Writer Tips

Make Your Wattys Story Immediate

This year, the Wattys judges are looking for stories that are IMMEDIATE, ENGAGING and COMMERCIAL. 

What is "Immediate"?

Immediate means the story gets right to the point. We want the audience invested from the very first chapter. Your first chapter should give them a taste of the reading experience they're about to have.

From Chapter 1, your reader should think "this is why I picked up this story." How does this work?

Put the hook in the first chapter.

The hook is the first major event in your story that sets the tone, establishes the characters, and gives the reader something to invest in. 

Examples of hook:

● A body is found gruesomely murdered

● The ignored fourth son suddenly becomes king after the rest of his family dies in a mysterious accident

● The main character witnesses aliens arriving on earth

● Getting trapped in an elevator with a cute stranger

● Finding out your new boyfriend is the son of a mafia don

In all of these cases, A successful hook is emotional, specific, and establishes the stakes and tone of the story. These are high-tension, high-emotion moments that immediately grab the reader's interest and promise them a certain kind of reading experience. Start your story on a note that's high tension, high action, high emotion, or all of the above.

NOT a hook:

● Waking up and getting ready to go to school or work

● Background information on the history of the kingdom

● Explanation of alien biology

● The protagonist's normal day in the life

These examples don't work as hooks because they're not focused on the present action of the story (the "front story"). Backstory and exposition don't go in the first chapter; sprinkle them throughout the chapters that follow. While it's common in a lot of novels and TV shows to show the protagonist's life before the story, the techniques that work in movies and TV shows aren't always the best choice for Wattpad. In Wattpad stories, the time available to hook the reader is really limited, so we want to focus on the moment of change where the story starts and not the circumstances leading up to it.

Story vs Story World: Focus on the Protagonist

Keep in mind that the inciting incident is focused around the protagonist and not the world. If your story is set in the zombie apocalypse, the conditions that bring about the zombie apocalypse may or may not be the inciting incident. If your protagonist is a scientist trying to stop the zombie pathogen from getting out, then the inciting incident could be the moment where the beaker breaks and the virus escapes. Whereas if your protagonist is a teenager trying to navigate life in their small town where half the inhabitants already have the zombie virus, the actual apocalypse itself is backstory and the inciting incident is something more personal to the protagonist, like finding out their brother is still alive. In both cases, the inciting incident is something that drastically changes the protagonist's life and challenges their assumptions about the world, but the stories they kick off are very different. 

Determining your Inciting Incident

If you're having trouble thinking of an inciting incident, here are some questions that might help:

● What is the moment where everything changes for the protagonist? 

● What new problem does the protagonist need to solve?