What I Hate About Wattpad

Section Four

*31

It feels like for some reason, some writers out there can never balance their sentences.

It’s like they’re always either writing super-duper long sentences without any commas or semi-colons or hyphens or any breaks at all which makes the reader want to gasp for a breath while reading those dang darn long sentences.

Or the sentences are short. Like really short. Fragmented sentences. Trying to sound all cryptic. Woo. My sentences are short. My writing is so interesting. I don’t use commas. My short sentences don’t flow smoothly. Because they’re so fragmented. I swear these sentences are shorter than summer. (And I bet my cookies the majority of my audience here are students, so ya’ll know what I mean.)

*32

I hate when virtually EVERY sentence starts with I.

I picked up my phone and dialed a number. I barked “Fetch me a cookie!” into the phone. I have a thousand servants at my hand whenever I want, and all I have to do is call them from this magical phone of mine. I skipped to the door and opened it. La la la la la! I started singing a theme song from High School Musical and all my servants broke into dancing.

I this, I that. Instead, you should think, I need to learn how to write in first person correctly.

*33

It makes me physically laugh my ass off when I see authors trying to talk fancy with an abundant amount of vocabulary just to sound either 1) like an adult 2) smart or 3) like a smart adult. I could see where you’re coming from if your main character is some rich pompous bald man living at a royal kingdom from England two hundred years ago – then yes, I get why he’d have to talk like that. But you shouldn’t need to go over the boundaries.

An example?

(This story didn’t have any copyright notices, so I’ll just use the first paragraph as an example.)

For seemingly as long as I had known the man the two of us busied ourselves with the watching of people. Both A------ and I would stare for hours through the lone window of the home we shared in that age old city. We would remark upon the gait of one man, the queer dress of another. For hours we would indulge ourselves the pleasure of speculation towards the mindset and character of passerbys.

I had to reread a few times to understand what the hell  he was talking about. Let’s run over it once more, pointing out the awkward stuff: a missing comma in the first sentence, choosing the word “busy” when they were just watching people in luxury, “watching of people”, the “A-----“ – it took me a while but I realized the author was trying to hide the name of the MC’s friend –, whatever the freak gait means (it’s a person’s walking manner), the awkwardness of “indulge ourselves the pleasure”, and basically the whole last sentence.

I mean, “indulge ourselves the pleasure of speculation towards the mindset and character of passerbys” gave me a whole butt-whoopin’ Whaaa?!?

And this was just the first paragraph too, imagine how bored and confused the reader would be after finishing the whole chapter. That is, if she even gets past the first few sentences.

What's the point?

Don’t overcomplicate your writing so much that your readers can’t even understand it.

*34

When people recommend horrible stories in the Undiscovered Gems forum. My God, I go there to get away from all the horrible writing, and instead the exact horrible stories I don’t want to read is recommended!

(Yeah, a while ago I was just trying to read a good story, but suddenly, I found myself here.)

*35

It’s kind of sad when the writing of people whose first language isn’t English is better than the writing of people whose are.

But then again, maybe that’s not exactly a bad thing, so I guess this is a half-assed point.

*36

Tense switchers.

There are three basic tenses (that you should already be familiar with): past, present, and future.

Past tense – walked

Present tense – walking

Future tense – will walk

When writing, use only one tense, usually past tense.

And that’s it. Easy, isn’t it?

That’s why it makes me wonder what kids are actually learning in school.

*37

Whenever I see Selena Gomez or Taylor Swift starred as the main character, and their picture’s all posted up on the side. Man!

It’s not exactly scary like point 15, but more like . . . Why?

*38

When people put a comment on your story (or even on your message board!) asking you to read their story. Whoa, whoa, whoa there. Dude. You can’t just advertise your story on my story (or message board!). That’s rude and annoying. Now please, take your ass to the Share Your Story forum, and advertise all you want over there.

That’s what I want to say. But sometimes I just end up visiting their story anyway, and . . . it’s really (not) good. What I want to comment on their story would be

“Your story is good. If I ignored all the grammar mistakes. And the clichés. And that one annoying character. And this chapter. And the whole story.”

But I end up saying something like

“Loved it! Voted! ;)”

Sike! I’d never lie like that.

*39

Ugh I hate when the main character’s so desperate. “All i wanted was love.”, “I wondered why boys haven’t ever asked me out before.”, “I’ve never heard those three words. I. Love. You.”

Oh stop it already, you haven’t ever heard your own parents tell or show that they love you? Even if it’s not boy love, you don’t have to be so desperate for it. 

While we’re hovering near that topic, might I add that I also hate how every female character is ALWAYS thinking about boys?

*40

It drives me nuts how everyone writes alright. It’s all right, not alright like already. If you spell it like alright, then it’s exactly proving my point how everyone thinks that alright is a word. Well it’s not! All right?!?

[Note: Extra point for Anita.]