A rant book of things that Wattpad writers do that I find annoying and pointless. Plus topics that need to be spoken about and brought to people's attention.
I have very very little filter, so if you're someone easily offended, my rant book isn't f...
No, I'm not talking about wattpad premium even though that's a scam too, I'm talking about Wattpad's story insights tool.
I don't know how many people even know of its existence because its located inside the story analytics section under the story insights section and at the very bottom but here it is:
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I know to some it may not seem like it, but I really try not to nitpick at every little thing Wattpad does and I try to give them credit where credit is due, but charging 9.99 for something that you can do yourself for completely free?
It's completely and utterly taking advantage of new writers who don't know any better and who trust wattpad to actually help them. You might think, "oh well if they charge money it must be done by an actual person, right?"
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"The TOOL only takes published parts into account." So no, a real person will not analyze your story, it'll just be run through a bot that generates a report. Though I don't know why they make it take 24-48 hrs, maybe to make it feel like it's actually worth the money and doing something because it takes so long to generate a report on... sentence length and adverbs.
Not to mention, they brand the whole story insights thing like your story has the potential to become a paid story and they show you this:
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A graph of "Writing Styles of Top Wattpad Writers" and showing you how you compare as if comparing me to random Wattpad authors simply because they're famous for writing romcoms is supposed to mean something to me or impress me.
It's fucking gross and slightly predatory. It preys on people's hope to become like their favorite author and says "Hey spend money on us for this bot-generated report on the most minimal of things and you might become famous because you have potential!"
Anyway, I do this exact thing to my chapters myself every time I write. All you need is to educate yourself more on writing, learn to analyze your work, and use ctrl + F to search for words you think may be repetitive. You'll need to learn these things anyway for the long run if you care about the quality of your work, unless you want to pay 10 bucks for Wattpad's robot to try and tell you shit that really isn't even all that important. (If you want to REALLY know what your story is like, ask an actual human for feedback, which is also free to do and they can tell you way more than this overpriced shit could.)
I wouldn't mind it so much if they charged around 1.99 or 3.99, but even still, there are sites that do what Wattpad's insights tool does for free. I know they want to make money obviously but Wattpad would probably earn a lot of praise if theirs was free as well. It'd be the only actually helpful tool they have.
That's about all, I just saw this thing and wanted to mention it to people because I think it's quite slimy to charge so much money to those who don't know any better and to carry the narrative this can help you discover your potential.
UPDATE
I checked back on the Story Insights section and saw this,
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A few weeks after I did this rant, coincidentally Wattpad has taken down the tool. Based on the way they word it, it sounds like the new tool will be free but I'm not going to bet on it. For once Wattpad has actually done something good, I hope at least.
