I've received some mind-boggling messages from young authors before, lamenting over the fact that they don't have reads, stars, or comments on their account. I don't want to single any individual author out, but I'll just say that I've received many of these messages and so this isn't targeted at any single person. Most of the time, the person messaging me is 11-12 years of age. Ignoring the fact that the age limit for Wattpad is 13 and you're not allowed to create an account if you are under the age of 13 (just so you know, you're not allowed to drink, drive, or smoke too), there is a trend on these profiles. They all do the same silly mistakes over and over again, and I've no choice but to write a chapter pointing these mistakes out.
This should come off as pure common sense to most writers, and it certainly relates to things I've said in previous chapters, but since I doubt most people read all 100 chapters I've released (especially in the 12-year-old demographic), I feel the need to once again write a chapter summarizing some of the points I think younger writers need to understand.
This may be some hard truths for some of you, so please approach this with all the best intentions and try to grow from it.
Capitalize the Title of Your Book
Titles are capitalized. I know that sometimes we don't capitalize every word in a title. Above, I didn't capitalize the article and preposition (the, of), but when in doubt, just capitalize every word. I say this because I see a sad number of authors that don't capitalize the title of their books.
You should capitalize titles. This should include the chapter titles. You may be able to make an argument for a stylistic choice to not capitalize chapter titles in certain situations, especially if you're surrounding it with some sexy word magic.
_-_-*chapter 1*-_-_
If you feel like that looks weird and unbalanced when you capitalize it, fine, don't capitalize it. But I think there is maybe a 0.00001% chance you have a legitimate reason for not capitalizing the title of your book, and when I see this, there is only one thought in my mind. How lazy. People will judge your work by how it looks on the surface, and if you can't even be bothered to make the first word they see grammatically correct, you will not get stars and comments. It's as simple as that.
Create a Book Cover
I think I've made it clear in this book that the thing that bugs me the most about any writing is laziness. I mean, I'm a lazy author. I rarely strive for perfect grammar. If you search through my work you will see there, their, and they're misused. I have no love for editing and at the end of the day the things I put online are hardly "finished" so much as "good enough".
That said, there comes a certain level of laziness where even I have to put my foot down. Not creating a book cover for your book (or just slapping up a picture like your book is a facebook profile), is on top of the list. There are numerous book cover makers, including one built into Wattpad 101. Yet, time and again, I see people just slap a picture up there without even revealing the title... and that just looks lazy.
Once again, if you can't even spend the time writing a blurb, posting a book cover, or writing your title grammatically correct, why should I spend the time reading what you wrote? This is base level stuff here. Don't feel like you can do a good job? Then ask someone to do it for you. There is an entire group of book cover makers on Wattpad, and you can get someone to generate a cover for you. I explain how in the "Getting Help on Wattpad" Chapter.
Write More Than One Paragraph
The Wall-O-Texts need to stop. This is stuff you should have learned in 3rd grade. I know this, because my son is in 3rd grade and he was learning about this. Paragraphs need to be broken up. Even if your only understanding of paragraphs is every 4 sentences (that's how I learned it in elementary school), that's still better than the wall-o-text.
Imagine trying to read what I just wrote if I wrote this entire chapter as one paragraph. It wouldn't be legible! And when anyone looks at ANY writing, and sees this long, one paragraph stretched across the page, no... just no. No one will read that unless you are in some way bribing them. This is just so lazy. Hit freaking enter every once in a while.
And let's just say this, dialogue should be spaced. Two people should NEVER say the same thing in the same paragraph. One person says something, new paragraph, someone else says something. I don't care if you don't like the appearance of a one three-word paragraph, that's how it's supposed to look like.
If your writing can't even be read by people, people aren't going to read it, and when you make a paragraph fill the entire chapter, you might as well have just written in gobbledy gook for all the good it's done in communicating your story.
Spacing your writing so it is legible is a bare minimum requirement in writing. Oh, and as an added aside, don't freaking dump that on an editor to fix. That level of laziness is just... just... ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!
500 Words is NOT a Chapter
I was actually shocked when I started writing on this site for the first time and found people who actually thought they could write a chapter in 500 words. I've gone through the mental math on this, considering many things and even trying these short 500-word chapters myself, and at the end of the day I just have to say that 500 words doesn't make a chapter.
Simply put, not enough can be described. If a chapter is like a scene in a play, allocated only 500 words just isn't enough. Either nothing of substance happens or nothing gets properly described. Look at any professionally published work, and you'll find most chapters exceed 1000 words. Even the young adult novels like the Hardy Boys and Goosebumps, where the font is large and the word size is under 20,000 words make this up by having 10-15 chapters per book.
