Penny Morrow

Are you struggling to find motivation to write your Wattpad story?

It may seem like many writers around you are finally getting in the spotlight during these unusual times. Whether that be by becoming part of paid stories, a Wattpad star, getting their books featured in select official Wattpad reading lists, others are indeed finding great success. Despite the ongoing pandemic, writers around you still find great motivation and drive to complete captivating and original stories. You, however, still feel your stories aren’t meeting the “standard” when it comes to getting your story recognized.

I want to ask you a few questions to consider to remind you of the value of your work and why you should keep writing because everyone has an opportunity to find success. You do not have to be a “pro” writer either or hold an English degree to do this. Neither do you need 10,000+ followers to get your story attention.

Below, I explain each step you need to take to begin to get your story recognized during the crazy year of 2020.

1. KNOW WHAT MAKES YOUR STORY A “HIDDEN GEM”.

To stand out among of sea of rich stories on Wattpad, you need to have a full understanding of what your story brings to the table and why it is truly different. I want you to ask yourself, “Have I read a story that includes x,y, and z things that are already in my story?”.

If the answer is yes, you need to do some further digging to clearly understand what sets your story apart.

I believe the majority of writers already understand what sets their story apart, so this step should be fairly easy & quick.

2. WHAT SHOULD BE IN YOUR SUMMARY.

The majority of your summary should be conveying what makes your story unique.

Somewhere within your summary, if it is not explicitly stated or described already, you need to have a sentence saying what makes your story different than others in the same genre. In this sentence, you should state the genre and the main thing that makes it different from other similar stories in the same genre.

Say your story is a vampire romance, but set in the ancient mythological city of Atlantis. This is a pretty different mash-up, more than likely, this is not something you commonly come across in within the Vampire genre on Wattpad. Imagine if this was your story and inside the summary all you described was the romance between “Character A” & “Character B”. You would be totally losing out on the opportunity to truly show the world you have built. So this is something that you should definitely talk about in your summary!

We must do more than simply talk about characters and their relationships in our summary. We must talk about the unique plot/world they are living in. If your story is about nerdy werewolves living in Florida, then you should feel obligated to talk about more than “Character A” and “Character B” having a secret crush on each other in your summary. This is because if you do not mention what sets your story apart, your story will get lost in the thousands of other stories writing in the same genre as you.

The genre of your story, and the world it’s set in, needs to be CLEARLY mentioned somewhere in your summary!

Within your summary, I cannot begin to explain how important it is that you clearly define or describe specifically what your story offers that is different from what everyone else in the same genre is doing.

3. THE TAGS YOU SHOULD BE USING.

Nowadays, we have to be aware of what readers are typing in when they are looking for our stories.

Let’s go back to the vampires in Atlantis. If this were my story, I would be using tags like: vampires, vampire-romance, fantasy, mythology, Atlantis etc.

Tags are critical. Let’s replace the word “tag” with “thing”. You should know some “things” about your story that are important. These “things” should be listed out in your tags. You also shouldn’t just be thinking about “things” in the physical world of your story, you should be thinking about the intangible “things” to. Does your story deal with mental health? Does your story discuss adulthood or growing-up? Is your story a mystery?

What kind of topics are happening in your story that are not specifically mentioned or “outwardly” stated?

For example, let’s say inside your story a war is happening. War is a “thing”. People in your story are going to war to attain certain “things” such as freedom, wealth, and power. The “things” previously mentioned could also be broken even further down into more specific “things”.

The “things” happening in our stories are important. We want to make sure we are talking about these important “things” because they are important “tags”.

Important Things = Important Tags

4. STAYING MOTIVATED.

The key to staying motivated is to not worry about what the competition is doing. You really do have to build value in yourself because spending energy envying, or getting upset, over the success of others will not help you move forward and continue your writing journey.

I know it is easy to get wrapped-up in why no one is reading your story.

The best we can do is build the most value in our books to a point where it almost becomes obsessive because we care about our stories so much. It is personal and it has value to us. The moment you look at what someone else is doing, is the moment you become unmotivated. Getting thousands of readers is not something that happens over night for a new writer who does not have twenty years of writing experience already. If this has actually happened to you, congrats, but you are the exception.

What I can say for undiscovered writers is that you need to keep creating to find readers. You are a like an artist. Artists, of any kind, need to keep producing to keep their following. If they stop producing, their following will go somewhere else to find art. As writers, our “following” is readers. If we disappear, or get jealous of others and stop creating, we stop investing in our value.

There are times when we all get writers block. There are times when we become discouraged. We need to ask ourselves why we started writing. I know we all like to get more readers. I guarantee you that the reason you started writing wasn’t for someone else’s entertainment. It was for yourself.

You wanted to create something.

The moment you start thinking about this as a competition, you lose.

I recently was interviewed for a job in sales and one question I was asked was if I was a creative or competitive person. I said creative. Maybe it’s why I didn’t get the job but what good would it do for me to lie about wanting to beat a number or another person?

You have to find peace with where you stand. You cannot become antsy to gain 500 hundred followers every day on Wattpad. You need to invest in YOU. You need to trust the future. When you write a good quality book, readers will come to it. You don’t need to worry about “fishing” for readers. They will come to YOU.

The reality of our situation right now is that a lot of people are hitting deep lows right now. People are isolated and people are becoming sad. The reason you started writing was because you had a story to share. People will come to your story and find entertainment in it. You put value, and continue to build value, in your stories. Success is subjective. What I consider as success is different from you.

The key to staying motivated, and finding more success, is finding value in your work. Sometimes we really do need to just put on our rose colored glasses because we have to keep finding value and not get caught up in the current affairs of the world or the success of others.

We can’t afford to forget the value we desire to build in our stories.

So you’re well underway writing your story on Wattpad. However, you see a strange decline, say, after just the third chapter. Believe it or not, I have found this is a normal trend. Even for books with thousands of views, the drop-off after around the third chapter is normal.

Why?

This is because about three chapters in is when the reader has decided whether they are hooked or not. So how do you combat this? How do you keep the reader reading?

How do you keep readers reading?

It may be hard to come to terms with, but you cannot hope to entertain every single person who comes across your works. You should expect that not everyone may find your story their cup of tea.

For the readers who find your story their cup of tea though, it is critical you be consist with updates.

When should you update chapters?

Many people will tell you to update every Friday or Saturday consistently. I am not going to recommend that for the new writer especially. You should at least try to keep some form of a update schedule whether that be every week or every month (maybe even every day?).

It all depends on what works for you. However, your reader is going to appreciate if you give them some idea of when to expect new chapters. In your profile, you should try to make some form of note of the story title and day of update.

In summary, find some form of schedule that works for you and post announcements each time you update. In your profile, post all works your working on and when you plan to update each.

You want to make sure you are consistent and that really is the key to all of this (and many things in life). If you have a passion for what you’re writing about and make your chapters the best quality they can be, the reads will come and you will gain more loyal readers. It’s not something (for most of us new writers) that happens overnight.

Stay consistent. Stay positive. Keep writing.