Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Sex and Wattpad's Mature Rating System

In Hollywood, there is a taboo. Never make a movie that is rated NC-17. Many directors have skirted the line of NC-17. For certain films, it's considered a mountain they must forge, because at the end of it, they must struggle to keep their rating R. Movie theaters won't play movies that are NC-17. Many stores won't sell DVDs that are NC-17. NC-17 is box office killer.

So directors have all kinds of tricks, since ultimately, ratings are decided by a small committee of presumably humans. They'll toss in inappropriate scenes even they think is too inappropriate. That way, when they get an NC-17 rating, they can cut those scenes out, and compared to before, it looks better, allowing them to get through the cracks with the real inappropriate scenes they desperately want to keep. Matt and Trey of Southpark fame are obvious examples of this censorship issue, however, I think every director has had to come up against this at some point.

Even in the modern age, PG-13 is becoming the new R. In order to increase sales, remakes and sequels to once R rated movies are now PG-13, choosing to avoid blood and swear words so a few more people will bring their kids to watch the movie at the theater. So you're probably asking yourself at this point why I am talking about movie ratings.

I'm talking about movie ratings because Wattpad has their own version of the dreaded NC-17 rating. That is, of course, the Mature rating. The Mature rating seems to be given fairly arbitrarily. I don't know if it's an event that is reviewed by people. I think, more than likely, there is a bot they designed that trolls through the archives looking for key words and phrases. When it finds enough to hit a critical number, it automatically changes the book to Mature.

Mature ratings, by the way, keep your book from being put on the top list. It will never be featured. People will only be able to find the book if they directly look for the book. For someone who is looking to bring in new readers, it's the equivalent of an NC-17 rating for a movie director. It's death.

Some of you might be thinking that more books ought to be rated Mature. Some writers treat Wattpad like their own version of literotica (I don't know what that is, I heard about it from a friend, quit judging me!), posting whatever sexual fantasies they can and hoping no one notices before they hook a half dozen sexually confused readers. For every girl wanting to be like Stephanie Meyer, there is another who wants to write the next 50 Shades of Grey.

I don't really have any opinion on the subject. People trying to pass off extreme sexual content to 13 year olds can be said to be as bad as someone passing porn out to children. I'd argue that any kid could get into literotica (whatever that is, kids, never go there) and read to their hearts content, and it's not exactly like anyone would likely stop them. So I don't really care if there is a "mature" community on this forum that likes reading about throbbing hard man bodies and luscious bodacious females. If I had any complaint, I'd say that proper labeling is essential. This goes back to my blurb advice time and time again. Be very clear about what kind of book you have. I don't care if you write a sex book, but I should know it's a sex book before I get to chapter 2 and find him whipping it out.

However, Wattpad's Mature bot isn't a particularly well designed bot. You may or may not be surprised to find out that this very Wattpad 101 book has been labeled mature on three separate occasions. For Wattpad's defense, it only took a quick email and 24-48 hours to resolve the issue. They were quick, asked no questions, and were apologetic for labeling my book as Mature. Maybe some of you aren't that surprised. This is a book where I've labeled every term for butt and breast that exists, have depicted a character that has been threatened with rape no less than 4 times, and not to mention my use of saucy language like "Sciddily doodle" and "Justin Bieber".

However, the Maturation process itself leaves something to be desired. For example, there is no pre-warning about your content. When I post my chapter, there is nothing that pops up, suggesting that the content may be questionable. It'd be nice if there was a selectivity filter on this site, so that at the time of submission, a warning pops up and says, You've use the word F**k 50 times in this book so far while you have it labeled as pg-13, it may get flagged as a Mature book, are you sure you want to post?

THAT would be useful. Yes, we should be able to decide the rating of our books ourselves, but advisements and warnings are a lot better than randomly switching stuff later on. At least, when something gets Mature, you can kind of be looking for it. The current system? It barely even tells you when your book gets labeled mature. Not only do you get a scarlet letter, they just slap it on your back while you're not looking and then snicker while you walk around, wondering why everyone is avoiding you.

