70 Deadly Wattpad Sins (The Book Of Evil Advice!)

Sin #32: Chapter Length (What are you writing, a novel?)

Since the dawn of Wattpad time, authors and readers alike have asked this age-old question: is it better to have shorter or longer chapters—

Shorter. Next sin, please.

W-Wow, really? Not even up for debate, huh?

I'm an efficient guy. If there's a shortcut to success, you can bet your buttons that I'd rather take the easy road. Working hard comes second to working smart, after all — luckily, I've never worked hard in my life and will never be qualified to write a full chapter on either of those topics.

But Tyro31, you're a writing genius and an insightful master of the literary arts! (He's making me say this, he writes all of my lines)

I guess you're right. Maybe I could impart some of my treasured wisdom on this divided matter. The answer isn't the same for all platforms, but if we're strictly talking Wattpad success, shorter lengths are the clear winner.

It's simple math. Maths? Maths. As a reader, when you're looking through an author's catalogue and you see their number of reads and votes in the thousands, that's reassuring. Each 1k tells you that people are drawn to this book, so it must be good. You want to read stories that are polished instead of the usual garbled mess of grammar and unresolved plots.

The next question is, how can I get higher stats for my story? If you guessed spamming several 10-word chapters every single day, you'd be right!

This post is cancer. You're cancer.

Libra, actually. But I get what you're saying. Just because you can do something utterly heinous and beneficial, that doesn't mean you should. For scientific reasons though, let's make wild and uneducated assumptions about Wattpad's algorithm. Okay? Great!

You might have noticed a stat within your story's Statistics page (see Sin #19: Know Your Followers, Part 2) called 'Completed Reads'. This places value in the audience's retention of your story — or rather, how many users are reading your chapter from start to finish without stopping.

If you're anything like me while reading a physical copy of a snoozefest, you're also giving up and using your bookmark halfway through particularly-long chapters. Sometimes, you may not even come back to the book at all. Sadly, this is the main flaw of longer titles: keeping you interested mid-read.

The internet is becoming a place of shorter attention spans, where the clicks mean more than the actual content does. Just by having a higher number of parts in your story, your numbers will go up without any extra effort on your part.

I feel like this is the kind of dirty tactic you should NOT be advocating.

The reason I'm not fully on-board with spamming is because of a personal theory. You can choose to believe it or not, but there must be a catch for why we don't see a whole bunch of empty one-letter-per-chapter books in the Hot section.

If someone reads your 100-word chapter from start to finish, Wattpad might give you +1 cool points. However, getting someone to read your 1000-word chapter is a much more impressive feat, netting you +10 cool points. The more cool points you have, the higher the Top # rating you'll achieve!

When people search for books in your genre, they'll generally use the Hot section to see what's good. You need to be visible here for as long as possible via several methods (high ratio of completed reads, regular updates) in order to stay relevant.

So where is the line drawn? How much of your story should you write per piece, without sacrificing reads/votes or your Hot meter?

Anywhere between 1000-2000 is ideal. Less than that and the story's pacing would suffer, but going higher will guarantee that some readers will start dropping off.

Are you kidding? That's not nearly long enough for my complex plot needs!

You asked for the Wattpad answer. If this was another platform like Kindle, I'd tell you to make each chapter longer than the Queen's immortal biography. Your lengths have to compliment the current audience's attention span, which is mostly hyper ADD-riddled teens who can't keep their eyes on a single webpage for more than a few minutes.

That's ageist.

Shut up, darn kids. Listen to your elders and start cutting up those chapters into digestible chunks! If there's a POV switch, no matter how short it ends up being, flesh it out into its own chapter. If you have transitions within single chapters, decide on whether they can be broken into self-contained parts.

Notice that this method reduces your individual chapter length, but expands your overall word count. If your chapters are still falling short, look at Sin #23: Being Sensible for tips on how to draw out the hidden potential of your sentences by not being a stale fart.

In case you don't believe that Wattpad would favour tighter chapter lengths, you might be more familiar with Youtube's reverse situation. Content creators are compelled to make videos exactly 10 minutes long for increased ad revenue, but going too far beyond that means people won't watch all the way through — hence why every video gets stretched from a 60-second topic to 60 seconds of facts and 540 seconds of random filler to keep you watching.

Ad revenue is an entirely different monster, but the algorithms aren't all that unique. Aim for that sweet spot where you can balance +70% Completed Reads and also max out your chapter length for the highest score.

----

I know for a fact that some of you are not going to like this advice. Honestly, I don't blame you. This is definitely not a good trend, but it is one that follows the 3 rules of the internet:

1. Be short (chapter lengths)
2. Be consistent (regular updates)
3. Be entertaining (don't suck)

Don't think of this as sheer quantity over quality. Rather, consider each chapter as its own short story and make THAT quality the best it can be! A book is nothing if not the sum of its parts, right?

The benefits of writing shorter chapters will make it easier for you to pump out new ones each week, as well as giving you higher stats to work with. If Person A has one 4000-word chapter and Person B has four 1000-word chapters, Person B will always have more reads/votes despite having the same amount of content. I wish this wasn't the case, but that's how it works.

Just keep in mind that if you abuse your chapter lengths and don't make them interesting enough, none of these tips will matter. Work smart, not hard; but also work hard.

TL;DR. Make it shorter next time.

1097 words for one measly sin? Wow, I should really take my own advice.