First and foremost, let's talk about avoiding potentially triggering elements in one's story. I already have to rework a chapter.
However, despite not having come across these stories myself, I know the ambassadors are already aware of at least one prompt of stories not being properly rated and/or having potentially triggering material because they've said as much in their clarifications for that given prompt. The prompt in question is number forty, the one that starts off with the "accidentally stuck in a place between life and death..." prompt, but they're already aware that some of these stories are starting off with an explicitly attempted murder.
Which my thoughts reading that they were aware of such stories was that if I did come across any story for this prompt, "I'd honestly be wondering how many times the MC would be killed off in that place between life and death in an explicit manner." Mind you; this isn't to say gore isn't allowed for ONC, but why go this route of describing the violence in an explicit manner if not to make the story titillating, which would, in turn, make the story against Wattpad's content guidelines.
As for things I'm actually seeing...
The only parts which count towards the word count are those that are a part of the storytelling.
One of the reasons I bring this up is because I have come across a few stories where what is up is a placeholder because the writer is currently working on the content that goes there, but I also know that sometimes even though the ambassadors say this doesn't count people think it counts because they really don't understand the difference between a part that leans towards the storytelling and what doesn't.
For example, I know of one writer who understands that the purpose of a prologue is to provide the readers' information, but they don't understand it's information still given as a part of the narrative that wouldn't fit easily in with the rest of the narrative. What they say is a prologue is effectively the introduction I have on my stories for my readers during ONC since they're no longer needed for the judges as they've added a part asking how the prompt is used, which in turn means we can give spoilers that we couldn't in an actual introduction to our readers.
The other thing I noticed is that one of their stories is also random ramblings about facts, something that reads more like a personal journal where they ramble about one of the plot elements while having nothing to do with the prompt to the point I do see a high likelihood of this one getting nixed in the first round - that is how bad this one story is. And to be honest, I've not seen this happen before.
Don't pad your word count.
Seriously, don't.
For example, I came across a story where the writer explained a couple of in-universe terms to the readers, but what could have been explained in a singular paragraph within the actual narrative ended up getting a long-winded explanation in what is best described as a prologue before the prologue, yet I also found the terms to be a bit strange in that it almost felt like the writer came up with the terms to make their story sparkle rather than because they made sense.
And in this same story - well, I couldn't pinpoint what the roles of the characters introduced in the prologue and subsequent chapters were supposed to be, which one of Mark Twain's rules for writing is thus. "The characters in a tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency." (, I have linked to a page that provides his rules at the end of this entry for those interested.)
But the point is I couldn't really identify any real character traits, any major plot points, or what the conflict was meant to be. In some ways, I kind of feel like the writer picked a whole slew of prompts and planned on implementing most in a minor manner, while for their main prompt picked one they felt was easy to implement and do little work for, that they could say write any old demon story because the prompt they picked could be interpreted as demons taking over the world at some point. And no, it wasn't demons; I'm just using it as an example so as not to single this writer out.
