As many of you know, over the last few years I’ve been writing and posting stories, long and short, on Wattpad. I’ve detailed some of my experiences with Wattpad over the years, in particular with regards to my novel The Descent.
The Descent was originally written as a 2,000 word short story during the spring months of 2017 (you can read here). It was my entry into a competition on the ScienceFiction community profile on Wattpad.
With the encouragement of those that read the original story, a re-write of the short story turned into a project that grew to 60 chapters and 117,000 words. It’s a story that has exceeded my greatest expectations. Not only has it been a Wattpad featured story (read about that here) but it was also shortlisted for the 2018 Wattys (read my post about that here). The most important part: it likely wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for the feedback from all the readers that read it throughout the last couple of years.
Recently, I was invited to participate in the Wattpad Paid Stories program with The Descent. If you’ve been around Wattpad for the last six months, you’ve likely heard of it. The idea is that you, the reader, have the opportunity to support the stories and writers you love by purchasing coins and unlocking chapters of the stories you want to read. A portion of what you spend goes directly to the writer. For The Descent, this means that the story is now no longer free to read and it has a paywall after the first seven free chapters. After that, you can either pay by chapter as you read, or buy the whole story outright.
For me, this is another step in my journey as a writer. In more than one ways, Wattpad is the platform that began to make my dream of becoming a writer a reality by allowing me to publish stories and receive instant feedback from you, my readers. Now, Wattpad Paid Stories has given me the opportunity justify all the early mornings, lunch hours and late nights I’ve spent writing not only The Descent but the other stories you can read for free on my profile. Just being invited to this program feels like validation that hey, may my writing has an audience after all.
What happens next with The Descent? Will it make me any money? I have no idea. But seeing The Descent as part of this program and knowing the caliber of the other writers in the program is a huge boost for me personally and I’m thankful that Wattpad has given me the opportunity to count myself among this Paid Stories writers.
If you’re interested in reading The Descent and directly supporting my writing journey, you can check out the story here:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/107471285-the-descent-featured
Or, if you’d rather stick with my free content, go to my Wattpad profile and check out some of my short stories and longer stories such as Intervention, my current work in progress.
https://www.wattpad.com/user/TechieInAK
If you do come visit, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Let me know what you think. That is, after all, one of the awesome aspects of Wattpad, community feedback.
Also, don’t forget to check out the other marvelous novels in the Wattpad Paid Stories program. Not only are they great writers but they are also fantastic people. Find out more about the program here:
https://www.wattpad.com/paidstories/
I hope to see you there!
