SomewhatDistracted Critiques

Read Mah Storee...

If you've followed me long enough, you know that I often go into the IYW club. On any given day, you can find someone desperate for reads and that person will ask, "How can I get reads?" Who hasn't seen that?

I don't always go into those threads, but I do like to help people. When I go into those threads, this is what I tend to say (more or less, depending on my level of sloth for the day):

Let me tell you how I’ve gotten reads on Seriously, Horrible. I promise people laughter and then I make their sides hurt. I don't stop there, though. I get them sent to their rooms and I also make people stare at the insane person who just can't stop laughing.

 What YOU can do to gain reads:

 1) Have a story with an attention-grabbing cover, a great blurb and a first chapter that makes the reader want to click over to the next, and so on.

 2) Have an interesting profile. People are known to follow others purely because a profile has caught their interest.

 3) Update your story regularly. People don’t want to read half of a story. They want all of it. They don’t want to invest in a story that probably will never be finished.

 4) Tag your story with appropriate keywords.

 5) Get active in the clubs. Be helpful, courteous, and memorable. If you’re a jerk, people will remember that, but it probably won’t help you gain reads.

 6) Make friends. Establishing relationships is the secret to Wattpad. Your friends will probably check out your work if you are checking out theirs.

 7) Read other people’s stories and leave meaningful feedback that proves you read the story. “LOL” and “Plz update” do not count as meaningful.

 8) Do not advertise on other people’s walls or in the non-SYS threads. You should not want your story to be equated with spam.

 9) Do not get involved in deals. Critique-for-critique is okay because you will be learning about writing. Read-4-Read, Comment-4-Comment, and Promotion-4-Promotion don’t work very well. Your goal should be for people to read your story because they want to, not because they have to. Promotions only work if the person is promoting because they love your story. If it’s done by someone known for promoting numerous stories each week, your story becomes associated with spam. If it’s promoted by someone who actually loves your story, thousands of reads could come your way.

 10) Did I mention to read and comment on other people’s stories? That deserves four more posts.

 11) Realize that every post you make is an advertisement for your story. You are allowed to mention your story’s title and make it relevant to the conversation as I did earlier. (And I’m sure I was able to lure at least one of you to the story to see if I was lying). You don’t have to mention your story, though. If people see you being helpful or memorable, or if they just plain like you, they’re going to click on your profile. Make sure what you have will keep them there.

Now, that number eleven is an interesting one. Every time I do my little spiel about how I get reads, Seriously, Horrible gains reads. If I do the little non-aggressive promotion well enough, I gain votes, comments, and followers. Every single time. For whatever reason, it's like people have to check and see if that story is as funny as I claim it to be. Sometimes, I'm lucky enough that one of the thread's commenters will come and say that 1) it works; they checked out my story, and 2) it's even funnier than I said it would be. And guess what happens? That brings even more people to my story. And all I had to do was tell people how I gain reads.

What I did was make my story relevent to the conversation. I can do that with writer's block and a slew of other topics as well. But...it's important that you don't do this in every single post. You never want it to "appear" to be an ad. You want the main focus to be on how helpful that post is...and you never want to link to your story.