How To: Wattpad

Representation

This is a chapter I've been thinking about writing but was not sure which book to put it in but I've chosen this one. On Wattpad, I've noticed that representation of people of different races, religions, sexualities, abilities etc is very minor. Of course there are books out there that include POC, people of different religions etc but there aren't enough.

If I got a pound for every time I've read a book with white, rich, atheist or Christian, straight, cis-gendered protagonist I would be rolling in money.

There are a lot of LGBT+ books out here with different types of relationships at the center of the stories but the most books written about LGBT+ relationships focus on homosexual relationships. I've never read a book on here that focus on an asexual protagonist, that's not to say that a book about asexuality doesn't exist but I've never seen one. Transgender characters rarely come up in books for any reason other than the fact that they are transgender.

POC are massively misrepresented on Wattpad in my opinion, there are simply too many books that are focused around a white main character. What I've said in some of my other 'how to' books is to simply not give your character a race, because then anyone can identify with that character because they can imagine the characters as themselves. People of colour are widely misrepresented in society as it is, so let's make Wattpad a place where people can feel like they belong and there are characters they can relate to.

Disability is written about quite a lot, especially in the Romance and Fanfiction section, but what I notice about these books is that they tend to not go into the negative side of the disability. The pain, the sense of hopelessness at times. You can place your characters in cute coffee shop and have them talk to a cute person but at the end of the day, if they are paralyzed, they will always have dark days. You can be as content with your life as anyone could be and still have dark days, they may not be frequent but everyone has them, regardless of ability.

This was just a small post about something that is a larger issue. Let everyone be represented on this amazing site. Let everyone feel like they are welcome with your words, with your stories, with you poems. With your kindness.