For The Love Of Writing

When A Name Just Isn't Enough

It's time to skip over every other important aspect that I could talk about and get right into the good stuff. 

Let's talk about characters. 

Unique characters are one of the biggest reasons that a reader is going to continue reading your story. Coming up with an entirely new person who doesn't bare any resemblance to other characters in different stories can oftentimes be very difficult. This is why every single genre seems to have their own array of stereotypical characters that we just can't seem to get rid of. 

If I have to read another story that includes a bad boy, some nerdy girl, and some pointless guy who's in the story solely for a love triangle, then I'm going to scream. 

Don't get me wrong, these are some classic character stereotypes that can be used to form a great story. But the use of these characters is becoming so worn out that they've lost all of their value. There's nothing unique or memorable that comes along with these sort of characters anymore, they're all so plain now. 

I've fallen victim to abusing popular character archetypes in the past and woah did that story crash and burn. It's still up on Wattpad actually with an incredibly original title (you'll see why this is sarcastic in just a moment) and the most cliche line of characters and storyline you'll ever see on this website. 

"The Bad Boy, The Best Friend, and The Nerd."

That's genuinely what it was titled. It was my first ever book on Wattpad and I made the terrible mistake of joining in on the bad boy, best friend, or nerd craze that was floating around. Mostly because that seemed like the typical love interests in every single story on Wattpad and in my mind I was thinking, "if I just write like all of these other authors and use similar characters then that's how I can make it big in the genre."

Terrible idea. 

We'll get more into how incredibly hard it is to make it big in such incredibly high trafficked genres on Wattpad later on in the story. Right now, I just want to get the point across that if you aren't successful coming up with original characters then, nine times out of ten, you're not going to be successful coming up with an original story. And I've learned while writing on here that people aren't looking for the same old story over and over. Originality is almost essential when it comes to writing on Wattpad. 

Take my story "The Girl Who Stutters and The Boy Who Mutters" for example. I believe it was my fourth book to start writing yet somehow became my most popular bringing in around 4.9 million reads. Had I not written this book, I wouldn't have understood how important it was to stray far away from the status quo when it comes to writing on Wattpad. 

As far as I've been able to find there isn't another person who's written about a speech deficiency on this platform that has anything over one hundred thousand reads right now. And I've looked through many different books in the category, none of them specifically centering about the problem itself. I believe that one of the main reasons my story did so well compared to others wasn't only because of my snazzy way of writing things, but mainly the characters. 

My main character, although introverted, isn't necessarily idententifable as a nerd. She's more of just a normal teenager who's suffered in the past because of her speech impediment and as an effect of that is more closed off than others. Then, of course, there's Scott who was extremely popular at their high school and did bully her from time to time. But you'll notice that, although he's very cocky and arrogant, he doesn't have a lot of the qualities that Wattpad's notorious 'bad boy' characters seem to have. He isn't known for sleeping around, starting fights with other people, having some terrible past, etc.