Things You Can Expect from Wattpad

Entry 1: Votes, Comments, and Demographics

Before you start reading and if you've read the description, this isn't a guidebook. This will instead be about what I've encountered during my years on Wattpad and what you might encounter.

Also, I sometimes end up rambling/tell a lot of storytimes, so if you don't like that, leave. I really do try to shorten up my stories as much as I can, but sometimes I think they can get too long. Now remember that I don't TRY to make my stories long on purpose, but if a storytime takes up a "chapter"/entry, it's because it has to do with said entry and I had a lot to say, but I don't think that's gonna happen here. This is also aimed at new users of Wattpad, but if you're not new here and have been on here for a few years but you want to read some of the stuff I've experienced, that's fine, but be aware that some of the stuff you'll read in this might be some stuff you already know about.

So while I guess this COULD be considered a guidebook, it's not supposed to be, but if you consider it to be one then that's fine. Sometimes I might even refer to it as a guidebook!

EDIT: This was written back when I had two guidebooks up. I recently took them down for personal reasons, so if I ever refer to them in this book, now you know why. I thought I was basically contradicting what I was saying, confusing readers, my main points in the entries were vague, and overall I just didn't think they were that helpful.

Now let's begin.

There are tons of writers here, and quite a few of them are new or just starting to write stories. Wattpad is known as a site where bad stories are posted, but that's not true. Yes, Wattpad has bad stories, but there are good stories on here as well. Despite what some people say, this also goes for fanfiction; just because something is a fanfiction doesn't mean it's terrible, but some fanfictions are indeed terrible. Because of that, I do understand the stigma that all/most fanfiction is terrible, but of course that's not true for every fanfiction.

Here's some kinds of voters (and commenters) you might come across during your time here:

-Those who vote on every single chapter and might comment a lot or a few times, like me. However, some of these users might not finish your story, and that's okay.

-Those who just vote on every single chapter and never comment/barely comment. Pretty much overlaps with the point above.

-Those who vote on a few chapters/skip around and might or might not comment.

-Getting 0 votes from someone but one comment, or maybe more.

-Getting one vote that sometimes isn't the first or final chapter but no comment. Also overlaps with getting one vote and one comment.

-No votes and no comments.

Lemme tell you this.

I remember one comment I got a few years ago where a reader asked me what votes meant. Basically, votes are like buttons, and they DO matter. They aren't useless.

I've been pretty vocal about votes in the past. To me, I like it when people vote on all the chapters of a story-or at least until they stop reading-because to me, in a way, that makes me think I've done something right. It also lets me know that the person read the chapters, especially if the chapters have lots of reads, and that they enjoyed it enough to do so. Yes, I know that people who vote on certain chapters aren't doing it to be malicious. Just putting that out there.