Write & Wrong

Wattpad Is Kinda Sad.

(This may or may not be offensive through a sensitive topic. Proceed with caution.)

Okay, so I've been on Wattpad for a little under a year, maybe, eh, seven months, and needless to say, this website has its ups and downs, despite the overall hype. I love Wattpad, really, just some things are a little... biased.

For example, the Wattpad is kind of like a society, or high school in itself. It's full of sad teenagers, the occasional amazing person, and trends that come and go. What I want to focus on is the whole trend thing, and you'll see how the other two come into play later.

So Wattpad has trends, right? What is popular now might not be popular in a few years, or months; for all we know, the latest trend might not even be around next week! In the literary community of the real world, one of the first major trends was paranormal romance, thanks to the Twilight series, and now it's a dystopia overload on behalf of The Hunger Games and Divergent (aye, all of these series are at least half decent, so no wonder they set trends).

On Wattpad, the trend is depression, cutting, and teenage boys coming to sweep sad teenage girls off their feet. And boy, I get so damn tired of reading the same thing over and over. Thankfully, this trend may be dying out, because I don't see as much of this as I did, eh, a month ago or so.

I like to try and find new things to read on Wattpad, but there was a certain point where that became impossible. When you reach far enough into the depths of Wattpad, you can find interesting stuff: cool points of views, different kind of poetry, interesting and original plotlines. But on the surface, it's fanfiction and romance-meets-depression sort of stuff.

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A friend of mine had introduced me to Wattpad. She was going on and on about how awesome it is, so I decided to give it a shot after asking a little about it:

"So, have you posted anything?"

"Yeah, I've posted a few stories so far."

"Really? Awesome, how many reads do you have?"

"Oh, about 150 thousand."

HOT DAMN, SON, HOT FUCKIN DAMN. I BETTER CHECK THAT SHIT OUT BECAUSE SHE MUST BE SOME KICK-ASS WRITER WITH TALENTS OF THE GODS.

So I make an account and whatnot, and I search up her story. I'm not going to name any names, since she's pretty famous, so I'm gonna just keep it on a for-you-to-know basis. But I find her story, and of course, I dramatically gasped at all the positive comments and reads that she had. I immediately started reading, and my jaw just dropped.

it fuckin' sucked.

The whole thing was unrealistic. Very-pretty-quiet-scene-girl-who-cuts-herself gets swept off her feet by very-pretty-quiet-new-boy-who-happens-to-be-her-new-neighbor and yadda yadda yadda. Not only that, but the grammar, oh lawdy, the grammar. The grammar in that story gives me nightmares to this day.

As I was forcing myself to finally get to that last page, I was thinking, "What about this story gets people to come back to it?" I head to the comments and see that they're all from girls who self harm, "You helped me stop cutting," "I feel so much hope after reading this story," "You're an inspiration." (Judging from those comments, it would seem like the story's actually kick-ass, but it's not, because I know some kick-ass shit. And that's what I was trying to figure out.)

People come back to it because the story appeals to the epidemic.

Because Wattpad's users are mainly expressing themselves through experiences of cutting or other self harm, that's what they're looking for. The trend is/was depression. And hope that a cute boy will end all of your sadness (which couldn't hurt, but hey, it's all about execution of ideas in a way that works).

The readers keep coming back to this story because the main character is something that readers can relate to on a technical level. Sad, lonely, self-harmer. But then, after the climax of the story, the main character is something that they all wish to be. Happy, loved, in the arms of a cute boy. That's why it's so popular. In context, it sounds good, but the ideas had no flow, no correspondence, and it killed a few of my brain cells.

I felt cheated. How come some piece of crap could get hundreds--thousands of reads with the blink of an eye, while I struggle for twenty reads?

I don't write about depression, or cutting, or cute romance. There's one thing. But I pride myself on original stories/concepts, shouldn't that be good, too?

So then, when you dig through the piles upon piles of the same plotlines, ideas, characters, you find pure gold. The stories with cool ideas, those intriguing characters, and all of that beautiful poetry. I'm not saying that writing about depression can't be in this "faction" of Wattpad - I've found multiple stories and poems that incorporated depression and sadness that were fabulous, but what made them amazing was some great word choice and twists on common ideas.

(For instance, one of the first stories I read on Wattpad, Night Life, dealt with the two main characters battling different severities of sadness. I freakin' loved that story. It was one of those that made you pump your fist in the air when you got that hella awesome ending. It was, without a doubt, kick-ass, because the ideas and execution were unlike anything I had seen. And apparently everyone else thought so, because it ended up in the 2012 Wattys.)

But sometimes, you find this writer, who speaks to you on a personal level, ya feel? I'm not talking about John Green, because he's a given, but on Wattpad, there's going to be someone you can relate to and whose writing connects with you on that personal level. They defy the trends. They don't want to create a fanbase, they want to create art. Your heart races when they update, your fingers itch to get to the next page. These people come every once and a while, and I have found one certain writer I love. It's a thrill to see what she comes up with, because her writing style is totally original, and same goes for her ideas. She doesn't have as many reads as my good ol' other friend, but she deserves every one she has and more.

I hope that for those of you like me, you can find that one writer as well.

And for those of you who write about depression while depressed: keep things interesting, but never forget that you write for a reason. Everyone has a reason for writing, and if that reason is to get out your feelings, keep doing that. It helps. (self-harm is not the way to feel.) (stay strong; depression is difficult, but, honestly, things will get better.)

Vote for finding that awesome gold-under-all-the-shit-piles writing hell yeah