Why Wattpad Reviews Fail

The Pitfalls of Reviewer Bias

When approaching a work written in an unfamiliar style, one's initial reaction is to approach it using their prior experiences; this is human nature, and how most of us approach unfamiliar events. A new text is then defined by comparisons to the old—this is why we say a movie "reminds us of Forrest Gump," or that a book seems like a "remake of 1984." But this approach is fallible when a new work may superficially appear to resemble another, but is more complex under the surface.

Different genres have different expectations for how typical storytelling tropes are utilized, including pacing, complexity of language, and description. This is an indisputable fact—any skeptics are free to compare Fitzgerald's lyrical descriptions with a text like The Stranger or Harry Potter. There are also die-hard enthusiasts of the whole gamut of styles possible in prose, even if fans of The Great Gatsby may dismiss The Stranger as telegraphic or fans of The Stranger dismiss The Great Gatsby as convoluted and verbose. Given this, it should come by definition that an aficionado of one work may give negative feedback on another, even if plenty enjoy the latter.

Where this runs into an issue on Wattpad is when reviewers combine two issues: they become so defined by comparisons to other works that they insist upon standards based on these fundamentally flawed comparisons—to such a reviewer, their favorite style of prose is a hammer, and everything else is a nail. A reader coming into Lord of the Rings only familiar with modern young-adult fantasy is going to be sorely disappointed if they expect Sanderson-esque magic systems—if they castigate Lord of the Rings for not conforming to this standard, it is on the reader for not doing their research and not Tolkien for failing to psychically predict the reader's desires. Likewise, a reviewer on Wattpad reading a regency romance trying to directly emulate Pride and Prejudice, prose and all, is likely to be confused and annoyed when it does not match what they expected from the genre on Wattpad. But the reviewer's expectations should not detract from an appraisal of the work if the writer has not actively tried to cultivate these misconceptions.

Most writers do not write to mislead. Most write knowing their idealized audience and what it desires. Odds are that this idealized audience does not include any individual reviewer; they, too, are not psychic. And when trying to improve a work, they do so in accordance with what this hypothesized audience wants—Rowling edited her work to be more suitable for her intended audience, not to cast a wider net in the hopes of snaring some errant literature professors or Dungeons and Dragons players. Part of a reviewer's job is to respect this authorial intent, even if they do not fall in this audience.

This can extend to the sentence level, too. Fitzgerald chose to describe Tom's house as a "Georgian Colonial mansion" presumably not as an inside joke for his snooty friends to laugh over as they smoked cigars, but because he assumed his readers would understand this reference and not need it clarified in a footnote. A particular reviewer's life experience may not have led them to have seen such a house before, or otherwise know to what it refers (some astute readers may also note that understanding the exact shape and style of Tom's house is not terribly relevant to the plot, and is a detail that could be easily skipped should a reader not know what it means). Then again, said reviewer may know plenty of things that someone else doesn't—and thus the chain continues, until it becomes very clear that one could never write for a true least common denominator if they tried! And so it becomes clear that an author must make reasonable assumptions about what their audience should or should not know, independent of what any isolated reviewer thinks in the future. Any reviewer who criticizes a detail for being too obscure in a book, and thus somehow exclusionary, might then wonder if they are the odd ones out, and should consequently be more tolerant of others who have had different experiences than they.

So in conclusion, any reviewer should read without prejudice or a sense of personal exceptionalism. It is rare that an author would know less than any one reader what sort of audience they would wish to attract, and consequently the author is best equipped to make deliberate choices as they write to attract this audience. We trust that Thomas Keller has chosen his tasting menus to attract people who would sufficiently appreciate his food, and consequently satisfy them to the best of his abilities, and do not complain if it does not appeal to us specifically; likewise, a book reviewer should do the same and assess what is present without making needless assumptions.