Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Five Skills Towards Becoming A Better Webnovel Writer

I still write in this book? Well, apparently, when I think of something worth saying! As some of you know, my web novels have been doing decent lately, and I've also been helping a lot of upstart authors get a footing in their writing. That said, a question popped into my head that I found particularly interesting, so I starting dwelling on it. Eventually, I realized it'd make a great topic to discuss in Wattpad 101, and so here we are.

That question is, "What Skills Do You Need to Work On To Be A Web Novel Author?" No, I'm not talking about "writing well" or "having good grammar". Those are the expected easy answers. Fundamentally, if you want to write web novels, you need to be able to write them in a readable and interesting way. So, I wanted to branch out from that norm and think more about the fundamental NONE writing skills that I needed and still need to work on to produce web novels.

There is a distinct difference between what it takes to write a good story, and what it takes to be a successful writer of web novels. It was perhaps a distinction I didn't make before, but as I focus more on web novel writing and less on novel publication, it's a distinction that I realize more people on Wattpad ought to make. These skill sets may not have any use to the standard writer making a manuscript and sending it to a publisher, but for those of us out on the line earning fans with our weekly releases, there are just some skills that are really useful. 

Fives the charm, so here is my list of five skills you should master to be a successful web novel author!

1) Fight Writer's Block / Learn to Write When You Don't Want to.

This is a no brainer, but many people probably don't think of it as something that needs to be learned and practiced. Yet, being able to force yourself to write is a bit of a skill itself. Freezing and struggling to come up with something to write is a problem all writers have, but if you want to get good at writing in the long-term and on a schedule, you're going to need to develop a good system for circumventing writer's block.

Some people will let themselves get bogged down for days, weeks, months, or even permanently if their writer's block is bad enough. If you want to release reliably, you have to make yourself write, even if you aren't in the mood. Some might say that forcing yourself to write will decrease the quality and creativity of your writing. That might be true to a certain extent, but it doesn't negate the fact that if you want to be a producer of writing content, you need to be able to produce reliably.

Thus, this skill requires you to not just write when you don't feel like it, but be able to produce with the same quality as you can when you do feel like it. That isn't to say you can't ever get writer's block, but a two hour walk should be enough to shake you out of it. If you can't get over your writer's block to the point where you're writing again within a day or two, and on a reliable basis, you're going to quickly have pipeline difficulties. 

I'd say a reliable release schedule is more important than anything else when it comes to growing a fanbase. People depend on knowing the next chapter is going to be there, so you can't just quit for three weeks because you weren't "feeling it" and still expect to grow in popularity as an author.

If this is a skill you can't wrap your head around, then there is a way around it. The best counter for a person in writer's block is to not start publishing a book until you've got a sufficient build up of chapters written. If you have the next ten chapter finished, that means on that day you just can't get yourself to write chapter eleven, it won't stop your release schedule. The trick with this is you got to make sure that you have enough chapters ahead that you don't run out before you complete the book. It also means you you need to produce extra chapters on days where your words are flowing freely to make up for days when they aren't. If that's the route you go, however, you need to learn another important skill.