I am baffled by the existence of Wattpad
wattpad.com is a popular website where mostly young people host their fiction so it get votes and visibility.
I was feeling lonely, and my usual online mates are not enthusiastic about reading my stuff, and I am always in search of feedback. So I got in touch with online groups for those who have an interest in writing. Mostly young people who, seemingly in their early 20s, give or take. Someone asked me if I was making something for the "Wattys", which I later learned is Wattpad's literary award. Another gave me a link to read his stuff on Wattpad. I had to make an account to read it on my phone. Annoying, but they kinda asked me nicely, so I installed it and created an account. Way too many hoops just to read some text, but okay! I started reading. There was an ad below, but that's okay. Suddenly, my phone was taken over by a full-screen ad. A full-screen ad. FOR TEXT. That was too much so I started looking for a way to read Wattpad outside of Wattpad. Maybe there is, but I paused my search to make this post.
Displaying text is a solved problem, and it has been for quite some time. It is so fucking trivial, I coud write a novel right here on this text box! I now hate Wattpad with such a passion, I don't think I'm reading that kid's story!
Wattpad feels like someone trying to fuck up reading.
On another note, I find it a little unsettling how these kids seem more concerned with their marketing than their writing. They have full press kits even before they learn the basics of writing proper sentences. There is also no love for short stories, they start writing novels as soon as they start writing. Everything is a novel with twenty chapters. I'm pretty sure Wattpad has a hand in that. But maybe that's just me being old, so feel free to disregard that.
I get the idea of a website that helps readers find authors, but in some sense at least, Wattpad feels like a water popsicle an I hate it.
I'm sorry, but as someone who grew up reading fanfiction on wattpad and live journal and fanfiction.net, the shear bafflement about how crap wattpad is is hilarious to read. It's been so so awful forever, to the point where serious authors would rather place their work on the "not fanfiction but original work" part of saviour website Archive of Our Own (AO3 for short).
I encourage you to try there, there's a pretty large momentum of authors who have absolutely zilch connection to fanfiction but are simply publishing on AO3 because it's the only website where - and I swear I'm telling the truth - there is no algorithm. None. You just post your work, 50 words or 500.000 it doesn't matter, and it's just posted chronologically. People can leave 'likes' (kudeos), but those are treated as a 'this was neat, thanks' button and again does not mean your work is put In front of more eyes (unless someone filters/sorts, but that's a 100% manual action). People can leave comments, and you as the author can reply.
Writing competitions are held regularly, but they're all organised by authors in specific genres themselves, not by the website. These are not that difficult to find, if you Google a little for your genre or short works + AO3.
Maybe give it a look? You'd post it under the "Original Works" tag, rather than a fandom tag.
Dang. What a find! I didn’t know this existed. Thank you for sharing mate.
You are very welcome and also I apologise for the free time you're about to lose.
Sure, I'll look into AO3. But I thought it was for literature for young people? I don't write the genres that are commonly appreciated by young people, I only interacted with them. So I don't imagine I would have many readers. My interaction with Wattpad was only to read and lookup stuff others sent me. I didn't have the intention to post there myself.
I am glad to learn that I provided you some amusement ;)
AO3 is principally fanfiction, but it allows for original fiction as well. Wattpad also contains a lot of fanfiction tbh, and in my experience the audience skews much younger than fanfiction.net or AO3 (or at least it did last I interacted with it). And yeah, like the person you replied to, I find it funny seeing someone encounter Wattpad for the first time lol... it has been this crap for years.
I feel like these websites have a dynamic where most people are posting installments of a novel. That is not really something I wanna do, I wonder if there's any love for short stories with no continuation. Or stuff that is in no way under the young adult umbrella.
As far as I am aware there is no single large community exactly for that purpose. There are a variety of communities online that also do host one off stories, often centered around a specific genre. I mentioned RoyalRoad in a different comment, with the advanced search you can at least filter on finished stories. Though most of them will be quite long.
As far as the younger audience goes, I think that is difficult to avoid. Simply because the demographic of aspiring writers with plenty of free time to actually try their hands on writing tends to be teenagers and students.
AO3 advanced / tag search also lets you filter for completion status, though some authors split up works into a series which are considered separate works in search so it's not foolproof
I think there are many amateur older writers. Plenty of people trying their hand at it. They may have other avenues to share their writing, like workshops or their relatives. Some will just keep it in a drawer.
It's okay that these websites are not for me to publish, that is what I thought. I was just checking since AO3 seemed cool :)
Oh yeah, absolutely. I am just saying that they are likely a smaller demographic overall, certainly online. Which is true not just for writing by pretty much anything in the online sphere.
Just wanted to point out that this is absolutely not true, AO3 doesn't have some kind of sign up saying "no olds allowed". It was founded more than ten years ago by fandom "olds" tbh, and all sorts of fiction gets posted there.
Yes, fanfic is the majority of what gets posted there, and you won't see as much engagement (comments, kudos and views) if you're posting anything with a small audience (e.g. fanfic for tiny fandoms, or most kinds of original fiction), but that doesn't mean you can't post whatever comes into your head. I'm not surprised that there's small authors' groups using it as a place to host fiction, because for all its faults, it's still one of the best places to host text for free without plastering it with ads or shitting up the reading experience of anyone looking at it.
It's not really an age issue, I'm just not part of the culture that grows out of fanfic, romance, and young adult fiction. That is perfectly fine and I wish them all the best. But I can't relate. I will read stuff if someone I know send me a link though.
