How to write a Wattpad Hit

Now, let’s get down to business. I guess I need this; to clear my conscience and clear my mind.

I lied to you.

I’m sorry. I think.

But this is the cure. The revelation. The big attempt to clean my samskaras as the Hindus would say. Clear your samskaras, your ballast, and you can free yourself from the eternal and painful cycle; the suffering; the punishment of rebirth.

This is how you write a Wattpad story. Or any horror story.

The first step is to have an idea. A concept, let’s say a man that appears behind your reflection.

You have to feel yourself into the moment. You have to stand in front of the mirror, with all your intention and all of your heart, and you have to stare at that empty space behind your reflection and you have to see him, there, with a straight nose and a perfectly symmetrical face and this smooth haircut, the hair, perfect, completely without hair loss, the way only actors in Hollywood can have it, combed to the side.

And you imagine him, standing there. Imagine what he looks like. How close does he stand? Does he keep his distance at the beginning, but then, over time, he steps closer?

A good horror story takes time. You cannot just churn it out in a few minutes. You have to feel it over days; you have to make the fear real – grow it, feed it, let it nourish and consume you at the same time.

So you write down what you saw. Make up a beginning – an amulet some strange gave you, or maybe you saw him first somewhere on public transport, standing behind someone else, or you saw him in the window of that neighbour that just died a few days back. It doesn’t matter at all what the beginning is, the reader will forget it.

What the reader won’t forget is the emotion. You need intensity. It helps if you had a neighbour that actually died a few days back. To feel real, to make it real in your head, you have to connect it to your world and your reality. The readers will feel whether you describe your imagination and when you describe Mr. Stock from across the street, whom you never actually saw except when he was working in the garden.

What you need to be careful about is the split; the line between fiction and reality. Good fiction incorporates reality. But the best fiction risks blurring the line – inside your own mind. Never, ever, let that happen.

So you see the man. You imagined him well. You can perfectly imagine his features. So write them down. Write him down. Start writing. Just let it flow; imagine what that man would do. Imagine why he stands there – whether he is just curious, or whether he wants contact, or whether he is one of those, filled with rage and hate, decades old, that just don’t stop burning.

Imagine him. Feel his hate. Make it real inside your head. Feel yourself into that man, standing there, behind your own, slightly shivering mirror image.

Do you feel the hair on your arms stand up? Good.

That is how a good story starts. Not with an idea, but with a feeling. A feeling that goes deep inside you; a feeling that grows inside you, stronger and stronger, and ever more intense. When you are writing your story this feeling should grow. Don’t try to write yourself empty; don’t try to cure yourself off your thoughts and ideas and imaginations and that man that, if you’ve done it right, you really sometimes seem to see.

Mr. Stock died. You saw the man there. And he then appeared in your mirror. Remember, it’s all just fiction. Don’t cross the borderline. Don’t let your mind wander.

What would be consistent?

The man would appear in more places. He appears in the reflection in your window. And the bus window. And the office window. And the screen of your office computer. And when you pull your mobile out of your pocket, in that short moment before you push the unlock button and while the screen is black – he is there too, smiling, maybe, or just staring.