, but it would boil down to that for a lot of them, as well.

2. Twins

Now that you've got a better name (let's go with Victoria, okay?), you've got to decide where in the family sweet Victoria fits in. She is almost always Ginny or Ron's twin. Why? I don't know.

I've covered twins to some extent in my chapter of OC Inserts. Honestly, I think this whole type of fanfic is cliche, but the ones that make her Ron or Ginny's twins (or Fred and George's triplet) are more cliche than others. I would avoid it, if I were you, but if you can't, just make sure that you make her her own person. Don't make her just like Fred and George. Don't make her just like Ron. Don't make her just like Ginny. Make her a totally separate character, with a separate personality, separate friends, a separate life.

3. Love Interests

Commonly, this is either Draco or Harry. It's almost always Draco if Victoria ends up in Slytherin (I'll get to that soon), and Harry if she doesn't. I'll cover both of these.

Honestly, the Draco/Eighth Twin stories are not as bad as others. They often have Toria ending up in Slytherin and cut off from her family, and looking for solace among her new housemates. They go two directions: either Toria pulls Draco to the light, or he pulls her to the dark. Either is good with me, because on the one hand you have a Draco redemption arc, and on the other you have a protagonist messing with the Dark Arts and pureblood supremacy and a whole lot of gray area. I'm not saying this is pulled off well all the time (the opposite is often true), but it could be, and it's really cool if it is.

The Harry/Eighth Twin stories are more problematic. Why? Because in these, Toria is often just Ginny, with a different name. I'm sure you guys remember by chapter on OC inserts. Replacing canon characters is not good. It's annoying to readers and lazy storytelling. And yet, for these type of stories, it's almost required, because Toria and Ginny obviously have incredibly similar backgrounds, and since Ginny is literally the epitome of the sassy, awesome OC (but better?), Toria literally just ends up living out Ginny's portion of the story while our favorite badass is relegated to the background.

Am I saying you can never pull this type of story off? No, I'm not, but you're walking very thin ice. You've got to be careful not to replace Ginny with your character. It's difficult, and I would personally advise going a different route, having Toria end up with Neville or Draco or an OC or literally anyone else.

4. Neglected

Though a lot of stories aren't like this, many, many fanfics have poor little Victoria neglected or even abused by her family. Why? No one really knows, something about a prophecy or a weirdly specific but explained power, or just pure, old-fashioned "the author needs a way to garner sympathy for this character but doesn't know how." Whatever the reason, I'm calling absolute bullshit.

You tell me for one instant, whatever the reason, that Arthur and Molly Weasley are going to mistreat one of their children? Heck no. Heck no. I'm like, legitimately angry at the slaughtering of characters that has to go on for this to happen. Loving, loyalty, protective Molly Weasley who does out of her way to keep her children safe is going to abuse her daughter because... plot? Arthur Weasley, the man who works his butt off in a dead-end job to scrape by a living for his family is going to neglect his daughter because... reasons? Even the children, though they may fight and pick on each other and play pranks on one another, even they would never do anything to actually hurt each other. If there's one thing you should get from reading the Harry Potter series, it's that the Weasley family loves each other a lot and would do anything for each other.

That isn't just limited to blood relatives, either; by second year they've practically adopted Harry, and Hermione is drafted in soon afterward, too. Even Fleur, after they warm up to her, is treated like family. They care for Remus, they care for Tonks, they care for Sirius. I swear, the entire Order is just the Weasleys saying, "You. You're family," and that's that.

There is no way that the Weasleys would ever mistreat one of their own children. There is no way that I will accept that. Ever. Most things, even ships I think are ridiculous or scenarios I think are stupid, I will recognize could happen under the right circumstances. This, though? Impossible. Ridiculous. Absolute garbage and I'm never going to say otherwise. The only way, only way I would even consider this is if you put literally the entire Weasley family under the Imperius curse to do it, and that would open up so many plot holes and complications that I'd caution you against that from a story-telling perspective.

5. Inferiority Complex

Okay, I'll give you this: It is entirely canon that Ron had this issue, and it goes to follow that Ginny most likely did, if only in the first books. So giving little Toria an inferiority complex as well makes sense. It's definitely cliche, though.

I'm not saying don't do this. Like I said, it makes a lot of sense, and if done well it can be a really cool character arc. However, you need to do it in the right way.

