Simple, quick tips for improving both your writing quality and your Wattpad experience. Open, friendly, and conversational, this book will give you that little info boost you need to tackle common problems and often-overlooked issues.
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A little secret about me: I *love* fairy-tale retellings! Ever since I watched Once Upon a Time as a tiny, hopeful twelve-year-old (though thinking back, I'm probably the same size I was then, I'm pretty small) I've been obsessed with retellings. However, at least to me, most fall flat. Why?
Note: This advice is based on experience from nearly writing a fairy-tale retelling myself and research I've gathered. None of this is set in stone.
1. Don't Do It For Reads
I hate to admit it, but a lot of people on Wattpad are really only writing because they want to get famous. They see the books with tons of reads and say to themselves, "I want that for myself." Some want the money and fame that come with well-known published novels like Harry Potter, some are actually doing it because they love writing. Believe me, there are much easier ways to make money and get famous. Writing really shouldn't be your first choice for that.
But I honestly doubt anyone taking the time to read this article is like that, so I'm just going to point out a very obvious fact for you: you need to want to write a retelling. You need to like retellings.
You need to choose which story you're going to retell and why. It's great to find a fairy-tale out there that you think you can build on, but unless you have a connection with that story, I don't suggest retelling it. Choose one that feels right to you, one that you have a connection to and probably is your favorite. Why are you retelling it? If it isn't because you have a special connection to it and feel that you can expand on it, you're not going to have a great time with it.
2. Get to Know the Original Story... But Not the Rest
So the reason I've done a bit of research on this is because I was planning on writing one for Trisha DS's (TrishaDS) Second Annual Golden Writer's Competition. Without going too off-topic here, she had multiple prompts for you to choose from (story ideas she hadn't gone through with), and you signed up for one. After that, you had the whole year to write the book. The one I chose was an Alice in Wonderland retelling, though she cancelled the competition and left Wattpad. Alice in Wonderland has never been my favorite, but I thought the prompt sounded interesting. Yeah, yeah. I said to choose a story you have a special connection to and I didn't. To be fair, I never ended up writing it and I probably would've had a hard time with it. Use me as a bad example here.
Trisha provided multiple sources of inspiration for us, though I realized they produced the opposite effect for me. Why? They weren't the original source. While these sources (movies, mainly) helped her, as they were her favorite retellings, they were already retellings!
