Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Git Gud: Some Advice for The Youngest Writers

I've received some mind-boggling messages from young authors before, lamenting over the fact that they don't have reads, stars, or comments on their account. I don't want to single any individual author out, but I'll just say that I've received many of these messages and so this isn't targeted at any single person. Most of the time, the person messaging me is 11-12 years of age. Ignoring the fact that the age limit for Wattpad is 13 and you're not allowed to create an account if you are under the age of 13 (just so you know, you're not allowed to drink, drive, or smoke too), there is a trend on these profiles. They all do the same silly mistakes over and over again, and I've no choice but to write a chapter pointing these mistakes out.

This should come off as pure common sense to most writers, and it certainly relates to things I've said in previous chapters, but since I doubt most people read all 100 chapters I've released (especially in the 12-year-old demographic), I feel the need to once again write a chapter summarizing some of the points I think younger writers need to understand.

This may be some hard truths for some of you, so please approach this with all the best intentions and try to grow from it.

Capitalize the Title of Your Book

Titles are capitalized. I know that sometimes we don't capitalize every word in a title. Above, I didn't capitalize the article and preposition (the, of), but when in doubt, just capitalize every word. I say this because I see a sad number of authors that don't capitalize the title of their books.

You should capitalize titles. This should include the chapter titles. You may be able to make an argument for a stylistic choice to not capitalize chapter titles in certain situations, especially if you're surrounding it with some sexy word magic.

_-_-*chapter 1*-_-_

If you feel like that looks weird and unbalanced when you capitalize it, fine, don't capitalize it. But I think there is maybe a 0.00001% chance you have a legitimate reason for not capitalizing the title of your book, and when I see this, there is only one thought in my mind. How lazy. People will judge your work by how it looks on the surface, and if you can't even be bothered to make the first word they see grammatically correct, you will not get stars and comments. It's as simple as that.

Create a Book Cover

I think I've made it clear in this book that the thing that bugs me the most about any writing is laziness. I mean, I'm a lazy author. I rarely strive for perfect grammar. If you search through my work you will see there, their, and they're misused. I have no love for editing and at the end of the day the things I put online are hardly "finished" so much as "good enough".

That said, there comes a certain level of laziness where even I have to put my foot down. Not creating a book cover for your book (or just slapping up a picture like your book is a facebook profile), is on top of the list. There are numerous book cover makers, including one built into Wattpad 101. Yet, time and again, I see people just slap a picture up there without even revealing the title... and that just looks lazy.

Once again, if you can't even spend the time writing a blurb, posting a book cover, or writing your title grammatically correct, why should I spend the time reading what you wrote? This is base level stuff here. Don't feel like you can do a good job? Then ask someone to do it for you. There is an entire group of book cover makers on Wattpad, and you can get someone to generate a cover for you. I explain how in the "Getting Help on Wattpad" Chapter.

Write More Than One Paragraph

The Wall-O-Texts need to stop. This is stuff you should have learned in 3rd grade. I know this, because my son is in 3rd grade and he was learning about this. Paragraphs need to be broken up. Even if your only understanding of paragraphs is every 4 sentences (that's how I learned it in elementary school), that's still better than the wall-o-text.