Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

I Don't Write Filler

That's a pretty bold statement, and I can't honestly say that it's true. I make this statement less as an absolute truth, and more as a goal I think all writers should attempt to obtain. I first was exposed to this concept when I was in middle school. We had been reading Ethan Frome, a short story that is often considered a classic by many. I had ended up stumbling upon a review written for Ethan Frome from an allegedly sexist, famous author. Despite Ethan Frome being written by a woman, he greatly praised it, and there was one sentence that stuck out for me and has continued to remain in my thoughts to this day.

"There was not a single word wasted."

Sorry, I can't find the original review, nor do I remember the author who made it, but for some reason, that particular line caught in my mind. Ethan Frome is a very succinct story. From beginning to end, it attempts to tell a very simple tale, and it does so marvelously.

Certainly, bloat is a problem for a lot of writers. I already have a chapter about certain words that get added to writing and serve to just bloat it out. A lot of it can be cut out, and many of the "pacing" issues we feel justify our "just" and various adverbs are more in our head than something that actually enhances the reading experience. This chapter is not here to talk about bloated words. To be honest, I've always been on the fence about this, and while being more succinct in your writing works in most cases, there is always the exception where adding a little bloat can improve readability.

So this chapter is not about writing the most refined work possible. I have chapters you can read to help you on that. This chapter instead focuses on fillers. This isn't to be confused with the filler introduction chapter, which is a very particular type of filler. This is just here to talk about fillers in general. What are fillers? A filler is a writing put there to fill in a word count or to get from point A to point B. Sometimes, it's a means of poor transitioning. Sometimes, it's a means of just keeping the scene from feeling short. Either way, it should be avoided in most writing. 

Look, I get how this works. You want to write the next chapter for your book, so you write out a list breaking down the main points in the chapter. 

-She gets up. 

-She talks to her best friend.

-She falls in a hole.

-She finds the magic crystal.

-She's told she's a magical princess by a talking cat.

However, in your limited knowledge and expertise, writing all that happening only takes you 500 words. So, what do you do? You fill out the chapter to reach an arbitrary word count. You end up describing her brushing her teeth and eating breakfast. Then you describe not just her best friend, but her parents, her favorite color, and her boyfriend's information. She falls into the hole, then wonders around aimlessly for twenty minutes, maybe meets a bat, and then finally she gets her hands on the magic crystal.

It's like the fetch quests in video games. Those randomly generated quests in Bethesda stuff where you're basically doing the exact same thing over and over and game developers want to convince you infinite repeatable quests is fun. They're not fun, no one wants to play them, we just want to do the requirements needed to get to the next thing that IS fun. And therein lies the problem with filler.

Writing stuff just to fill out the word count is just boring. It makes things take longer, and it causes that reader's fatigue I mentioned a few chapters ago. My urge to skip is never greater than during some filler where you're going through the motions until the next cool scene happens. 

A lot of web novels these days lean heavily on that. It's not as big of a deal on Wattpad from what I've seen, but when you go to web novels or fanfiction, a lot of people try to replicate popular stories written in China. A lot of writers in China get paid by the word... so their writing styles often involve them finding a formula, and then endlessly repeating that formula as long as they can keep the readers hooked. Many of these books go 2000-3000 chapters. In these stories, I'd go so far as to say 90% of about everything you read is just filler. It might be action filler, with characters fighting and bombs exploding... but that can only grab a person's attention so long before they start to lose interest, as any Micheal Bay movie can attest. Writing for maximum word count and dragging your readers along for 1000 chapters is a skill all unto itself, and I think more people rage quite Chinese novels than actually ever finish them. So, let's focus back on the filler.