When you do find out your story got flagged as Mature, then it's too late. You can't just delete the last chapter. You can't just fix a few words. You have file a request, demanding to have your mature rating dropped. And trust me, the path to emailing them is wrought with self-help links and a general unwillingness to allow you to email them for help unless you really really need it. And yet, there is no automated system for removing the mature rating. You HAVE to go through a person to get it done.

To make matters worse, it's never really clear why you got flagged in the first place. Did you curse one too many times? Was it that f word that one character used three chapters ago? How about when you referred to one character as a "badass". Gasp! Did I just set myself up for another Mature flag? When you're writing a story that skirts the line between Pg-13 and Mature, it can be quite the frustration.

And like movie directors that PG-13-ify a formerly R rated movie (Die Hard, anyone?), sometimes the thought of cutting out the curse words and the violence will just ruin the best parts of your story. I've tasted this dilemma personally, in fact. If you remember RPG: Seductress, which popped up for a month and then disappeared, that was actually a book I tried to "PG-13"ify in order to get feedback, planning to add the sauciness later. The entire book didn't turn out how I wanted it because of that removal of indecent content, so I tossed it away and rewrote it. The rewritten version won't be going on wattpad, because it'll get a Mature rating, and subsequently I won't get any feedback on it.

The thing is, this entire thing could be resolved if wattpad just created a mature section for wattpaders to chill in. Booksie has its booksiesilk (I have no clue what that is, I heard it from a friend, shut up, leave me alone!), and wattpad could just have a mature genre, with mature rating board, and a mature forum. Edit: Shortly after putting this up I was informed about Wattpad: After Dark. It's an app for their 17+ content. To the best of my knowledge, this has no presence on the website and is an app only. Plus... I feel like there needs to be something between Pg-13 and Mature. It'd be like if movie theaters didn't have rated R, and every movie that wasn't PG-13 got treated like a NC-17 movie. You know? 

Don't get me wrong, I get why Wattpad keeps them separate. Wattpad doesn't want people seeing their site this way. It's a site that is mostly young girls, and putting in a mature section would seemingly threaten to destroy the image of this site, so they try to keep the two from intermingling. Mind you, with what I'm talking about, I'm not talking about sexual content here, even though I used site names I've never heard of and have no clue what content they have, I swear. I'm just talking about creating a place for the already existing mature rated content to exist, without being branded like a dirty word. Yes, I consider relegating them to "After Dark", an app that looks like more porn than not, is relegating them to a dark corner of the web. 

It'd also be nice if the criteria for "mature content" was given more directly. Oh, wattpad has their faqs on the subject, but "indecent content" is in the eye of the beholder, and there is no firm rule on who find what inappropriate. In a book taking place in the ghetto in 1980s Chicago, can you use the n word? How about a book about a mobster family? Can they use the F word? How violent can a torture scene be? How descriptive is descriptive? Is it mature if I talk about a throbbing manhood entering a gooey center? Or is it only inappropriate if you name them? If I call my thing steve and her thing dave, can I pound dave with steve until steve explodes? What about if I call it my thingamagiger. Where does mature lie?

Their maturity filter doesn't even hint at it. Exactly how many swear words can I use? What kind swear words? One person's mature scene is another person's not mature thing. People have large gradients of tolerance. A little bit of insight to how this formula is decided could go a long way.

Which comes around to the point. I've already stated that you need to be clear what your writing. Don't try to surprise your audience by sneaking a thingamagiger in there and hoping they like it when you suddenly slap it in their face. Wow... that kind of sounded rapey... which is exactly why it's not a good idea to do this. In both writing and sex, it's good to be very clear about what to expect. If there is any lesson in today's writing, it's that. Be clear about what you're presenting to your audience. If you try to trick them, you're coming off just as creepy as the guy who runs around flashing people on the street. Isn't that a bunch of Justin Bieber.