Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

5 Critical Comments About Critical Commenters

Why do they do this? They do it because they enjoy it! There is something more immediate than the delay gratification of the next chapter, and that's the joy of obsessing over this one. After all, this chapter is out now, and that chapter will come then. Now is now, and then is then. When will then be now? Soon... but not soon enough. Thus, if a reader is at a point where there isn't anything else to read, they will start to dwell on what they did read.

Web novel writers face unfair criticism.

In a lot of ways, this is unfair to Web Novel authors. When you publish a book it often gets read in a single lump. Since the reader can literally read it all at once, and every break is controlled by him, he reserves judgement until the end of the story. If his mind is obsessing over what he read, he ends up reading more. When he finally does make a comment, if he does, he's commenting right after the end of the story. The emotional journey is over, and he just read the climax which might have been genuinely exciting, hyping him up for his ultimate final comment.

That doesn't happen with a web novel. Every person who reads your web novel then has to wait a day, two days, a week, or even a month for the next chapter. If they were reading everything you had, got invested after 20 back to back chapters, only to hit the final one that ends on a cliffhanger, they are going to react to said cliffhanger. Sometimes, they'll react poorly.

Raise your hand if you've ever had a commenter go on a rant about some innocuous detail being left out, when you had every intention of writing that very thing the next chapter. I bet most of you haven't raised your hand, because why the heck would you? You're in private and I'm not even there to see you raise your hand. That'd just be weird. Put your hand back down, weird person. However, I would say most of you have experienced the example above.

I don't find it particularly surprising that the vast majority of my 1-3 star reviews show that the reader only read to 2-3 chapters of the book, while anyone who seemingly has read passed the first ten chapters and actually got into the story usually gives them 4-5.

Your novels are often judged every chapter, and while I've advised in the past that you have to write chapters a bit differently with this in mind, you're still trying to tell a full, coherent story, and just because you didn't explain something fully at one point doesn't mean it wouldn't be explained by the end of the story... or more than likely... no one would care by the end of the story. It's easy to pick out things in the middle of any story, no matter how well written, but those innocuous details grow less important the farther you get away from them.

That leads us to one horrifying reality.

Your Nitpickers Are Often Your Biggest Fans

Have you ever met a Star Wars fan? A Trekkie? A Whovian? Let's go outside of scifi. Oh god, does Game of Thrones count? Anyway... how many times have fans been pissed off over something that happened in their stories. How many inane questions, annoying nitpicks, and angsty attacks have come from fans compared to casuals? Almost all of them.

That's because when you're invested in something, you care about it. You're much more likely to make a comment, or complain, when the story has you gripped. In fact, one could say someone who is truly entrance in a story doesn't even think about the creators at all, but only care about this creation.

At its worst, it creates people unable to separate a character from the actor playing that character. How many death threats have actors received for their character because they did something they didn't like? At its lower levels, its just ranting and angry comments.

Why is it like this? Why do your biggest fans... the ones that support you the most, often make you want to continue writing the least? Well, that's because...