Wattpad observations

[betweensunandmoon]

There are three tiers of Wattpad stories:

1. Terrible.
2. Enjoyable, so long as you don't think about them too much (or at all).
3. Genuinely good.

Genuinely good Wattpad stories are harder to find than a needle in a haystack. At least if the needle poked your hand, you'd know you found it.

On the site itself:

1. The search function is abysmal.
2. Heaven help you if you want to read anything on Wattpad other than romance stories.

Romance is very much not my genre.

On said romance stories:

1. You cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a billionaire or crime boss of some variety, and I'm willing to bet that the only difference between the two is that one's made his fortune through illegal means.
2. Kidnapping is apparently a great way to start a romantic relationship.

Not that Amazon's "Romantic Suspense" category is any better. In fact, it may very well be worse. *shudders at the memory*

~~~

I restarted the book again; it was going in a direction I didn't like. The 10,000 words weren't totally wasted, but I don't know how many of them are salvageable.

It's a good thing I'm writing this book for myself and not for Wattpad, though it may very well end up there one day. There's no romance in it.

Comments

[igenlode]

I frequently fantasized in detail as a child (and still do, truth be told) about characters suffering great emotional and occasionally physical pain, but it was always for the sake of hurt/comfort and sometimes to explain why they were the way they were.

Well, I used to crawl round at the bottom of my bed beneath tightly tucked-in blankets as a child and pretend I was a slave in the mines, but I don't think that was for hurt/comfort, so far as I recall -- it was just for the glory of grim suffering (and to see how long I could stay down there without suffocating :-p)

I can't find anything sexy about a man physically and psychologically harming a woman until she breaks down and decides that she loves him. Not every Wattpad romance plays out like this, but a lot of them do.

The 'rape romance' has been very popular since at least the 1970s (and probably since Mrs Radcliffe in the 18th century), in which a woman is carried off by a strong, masterful male (thus absolving her of any blame in the enforced intimacy) and subjected to a series of titillating indignities, until it finally dawns upon her and/or him that he is actually in love with her and that he will henceforth repent of all his previous copious liaisons once she confesses to returning his affections. Bondage/sadomasochism is currently regarded as a morally approved 'kink' that should not be 'shamed' (probably assisted by "50 Shades of Grey" and its precursors/imitators); the emotional equivalent of "he ties her up and hits her, and she is aroused by the sensation of helplessness" has been rebranded as dated and sexist, but they appear very similar to me. I imagine a lot of women still enjoy those fantasies, even though they have been told that it's not socially permissible.

if you wanted to write a story about two gangsters in an uneasy alliance just waiting for the inevitable misunderstanding and tragic ending...

You really do know me, don't you? :P

Well, you're probably the only other person (besides myself and DutchS) I can think of who would actually have been eager to see my unpublished fanfic on Frank Capra's The Way of the Strong...!
(Did I ever recommend Underworld to you? I probably did.)

I actually had no idea, because Wattpad doesn't advertise itself as being romance-centric, but I guess it is.

I had no idea either. I only ever posted on Wattpad because it was suggested to me as 'therapy' by a (female) job adviser who said she posted there herself; original fiction in her case, I assume, but I never really got beyond the limited fanfic section! I never got any of those jobs, but posting fiction about self-torturing protagonists was actually one of the more helpful therapy suggestions I ever received, with hindsight. It's one of the few situations where trying to make other people feel bad is regarded as a desirable talent...

I wish there were a site specifically for stories that don't have romance as the main focus.

I suppose there's asexual fiction, although I'd assume (and I may be wronging it) that that sort of thing tends to be about characters Finding Their Sexual Identity and Learning They Are Not Broken, rather than about the vast majority of bits of life that don't consist of people romancing one another.

In regards to my own book, it's just a matter of moving some scenes around and rewriting one or two. It's back on track for the time being.

I've found several times that it's odd how the impression given by something can change according to its context. A specific line of dialogue that seemed to be going into entirely the wrong place for the character can be salvaged by having the same words spoken with icy control rather than blurted hotly out, for instance, or a scene can take on different connotations by having it take place at a different stage in the plot.

The great art is in identifying what the 'wrong' thing specifically is, I find -- and, ideally, working it out before you've developed a whole lot of other stuff depending on the element that shouldn't be there...

[betweensunandmoon]

I know kidnapping and rape as "romantic" tropes are far from new things (see, for instance, The Sheik). If these stories were presented as nothing more than straight-up erotic fantasies, I wouldn't be nearly as bothered, and might even enjoy them if they were consensual roleplay scenarios written by people who knew what they were doing. They're not, though—they're meant to be romances, and the whole point of romance is that you want the couple to end up together. I don't get it.

Bondage/sadomasochism is currently regarded as a morally approved 'kink' that should not be 'shamed' (probably assisted by "50 Shades of Grey" and its precursors/imitators); the emotional equivalent of "he ties her up and hits her, and she is aroused by the sensation of helplessness" has been rebranded as dated and sexist, but they appear very similar to me.

Well, you see, the difference between rape and kinky sex is that in the case of the latter, both parties consent and establish boundaries beforehand. The 50 Shades trilogy badly misrepresents BDSM as a whole and should not be taken as any sort of instruction manual.

(Did I ever recommend Underworld to you? I probably did.)

You did. I've just been a bit too mentally and emotionally drained to watch anything as of the past year.

You don't have any interest in sex, and I don't have any interest in romance. We can be dysfunctional in the eyes of society together. :P

[igenlode]

I think the point is not whatever rituals of 'safe words' and earnest agreements the current BDSM self-identified community has agreed on (and which I rather assume don't form part of the average establishment of Miss Whiplash in Soho catering to gentlemen of certain specialised taste -- although I daresay that's because there *are* unspoken definite boundaries in a commercial transaction; if you're paying to have a middle-aged lady dress up as a nanny and punish you for being a naughty boy, she's out to get a satisfied repeat customer and isn't going to do anything that will endanger the prospect of her receiving that money).
The point is that people like to read about and vicariously experience things that they wouldn't enjoy having happen in real life at all -- hence the popularity of serial-killer books, 'penny dreadfuls', 'True Crime' and misery-lit, etc.
Goes all the way back to the Ancient Greeks and the principle of catharsis, I suppose...

So yes, in the case of romances people --women -- like the image of the dominating bad boy who drags the heroine off to a remote location against her will (so she can't be blamed for taking up with an obviously unsuitable partner), enforces intimacies on her (so she can't be blamed for co-operating) and breaks her to his will (so she can't be blamed for loving him when objectively she shouldn't). You're supposed to want them to be together -- I think the whole idea is that the readers want them to be together and are willing the silly heroine to stop trying to rebel against what's best for her. In fact that was pretty much the assumption I was trying to subvert with Arctic Raoul, where I imagine most of the readers are going to take it for *granted* that Christine finally gives in to poor, sad Erik and takes care of him and realises that he is only bad because he loves her... or at least, subconsciously or not, are going to be tantalised by the possibility of that outcome being dangled before them :-p

You don't have any interest in sex, and I don't have any interest in romance. We can be dysfunctional in the eyes of society together. :P

Oh, I'm *interested* in sex all right. I just don't do anything about it, since the prospect of humpings in the abstract doesn't do anything for me.
I classify myself as an unfashionably monogamous non-practising heterosexual ;-p

(Which has an awful lot in common with Erik, as I'm well aware...)