Crafting stories from start to finish
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of putting the hook in the first chapter in order to entice your readers and of building and releasing conflict in order to keep them. In order to effectively build a long-running web novel, it helps to think about how you are going to structure your reader experience over the long term of the story. Thinking about structure can feel intimidating, but you don’t need to have a spreadsheet to write a good story. All you need to do is think about your story as having Beginning, Middle, and End phases.Each phase of the story has a unique function and builds successively on the ones before it.
Effective outlining methods for writers
Though plotters vs pantsers is a well-worn dichotomy in writing circles, here at Wattpad, we like to think about it as more of a spectrum than a binary. Pantsers excel at improvisation and creative verve, while planners have meticulous structure and long-range thinking. Learning to outline doesn’t mean turning a pantser into a planner; it means giving yourself enough structure as a writer in order to allow your improvisation to bloom.