Know what? This inspired me. I use AO3 pretty actively for fan fiction, and I think I'll post some of my next few original short stories for the monthly writing prompts/contests there. Maybe I'll post the ones I already wrote, too. I'm surprised that option never occurred to me before, even knowing AO3 has original works.
If anything tbqh AO3 still seems more suited to your needs than Wattpad does, at least based on my understanding of the two websites' cultures. While young adults presumably still use AO3, there are plenty of older writers on there. Wattpad had a reputation for skewing young when I was younger.
That's commonly called a "oneshot" on ff.net/AO3.
Seriously I'm pretty sure I was introduced to wattpad back in the day because I read a complaint about it on one of the others 😂
Has it actually ever been good or do just people think it was good 'way back then'? Ya know, the same way the middle ages are romanticised, but it's conveniently forgotten they didn't have a central sewage system so shit just ran in shit-rivers down the street.
Oh dear, no. It's the full range from full erotica containing things that are still new to me after decades on Al Gore's internet to "G" rated cozy continuations of your favorite story, etc.
They're more of a "censorship of things we hate, is a slope that leads to censorship of all of this" sort of place. The tags matter
Ah sorry I misread your post then! But err what exactly is your definition of young people? Hah, because AO3 is built and funded by millennials and gen y, and unfortunately we're definitely not that young anymore ;)
I'd honestly say the average age of reader on AO3 is mid thirties. Only thing of note is that there's a pretty large gender divide with men in the minority; though this isn't nearly as apparent in the 'Original Works' section of the site. Not sure if that matters, the only real consequence I've seen is the lower tolerance for men-writing-women-syndrome 🤷♀️
Do you like Warhammer 40K?
I had never heard of it. As someone who grew up without smartphone, I totally get the vibe you’re getting from Wattpad.
Doing some googling however, I found this Guardian article that made me think about for who Wattpad actually is.
It’s not for the dinosaur that uses technology to supplement or substitute previous habits (using an e-reader instead of a physical book), but for the chronically online Gen-Z’er that’s scrolling through yet another social media app. This time it’s the one with the stories instead of the (moving) pictures. If the default mode is using the phone/social media/an app, Wattpad is a way to get in touch with something that’s a little more verbose than messenger apps. So tentatively a net positive. Maybe.
While a glance at the Wattys confirmed my earlier vibe check -i.e. not for me- I suppose writing about porn is somewhat more interesting than producing it or watching it.
And something tangentially related is of course the whole problem of the platforming industry. Why give someone else the control over your production means…
Thank you dearly for providing my daily dose of laughs. I have nothing to say on the subject, but this was an entertaining read!
Another thing about Wattpad that hasn’t been mentioned and is something I have yet to fully wrap my head around as a writer is that each installment you write is for a kind of Twitch live-reaction from the readers, where they will highlight a word or passage they like/dislike and offer changes. Writers, in a kind of improv performance, allow the readers to help develop the story on the fly, often introducing new characters based on the readers themselves.
It’s a new community-based idea of what writing and storytelling is. The normal concepts of quality writing aren’t important there. You are doing low-level fan service and self-promotion in the comments as a part of your writing.
Fyi, it helps to include a link to the website for those not familiar with it ;) I assume you are talking about this website? At first glance it seems somewhat similar to RoyalRoad allowing people to publish web serials. Though they seem to heavily market towards gen z instead of a general audience.
At least in a desktop browser I am not seeing the sort of stuff you are talking about with the phone app.
As far as reading the stories outside the platform goes, I have been using a browser extension called WebToEpub for that.
I mean, that's how it often goes and imho is nothing new. The whole reason I got into computers way back (late 90s early 2000s) is because a bunch of us discovered website making and had heard stories about people who made big bucks putting ad banners on their website. So we approached it entirely with the idea of just making a website for the ads with no idea what to actually put on it.
Of course, we eventually discovered that it isn't that easy to rake in money that way. The majority of the group then got bored with it and a few, including me, continued because we found that it just fun to make websites and tinker with the technology.
With writing there is a lot of the same stuff going on, maybe not about making money, but other aspects like social validation and all that.
Small edit: I had a second look at the website, it seems like Wattpad is more heavily promoting that sort of thinking and behavior compared to similar platforms. I am not entirely sure what to make off that either.
Sorry, the way people on these groups talk about that website it feels more popular than Google. Yes, it is wattpad.com.
I don't think seeking validation is inherently bad, that is a normal impulse. But websites do exploit and deform that natural necessity in ways that are not healthy, yes.
I tried out Wattpad last year. Didn’t go well. Super buggy on a desktop browser (that was my experience anyway). Gave up on it.
I should mention that Wattpad seems to remove books and accounts often. There is no reason or appeal. I find it odd that they will actually delete stuff instead of simply hiding it for everyone else. Even more odd is that some authors have no local backup of these books. I don't know why anyone would keep the only copy of their work on that website, but some do. Regardless of the platform, backup your novels people.
webnovel is the same, so many ads and the ads aren't even from other ad networks but for novels on their own platform. so system wide adblockers don't help. that said I didn't get any ads while reading the novels themselves. webtoon is also kinda the same. I think this is more to do with their monopoly (?) than the format itself. like, even with the ads, it's better for authors/writers to post there than some other site that no one uses, otherwise what would be the point if no one can discover your novel?