The only exceptions are chapterless books, and it's cool if you want to write a chapterless book, but that book then needs to be chapterless (or given Wattpad's system it needs to exist within a single chapter). And unless you're writing a pure children's book, even a chapterless book (a short story) will still end up being a few thousand words.
Oh, and for those of you who want to excuse your steamy one direction romance as a book for children, there is a distinct feature of children's books you're likely missing. PICTURES! Yeah, Dr. Seuss books weren't popular just because he could spin a rhyme, but also because of the artistry within the books. Children's books usually involve both a writer and an illustrator.
So, I'm going to say perhaps one of the harshest things I've said on Wattpad 101. You have a story that you feel is enough at 500-word chapters? You literally can't think of another thing to write? You barely got to 800 words and think you ought to slap yourself on the back? No... just no. It's you. You need to grow up and increase your writing ability.
I will give a nod to deliberate stylistic choices, people choosing to write an 800-word chapter for some reason, but you're probably not them if you're sitting on this website wondering why you don't have stars and comments. I can forgive an author who writes chapters into 2-3 800-word parts just because they can't write that fast and need that to release reliably. But, if you literally struggle to get past 1000 words in a chapter, if that's seriously your limit... then you need to get gud.
For now, on Wattpad, yes, there are ways to get around it. The aforementioned splitting chapters into parts being one of those ways. However, thinking long term here... thinking books that people actually want to read, you need to be able to write over 500 words.
Saying this, I'll concede to the reality that *sigh* "After", Wattpad's own megahit... often included chapters that were only 600-700 words long... although I believe even in her case her chapters grew longer the longer she wrote, and most of her chapters were 1000+ words by the time she finished the book. The main takeaway is that she can write longer chapters, and you should be able to too.
If you choose 800-word chapters for some kind of pacing reason, then it is fine, but the key word is "choose". As in, you should be able to write more, you're just choosing to say more with less. If, on the other hand, you sit in the "barely can pump out 800-word chapters" camp, that's a weakness you need to fix.
Books Should Be, You Know, Books!
How many seven-chapter books with 400-word chapters written in one paragraph have you seen? None? Yeah, so why do you expect your "completed" seven-chapter book to be something people will read? At some point, you need to understand what it takes to tell a story. You can pick short young adult stories; you can pick long and complex stories, but at the end of the day, your story should in some way look like them.
If your story doesn't look like any book you've ever seen, let's just assume you haven't created the next big thing that is going to explode into extreme popularity. I think we can assume that you've more likely created a dud, something that barely looks like a story, and that wouldn't interest most people because... well... look at it. It extrudes laziness. You can't just throw something online and expect it to go big. It takes time. It takes effort. And while quantity matters to some extent, you also need to quality in your work... at least the basest show of quality control... like actually finishing the thing you started.
You don't know how? You're telling me you can't use the spelling/grammar function on Microsoft word? I mean, I've seen writings that CLEARLY haven't used it, yet come up asking why they aren't more popular? Come on, guys, it doesn't take a college education to edit your work, use a proper book cover, and enhance readability.
You've already finished, and it sucks, so now what? Redo it. Oh, My Gawd! Redo 3000 words of writing! That took me a week to write! How dare you suggest I redo something!
Uh... yeah... redo it. If you have to rewrite something from scratch, then rewrite something from scratch. There is no problem with starting over. I've seen some great stories start out as garbage on the first draft. However, that's the beauty of writing and Wattpad in general. You can improve. You can repeat and rewrite and try again. You can get feedback from people, and then take that feedback and try again and then get feedback on the next one.
Your story isn't done until you want it to be done. If you spent ten hours on it and feel it's done... well... that's pretty lazy, I have to tell you, and that will end up showing in the end. You can always hope you hit the jackpot... that your story just happens to hit the teenage girl word bingo and explodes in popularity as the best bad boy book, or you can keep at it, trying to learn and hone your craft until you find something you're happy with.
If you're happy with mediocre, that's fine, but don't come crying that your story isn't becoming "oh so famous". Just because your profile has ten "completed" books, each 5 chapters long with all the care of someone who doesn't care at all, its up to you to decide what you want to do with it. I can tell you right now that I've seen these accounts a dozen times now, and the problem isn't bad luck, the problem is you.
You need to work harder, learn more, and spend more time to produce something worthy of being consumed by your readers. A bit of tough advice, but there it is. Hard work may never land you a megahit... but producing content constantly, and with a constant drive to improve from what you've done before, and you will get readers, you will get stars. Hard work pays off, and if your answer is that you were already working hard, and the result is the things I mentioned above, hopefully I've set your bar a little higher.