The Wrong Way:

- Make her bring it up to her brothers when she's mad at them. Typically, she'll yell that she'll never be as good as them and then they'll either get angry or try to comfort her. Not only is this not very realistic (I don't know if any of you have ever suffered from an inferiority complex, but most of the time it's not something you bring up to the person who you feel is superior), but it's also really cliche. If you're going to make her explode at her brothers, at least wait until near the end. I read a lot of fanfics where one of the first chapters contained this explosion, and it was really confusing.

- Make her cry about it often. Because, you know, making your characters cry is what makes your readers like them and hits those feels, right? No...?

- Make it be her only real character trait (other than The Sass™️).

The Right Way:

- Make it influence and drive her. Often, when people feel inferior, they react one of two ways. Either they fall into depressed hopelessness, or they take those inferior feelings and try to get rid of them by proving their worth. Take Ron and Ginny, for example: Ron often seems to feel like he'll never step out of Harry and his brothers shadows, and often he lets that stop him from doing things. Ginny, on the other hand, took her feelings of inferiority and made herself her own person, known for her beauty and bat-bogey hexes and Quidditch skill. Make Victoria take those feelings of inferiority and channel them into a drive to prove herself, however that may be. 

- Make it affect her self-esteem so consistently that she doesn't even realize it's not normal. I see a lot of people writing "inferiority complexes" with characters who seem at least slightly self-aware, and who seem to understand that this isn't normal and they shouldn't think the way they do. The thing about low self-esteem and feeling inferior is that most of the time it's so deeply ingrained inside a person that they aren't even aware that normal people don't feel this way constantly. They genuinely believe they're inferior. It's a self-perpetuating cycle: you think you're inferior, so it fuels your inferiority complex, which only makes you feel more inferior. That's not to say that at some point, your character won't reach the point where she realizes something's wrong in her thinking. However, it's a very long process to reach the point of self-awareness, even. If your character is at the point where she is conscious of her inferiority complex, that implies that, on some level, she realizes she is not actually inferior. She should, at that point, be actively working to overcome this mindset, and over the course of the story make progress towards a healthy self-image. 

- At some point, let it cause problems. Let her resent her older brothers, or intelligent and popular friends. Put her in a situation like Ron in Goblet of Fire, where it really threatens her relationships with people. For one thing, it'll help her grow as a person to work through this, and it could also be a great opportunity to flesh out your other characters by forcing them to realize what's going on with Toria and trying to help her.

6. Unknown...?

This cliche makes no sense to me, personally. Why is it that so often no one knows the Weasleys have an eighth child? The author has to perform narrative backflips to explain this away, and it often seems slightly pointless. It's like they wanted a Harry's Twin type of reveal, but within an Eighth Weasley story.

Often, the reason for this is "there's a prophecy about her" or "she's really powerful" or "Voldemort's after her because (insert strange and unexplained reason)" or the Weasleys are trying to hide their abuse. However, even ignoring all the problems with these reasons themselves, having Victoria Weasley be a secret creates more problems than it solves. 

For example, there are stories in which, not only is Victoria a secret to the outside world, she's a secret to most of the Weaseley children, too. You're telling me Molly Weasley, AKA Supermom, managed to hide her pregnancy from her children? Even if the older ones were at school, Percy and the twins and Ron and Ginny wouldn't have been. Did Molly take a sabbatical from parenting? Are the Weasley children just full-blown idiots? This is never explained, ever, and I see why: there is no logical explanation.

Strangely enough, Victoria always does end up at Hogwarts. Despite the fact that wizard homeschool is a thing, and parents can canonically choose to teach their children at home, the Weasleys always send Victoria off the Hogwarts, and everyone discovers she's a Weasley. My question is: if you really wanted to keep her a secret that badly, why not school her at home? Surely it's cheaper, something the Weasleys always worry about. Or, in the cases where Voldemort and prophecies are involved and the Order somehow knows about little Toria, why not get them all to pool their resources and send her off toe Beauxbatons or somewhere?

Honestly, this is the one thing that never makes sense to me. It's so completely pointless, obviously just there for the drama of it all. If there's one thing I hate, it's dramatic secrets that serve no real purpose to the plot.

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While we're talking about Weasleys, just wanted to let you know that I updated The Riddle for the first time in a year! I'm really sorry for the long wait. I've had enough with abandoning fanfictions, however, so I couldn't let this go on indefinitely. Updates will be more consistent, I promise. At least twice a month.

Also, I know it's been forever since I updated, but thank you for 40k reads! I really enjoy writing this and helping you guys out! Today's chapter was sort of just a fun one (if frustrating as heck), but I'll get back to serious topics soon!

Anyway, send in your questions for chapters, or specific questions you have about your own fanfic! I'd love to help any way I can!