The Help Book - Basic Wattpad Tips

Do vs. Don't - PART TWO - Time (two examples)

Common plothole: time passing #1.

DO: Allow for time to pass. Events take time in real life; keep that in mind when you write a story and aim to make it believable. I once read a story where the girl woke up at let’s say 7:30, took a shower, got dressed, did her hair, didn’t like it so she re-did it, ate breakfast, talked with her mother, walked to school, talked with her friends in the school yard and then walking into class at 7:45. Okay, I don’t remember the exact time but she really did all that in the space of fifteen-twenty minutes. What is she? A superhero who moves at the speed of light? Even if she is, how did she spend so much time talking to people who move at normal speed? Or do they have superpowers too?

Yeah, a tad unrealistic, don’t you think?

And speaking of superheroes: have you noticed how most bad boys in wattpad stories tend to have Wolverine’s awesome healing powers? This leads us to a don’t.

DON’T: Chapter one: the characters get into a bad-ass fight and get bad-ass wounds; chapter two and a day later – not a single scratch on them? Girls and boys, unless you are the Wolverine, some other mutant or a magical healer (or have a healer at your disposal), you would not heal overnight. You will have scars, you will have bruises and you will be in pain.

But you wanted to elaborate on the fight and your main character winning and not on the consequences?

Well, at least mention those consequences!

If your character goes to school, you can have him thinking “my classmates were all staring at my black eye” or “my leg hurt so bad, I was barely dragging myself through the hallways”. Example:

From Here We Go Again, Chapter 11 (Alex’s POV), Saturday – the day Ty got injured:

Tyson was sitting on the ground, leaning his back on a bench and clutching his stomach. What had happened to him after the Ring? Instead of having just a few not too troublesome injuries, he was now covered in fresh bruises and cuts and was gasping for air.

From Here We Go Again, Chapter 12 (Alex’s POV), Sunday – the day after:

Tyson sat himself down on a stool and placed the towel on another. He slowly took his singlet off, wincing slightly due to the pain. The majority of wounds were on his torso, but he had one on the left of his jaw, a split lip and a black eye. I noticed the bruises had gotten a bluish hue during the night…

From Here We Go Again, Chapter 13 (Alex’s POV), Monday:

We entered and I instinctively started searching for Tyson. I expected him to ditch today, but to my surprise, he was in his usual seat, gazing out the window. I briefly wondered why none of our classmates were staring at him; his black eye and split lip were hard to miss. But then I realized that they were probably used to seeing the boy in that state…

See? Now I don’t claim to be an expert on wounds – because I am not – but I did some research and I included the injuries in the chapters after they were inflicted and yeah, it sounds more believable that way.

Tip: It’s hard to keep track of injuries but you know what might help? Throughout Here We Go Again, the two main characters (Alex and Tyson) got into several fights, sometimes with each other, sometimes with other people. Whenever a fight occurred, I’d make a new document entitled “include in the next chapter” (or something similar) in which I’ll write where they got hurt (as in “stomach”, “face”, not “in the park”, “at school”) and how badly. That way, I would remind myself to mention those injuries in the following chapter(s).