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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...
The most common epic fail for an epic story... Feeble Side Cast.
While writing a story, authors tend to put their whole focus on the main characters. I understand that you do so, because the main is usually the narrator of the story and you want the readers to connect with him/her but that doesn't mean you should neglect all others.
For example, if I have to write a love story, I would definitely not make it seem like said boy and said girl are the last people alive on Earth and everyone else either don't exist or don't matter.
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No. For the sake of literature, don't do that.
The supporting characters are just as important as your main characters. Because even though the mains tell the story, the supporting characters help it along, make it easier to understand and gives it a fresh outlook.
I mean, you can't just talk about the main characters in the story all the time, can you?
Let's suppose you have this awesome idea for a plot which you know is going to hit the bookshelves. Or rather the Wattpad Libraries. And you have decided upon an equally intriguing main character who you lovingly crafted giving him/her all the points a good character should have. Everything seems absolutely perfect except for the side cast.
If you are writing a fanfic set in the Golden Trio Era, make sure not to completely ignore all others except from Harry Potter and your OC. Side cast do a lot more than just stand there and watch the story proceed.
So, develop your side characters just as lovingly as you do so with your main characters. Give them time and effort, create their back stories, develop their personalities and assign them specific traits and habits to keep them distinct.
The advantage with writing fanfiction is that most of the side cast is already developed and you don't have to take the pains of transforming an ugly duckling into a swan. But however, if you still don't pay any heed to the side cast or get them all wound up in a highly intricate web of OOC Syndrome, then the story is going to be a definite epic fail.
For instance, look at Twilight. (I might as well tell you that I hated all the books and the movies. I read the first 196 pages of the Twilight book and it nearly had me vomiting, no offense meant to anyone though). The main characters Bella and Edward are not worth talking about so that's a different case altogether but the side characters were not feeble.
Each supporting character had his/her own story and explanations to why they were a certain way. And even though I might not be so fond of Twilight altogether, I will still appreciate the effort Miss Meyer put into creating the rest of her characters.
But no, I'm not telling you to follow Twilight. No, nope, never. Main characters are just as important. What I mean is that you must give time to all your characters equally because no one would like to read about a witch or wizard who is best friends with people who do nothing except standing there and looking pretty.
