Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

How I Learned to Describe My Books Before People Read Them!

I think I established in the previous chapter that publishable stories and Wattpad stories are different. They can be treated differently, and as a writer or a critic, keeping an eye on what you're trying to write matters. That said, there is one thing on Wattpad that most people don't do, but everyone should. That is tell people what your book is about before they start reading.

This seems like a rehash of the chapter on writing blurbs and summaries titled "How to Write a Blurb/Summary". However, this isn't really what I mean when I say tell people what your book is about. This is a problem we commonly run into in The Science Fiction Group run by shalonsims and a problem I am just as guilty of as everyone else. That is: we make assumptions.

We assume readers can quickly ascertain the point of our books. Not just what happens in the book, but what to expect when reading it. The tone. The genre. The content. However, in an environment like Wattpad, simply giving your book a summary and a genre is usually not enough information. This is important for critics, who are expected to often read only between 1-5 chapters of your story before they tell you what they think. 'What your story is' might affect what they think about your story.

One can argue that a GOOD author will make 'what a story is' self-evident. Maybe that's true when you have professional artists designing your book cover, professional publishers writing your blurb, and wikipedia entry for someone who wants to know a little more before investing in your story. However, us Wattpaders don't have that, and no offense to anyone, our stories are submitted right alongside casual stories written by young kids, fart jokes, and rant books. It's easy to confuse satire with just another teen drama; it's easy to confuse convention from something breaking with convention.

The problem is easy to see when it comes to video games. Angry mothers upset that video games with indecent content are being targeted to their kids, even though most video games have a rating system, and most children cannot buy a game that has over an M rating. That's fine and dandy, but as a parent, an M rating is very vague. Halo is M rated. It consists of a space marine shooting space monsters which spill blue liquid. There is little swearing. There is no nudity. I have no problem with my kid playing this game. Then there is GTA V and Saints Row. Games where they are actively committing crimes, playing with strippers, and whipping naked guys in ball gags strapped to chariots. Or Fallout 3 and 4, which include excessive swearing, and dead corpses hanging from hooks and mysterious 'meatbags'. Or Dragon Age, and the bare-breasted enemies like Desire demons and broodmothers.

Suffice it to say, these games are all really different in content, and even though most M ratings have 200 characters to describe WHY they think a game is M rated, it's still not enough to really make an informed decision without having played it yourself.

Now take that to Wattpad. We don't really know what we're getting into when reading your book... and there is enough content on here in the same genre, that it is really easy to think your book is something else. Wattpad has children reading it. Do you want them reading your hardcore lust fantasy? Oh sure, you don't technically "show" anything, so you feel safe giving it a PG-13, but still... content matters. And no one will know what your novel is unless they read the content.

Age aside, people have tastes. This is an international site, and you'll have english speakers from all over the world reading it. Some people will think some things are inappropriate, and somethings aren't. They want to read a fantasy, but they don't want to read your sex fantasy. These kind of differences are important. 

Most people try to make there first chapter indicative of their entire book to tip people off, but that doesn't always work.Every once in a while I see posts complaining about this. Someone writes a really heavy or dark chapter for their first chapter, but that's not really the theme of their story. They're scared that someone will read that, think the story will only get darker from there, and not realize it's really a romantic comedy about a girl who had bad times, but is learning to laugh again.