I’ve been looking for a new outlet for my longer, full length stories so I thought I’d give wattpad.com a try. If you haven’t been there, wattpad bills itself as a world of unlimited stories. For the reader, wattpad is a place to discover new authors and read some really exciting work.

For the writer, the site is easy to use and well organized. Posting a story is quick, as is notifying the wattpad community that you’ve posted new material. You maintain complete control over your content and can update/edit at any time. You can even build the story while the community follows along, providing comments and suggestions.

And it’s free to join, read, and publish.

Wattpad is a social platform that encourages conversations about writing.  The idea is that by reading and commenting on other people’s stories, they’ll reciprocate by reading and commenting on yours. The comments generate buzz and buzz gets more people to read your stuff.  This will be the most difficult for me as I have very limited time to be on-line either reading or commenting.

Nonetheless, earlier this week I posted “Grayson’s Mountain” (originally published in eFiction, November 2011) just to see how it was received. In the near future I will post a few more previously unpublished stories. Hopefully I will get some constructive criticism, and maybe even some compliments.

If you are a writer, and in it for the money, there is something to keep in mind before posting to wattpad, or even to your blog. Some magazines will consider those posted stories as previously published and will not consider them for publication.  Consider this carefully before posting. Once it’s out there, it’s out there.

On the other hand, if your main goal is to get your work out there to share with the world, then you might consider posting to wattpad. It seems like a great community to be involved in. Publish and be heard. The stories don’t do anyone any good sitting in your virtual trunk!

Are there other writer and reader friendly sites that are similar to wattpad? If you know of any, why not share? We can all benefit from the opportunity to start conversations about writers and the stories they create.

One last thing―don’t forget to jump to wattpad and read “Grayson’s Mountain”.  And be sure to let me know what you thought of it.  Thanks!
© Copyright 2014 by Kevin Fraleigh.