10 things I’ve learned about readers from crowd-writing on Wattpad

I’ve had my stories on Wattpad for about 18 months now. With every chapter I’ve posted, I’ve built a readership. But more importantly, crowd-writing on Wattpad has allowed me to find out what my readers think as I go along. I’ve been interested in their feedback – it’s diverse – funny, intelligent and sometimes plain rude. But I can’t help loving each and every comment that I receive because it teaches me so much about readers. It also helps me to cultivate a thicker skin for criticism and to understand that some readers are flippant, some are easy to impress, some are hard to impress, some readers get my humour, some readers see humour when there was none, some readers are impatient with the story, some readers want the story to slow down, some readers are fans who want to shake pom poms at every sentence, some readers will read right to the end of a novel and then say your story stinks …

10 things I’ve learned about readers from crowd-writing on Wattpad:Readers will go along with you. Editors will not. Readers may excuse flaws in the plot if they like your writing styleReaders can sometimes be overly sympathetic and may barrack for the wrong personReaders like discovering parts of themselves in a storyReaders can be very interested in the minutiaeIf you’re putting your work out there in the world, some parts of the world may judge it differently. Readers in some countries are more conservative than others.Many readers will skip to the last page (the reading stats on the last chapters of my stories are consistently greater than the second last chapters)Some readers make up the most creative assumptions as they're reading that I never could have even imaginedEndings are extremely important for readers, but you can't please everyoneReaders may help you discover what your talent is and it may even surprise you
My stories on Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/user/outaprintwriter