1. Does your book contain a romantic plot?
Make it a subplot or delete it.
Reason: By removing yourself from the Wattpad mainstream that is largely associated with badly written, repetitive romance themes, you already make your book look much smarter than average. It is a very easy way to stand out.
2. Do you read your book and feel like it is absolutely lame?
Add some controversy.
Reason: If you have written a book where there is absolutely nothing interesting going on, chances are that writing just isn't for you. However, controversy draws humans like light draws the moths. You need no skill to make it happen, it's their nature.
For example, as of February 2019, a dystopia where clairvoyant oranges with very unsubtle megalomaniac tendencies descend from the skies with the promise of making the world a better place by having all future bad guys be aborted would run quite well.
(Alternatively, read more books, see what makes them good and actually learn how to write.
It will take longer, but bring you less hate.)
3. Is your book's protagonist boring as brick?
Stop making that thing a cooler version of yourself, let it have its own life.
If that did not work or you did not do that in the first place, give it some unpredictability and/ or make it run into messed up situations that it doesn't know how to deal with (yet).
Reason: Just works every time. The character development basically writes itself.
(Prom night does not count, unless you REALLY give it a unique spin. Like Carrie from Stephen King.)
4. Is your world a dystopia or otherwise action-orientated story?
a) Do not imitate Maze Runner. Do not imitate The Hunger Games. Do not imitate Divergent.
Ideally, do not imitate at all.
But whatever you are doing, do not imitate those three.
Reason: Everyone will see what you are doing. Even from 100 miles away, while being enshrouded in a darkness that the mines of Moria would be envious of, it would not be any less obvious.
Wattpad is filled with these.
b) If superpowers and special heritages are involved, do not make them the solution to everything, do not allow them to infinitely increase their strength and do not make them the big plot twists. Make them tools to solve and/ or create problems instead.
Reason: It has just been seen way too often and it will over time suck the life out of your story.
This is the sad fate of lots and lots of Shounen anime and Wattpad stories with promising beginnings. It is also why Superman is boring.
c) Kill the chosen one.
Reason: It's the only way. The Bible did it, too, and look how popular it became.
d) Do not create an infertility crisis where there is only a few or even just one pretty female left to procreate with.
Reason: We all know how this plays out without even reading it. However, it might work if you make her a fat ugly lesbian who is also a criminal mastermind. It should give you a lot of controversy bonus points. e) The beauty of darkness is that you cannot see through it. It gives you no choice but to explore.
Meaning: Just plastering gore and hopelessness all over the place is not going to cut it if you want a good story. In a sense, you have to give your world's darkness itself a character.
For example, interesting zombie apocalypse stories are most often not good because of the zombies, but because of how they bring out the extreme sides of people trying to survive it.
Other example is the Joker from The Dark Knight, that one should be self-explanatory.
Isnt done yet.
