I’ve finished a story with about a 100,000 word count, which will always be dear to my heart

[Guest]

It gained 4.16 million reads on Wattpad and was signed onto their paid program and webtoons hahah. It’s cool and all but the story is quite amateur to be honest and it really gave me a desire to aim a little higher this time since I’m pretty sure once it’s been signed with Wattpad, no agency is going to touch it hahahah.

Soooo I guess my reasoning for this post is what advice would you give someone going from writing a totally unplanned out story on Wattpad to writing a more structured story that actually has potential to go somewhere? I really want to write this story from a standpoint of believing it will actually go somewhere, since I wrote the previous strictly for my own entertainment and never really imagined more than 100 people would read it hahah. Any advice or pointers at all would be so greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Also, idk if it matters but I love writing romance and fantasy.

[Bailey]

I would definitely check out Alexa Donne on YouTube. She talks about how she used to do fanfic and ways to avoid it in traditional publishing.

[Nicholas]

You should write with the same vision. You were being creative and not focused on sales. That’s what drew the readers. You may feel it was amateur but 4 million is 4 million, amateur or not. Write from the heart.

That’s what writers do. You said you wrote it for your own entertainment. That’s what writers do.

They write because they enjoy it.

Don't miss: I’m curious—what are the pros and cons of sharing your work on Wattpad?

[Finnely]

1. That's honestly amazing! Getting Wattpad to pick anything up is damn near impossible, so you should be proud of yourself. And that's honestly a point in your favor---you already have a platform when a lot of people aiming to traditionally publish are starting at zero.

2. Just write it. No one and nothing is stopping you from writing something new from start to finish and pitching it to agents. If you're looking to incorporate more structure, highly recommend checking out The Snowflake Method of outlining or the book Save the Cat Writes a Novel.

[Daniel]

From your post it sounds like you are most concerted about plot. I believe in the primacy of plot overall character, I would consider myself basically an Aristotalian. theoretically we talk about 3 act structure, even in the context of 5 act structure( (Shakespeare and sitcoms) where acts 2, 3 & 4 are basically a drawn out second act. Plot is a plausible sequence of consecutive events, arguably causally related. So, if you are concerned about structure it can be helpful to outline your story before beginning to write, or at least around when you first begin.

A couple of objections to this approach, " I don't want it to feel stiff or wooden" the outline served as a temporary guideline, your story will be in flux. And so will your outline. Don't be afraid to change it as you go along. It's a road map to be sure but feel free to digress to a new mexico backwater to sample the local green chili cheeseburger. You can always go back to the highway or continue on two lane blacktops down to Mexico.

The road map got you setting out to the east. This metaphor is worn out, but your outline needn't be. It gets you going in a direction and can always be modified as you go along. Always save all the iterations. Because you might want to revert.

I like the notecard technique where you lay out all the scenes, events. Chapters on notecards and experiment changing the order, you can color code the drafts. All of this forces you to think about structure, instead of perhaps wandering aimlessly. Although wandering aimlessly does work for some writers also.

Explore these too: What would be a reason that ancient keys were createda and scattered throughout earth thousands of years ago?

[Alma]

Use the precious reader feedback you got from Wattpad (they do leave feedback there, right?) and make a list of what worked and what didn't. Use those ideas to plan your next stories.

And a technical point. Usually web serials are weakened by a lot of filler and plots that go nowhere, which is one of the reasons they wouldn't get trad published. They're basically a first draft, consumed by readers as it's created. So with your experience, try to outline the next story you write and it'll likely come out stronger and plotted more tightly. And therefore a lot readier for publication.

Also, check out: Anybody know the legal rules for self publising fan-fiction?

[Bethany]

Me too.. start writing. Plot out a story line.. write and submit it either for publishing or self publishing.. that's pretty much all I write is fantasy romance..

[Max]

I am a virtual assistant for authors and a creativity coach. If you want to take your writing more seriously, I would suggest you invest more time in the planning and research stages.

For example, plotting out your story and character arcs and writing detailed character descriptions that you can later draw on.

Don't forget to take a look at: How do I get an ISBN number when I'm self-publishing my book?

[Ian D.]

My first piece of advice is to get off Wattpad, it seems great but it isn't.

The next piece of advice is to keep doing what you are doing, a mistake many new and some experienced writers make is they start to look for those dollar signs. What you did worked for your first book/story so it is working and you don't fix what isn't broken.

Finally prepare for the flood of messages from those claiming to be publishers, cover designers, and promoters, and remember if they approach you they are probably fakes.