Here are a few tricks from published authors on how to write well, and my thoughts on them (and how they relate to good ol' HP, of course). Hope they're helpful!

1. "My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt." — Michael Moorcock
That is very good advice. If you want to write anything at all, you need to read everything you can get your hands on. Not just Harry Potter fanfiction. Not even just Harry Potter itself. Get out there and peruse the shelves of your library' classic section, and read mysteries, horror stories, Shakespeare, you name it. I've read everything in front of me since I was four, and it's helped me so much in writing. It means I have a larger vocabulary, for one thing, and I know what makes a boring story and what makes a good one. That's something I can't teach you. Only books can.

2. "Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you." — Zadie Smith
If you're constantly being interrupted, there is no way you'll pull anything better than out of your brain than those slugs Ron puked up in second year. You have to have quiet to think and write, and you have to have few, if any, distractions. That's why I normally writer early in the morning, or at night after my youngest siblings have gone to bed and the house is quieting down. It's so much easier to concentrate, and I promise, your best chapters will come from these times!

3. "Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel. If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution." — Michael Moorcock
This is where planning comes into play. This may sound easy, but it is not. It needs to be planned in detail, along with your plot. I've already had a chapter about planning, so I won't go into detail here. Anyway, after you've planned it out, this is a good guideline to follow. I'll make a chapter on story arcs and so on eventually, but for now just take this to heart.

4. "In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it." — Rose Tremain
This is a good idea, but I wouldn't take it as law. Yes, you need to keep your ending very flexible. But if you come up with an amazing idea, write it down and plan on it. You need to have some idea of what will happen so you know what you're building to. However, Ms. Tremain had a good point. Your ending can't be this amazing showdown between your character and Voldemort if nothing ever showed your character was capable of that in the book.

5. "Always carry a note-book. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever." — Will Self
This is beyond true. Honestly, there have been so many times when I've been sitting in class, and I've suddenly gotten a brilliant idea. Of course, I write on my phone, so I keep all my notes in it as well. But we can't have our phones in class, so I can't write down my idea then, and normally I forget it before I can get to my phone. Don't let that happen to you!

6. "Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting." — Jonathan Franzen
If you spend a lot of time trying to use bigger, cooler words... Stop. It's doing your story more harm than good. Maybe you think it sounds better to say "cantered" rather than "ran," but for readers it can sometimes be a bit of a speed bump in their reading experience, especially if you do it over and over again. The point of writing is to let your readers lose themselves in your story. Hard to do if they keep hitting speed bumps. I find its best to use the first word I think of, most of the time. I only pull out the thesaurus when I can't remember a word, but I know a few words that mean sort of what it means. Of course, it helps immensely to have read a lot for my method, because I have a larger vocabulary than a lot of people and don't use the same word constantly. If you find that you used a word more than two or three times in a paragraph, maybe you should get the thesaurus out. Otherwise, just leave it.

7. "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." – Anton Chekhov
This is often referred to as "Showing not Telling." It's a huge struggle for some writers, especially fanfic writers. A lot of fanfic writers tend to think that since they write fanfics, they don't have as high a standard to rise to. Well, I consider fanfic writing an art form, one with few true masterpieces, but oh how they shine! And they do because of good planning, storylines, and Showing, not Telling. It's not very hard, and you could even do it at the editing stage of you wanted to. Help me raise the bar of fanfic writing! Show, don't Tell!

8. "Listen to the criticisms and preferences of your trusted 'first readers.'" — Rose Tremain
Some authors respond very well to criticism. Some, very poorly. You need to respond well, and keep in mind that you are a bit too close to the story to notice some of the problems your readers might point out. Never discard a criticism immediately. On the other hand, you should also never take it as law immediately. Take it into consideration, and see for yourself whether the change should be made.

9. "The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying 'Faire et se taire' (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as 'Shut up and get on with it.'" — Helen Simpson
Perhaps the best advice for any fanfic writers — just stop worrying and write. If you have free time — go write. If you don't want to — do it anyway. If you don't know what to write — tap-dancing pineapples! Go write! You'll get ideas. That's how you get past writer's block. Of course, this is where planning is also helpful. If you have a general idea of what will happen in a chapter, you can know where you're headed with whatever you're writing; even if you don't know how to get there having a destination is a start. Just get out there and keep writing! You'll rewrite that passage a few times before you're done, but I've gotten my best ideas that way!

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So, that's what published authors want you to know. Helpful? Not? Let me know, and I'll see you next time!