Your Stories are Bad and You Should Feel Bad

Special: The Problem with Wattpad

I like Wattpad, I truly do. Here, I can be my true self, a beautiful disaster of literary proportions.

Still, there are some things that irk me on this site. So, for the first time in ever, I decided that I would rant about the problems with Wattpad, and then tell you what I’m trying to do to fix them. Yes, you read that correctly, I, the great usurper, am trying to do something good. Of course, I’m doing it my way, so that means that a few tears will be shed if I come even close to succeeding.

This might be fun.

Let’s start!

So, it wouldn’t be fair to just point out the bad on this site. To be impartial, I would also need to point out the good. Fortunately, I’m about as impartial as double-decker cookie brownies are good for your health. Screw that stuff about integrity, I want to lay blame on things other than myself for the failures I have encountered; today the blame will be pointed at Wattpad!

The Invisible Readers.

Wattpad has a lot of visitors, more than any other writing-related site on the internet (that I’m aware of). Yet, at the same time, the site encourages its readers to be, for lack of a better term, invisible. Difficulty posting comments, the need to be logged on, the small comment buttons on the mobile version. All of these little things lend to a population that does not need to interact with the media they are consuming.

Therefore, it’s safe to say that we, the writers, are all the weaker for it. Comments are our life-blood. We need them. Is this solely Wattpad’s fault? Well, no, not really. Most sites where there’s the option to comment will garner some talking, but usually it’s just a tiny flock from the much bigger crowd that do so. Nonetheless, the lack of encouragement in the site design doesn’t help.

 

The Gorram Formatting.

If I had a penny (or a dime, we don’t do pennies here no more) for every badly-indented, weirdly-spaced story I ran into on this site, I’d have enough to hire a half-decent hooker for every member of the Wattpad staff.

The problem here lies in the god-awful way in which Wattpad handles written files. Indentations are out of the question unless you want your story to look like an M.C. Escher print. Spacing between paragraphs is handled by the god of chance, and fonts aren’t touchable. I try very hard to make myself presentable, and what you see here is my best effort. Still, I know a dozen other writing sites with far, far simpler and more effective systems for handling text.

Gosh, I miss being able to export directly from G-Docs....

Would it be that hard to make a usable system that allows for easy formatting on the writer’s part? I can’t answer that question. I’m not a programmer, I’m a whiner.

The Competition. 

For such a large site, with a limited amount of viewers and an expanding quantity of things for those same viewers to look at, it’s normal to have some competition. My complaint comes not from the presence of competition, but for the lacklustre way in which its doled out.

I like competition. I want more of it. It stirs the blood and stokes the flames of creativity. Having to fight for dominance and position is a good thing. Many other writing sites that I’ve been on encourage it, usually through slight and subtle nods.

Wattpad doesn’t. In fact, there’s the air of “everyone can succeed if they try hard enough” that’s soaked into every pore of this site. That’s some serious bull. Someone will have the most reads. Someone will get the most followers. Someone will be noticed by some passing publisher. Not everyone.

This may be an odd complaint, but I find that the lack of enforced competitiveness is killing us all a little.

The tighter the competition, the closer the entries have to be to perfection. You’re far less likely to have terrible grammar ridden stories if the writers of those same stories know that they need every little edge they can get to succeed.

Social Attention.

I was going to omit this particular complaint, if only on the grounds that it wasn’t big enough to warrant the effort to write. Then, Wattpad changed the format of every writer’s profile. As of this writing, it’s still in beta, and subject to change. Nonetheless, I doubt that the changes will move away from this one aspect.

The site is becoming a social one. That, on the surface, isn’t that bad. After all, talking to each other won’t kill us (well, I might get a few more threats and rants, but those are amusing more than anything else). But, as of right now, I see the attention and focus of the layout focusing more on the who’s who then on the writing and stories.

Wattpad has a choice. It can either become a site for stories, or one for writers.

This has one obvious consequence. If Watty sides with the writing, then stories that are popular fodder will rise to the top. Yes, that means more boy-band semi-erotic fanfiction written by adolescents with more blood in their ovaries than in their brains. It's about as bad as it is unavoidable.

On the flip side, if Wattpad becomes a socially-focused site, we will then have a brand new issue. Writers will be striving to become popular. How does a writer become popular? Some of you dimwits might think that it's by writing well. You're wronger then the gremmer in this sintence.

You don’t become popular by being good at something online. You become popular by being scandalous. A twat like me will have better chances of succeeding then a hard-working, honest Joe who gives it his all but still remains humble.

The competition will shift to one of “who can make more noise.”

I think I’ll stop there. But I will go on in the next chapter and point out a few ways that you (yes, even little old you) can help make this cesspool smell a little less like dung.

Keep warm, stay cool.