Wattpad Pet Peeves

When the Solution to Everything is Communication

Alright, so this is something I've not only seen in Wattpad books, but also in professionally published books! Gosh I love writing! However, it mainly seems that amateur authors fall into this writing "trap". 

In my opinion, it is impossible to write a good story where there's nothing at stake, because if there's nothing at stake, then the story has no purpose, and everything the characters do is pointless. Basically, when the entire conflict can be resolved by the characters literally just talking to each other and not being stupid, then the story is pretty pointless.

My favorite example is always in amateur mystery books. There were these two books I read back to back, the first one called "The Amateurs" by Sara Shepherd, and the second one was "You'll Be the Death of Me" by Karen M. McManus. Both books were murder mysteries, and they both involved teenagers solving said mysteries. 

Let's start with the lesser of two evils: "The Amateurs"

It was basically about a bunch of kids who were users of a murder mystery forum solving a case about a missing girl that had been closed years prior. The plot was decent, but there was this whole thing about how the kids couldn't let the police in on what they were up to, or else they'd get arrested for "withholding evidence". That is such BS. Literally if the kids weren't so stupid, the entire story wouldn't have happened. At least the book was still somewhat entertaining. 

And now for my least favorite mystery book: "You'll Be the Death of Me"

In this one, a group of high school friends accidentally witness the murder of one of their classmates, and they have to solve it. They were really stupid because they'd been at the scene of the crime but fled when the police showed up. There was still a little more at stake than in "The Amateurs", but the book was ruined by other amateur writing mistakes (such as constant POV changes and a failed twist villain).

I've seen tons of books on Wattpad that are so much worse than this, where literally if the characters just talked to an adult or something, then there would be no conflict at all. Even though it's been a long time, I'm still going to stay true to my not referencing specific Wattpad stories policy, because I don't want to send hate anyone's way. However, I will directly reference professionally published books because people actually take the time to edit those things, so I expect better from them. 

Anyway, sorry for this lame chapter. This one had been waiting in my drafts for I while, and I just want to get all of my drafts out for the time being. 

See y'all in the next one!