I'm not gonna decide for you how often and when you should post. A lot of other sources have already covered that topic. It's prolly no secret to you either that Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings are ideal times to update your story, because that's when most people are home from school or work and have the chance to sit back and be near their fave Wattpad-browsing device.

But something for you to think about is the fact that Wattpad is a global site and readers are awake and asleep at different times. This might not seem like a big deal to many Wattpad writers since your language and your time zone will naturally sync, but this is an issue for authors like me who write in English but live in Asia. (Yes, there are writers like us on Wattpad.)

Since Wattpad has no function for automated chapter uploading (year check: 2019), we could either stay up late or let our updates fly out in ungodly hours of the morning. These are small details compared to the overall scheme of putting out high-quality work that readers would watch out for in whatever time zone, but it is important enough to make you pause and wonder if maybe you're limiting your audience reach because of language or cross-cultural expectations.

There are those I-will-translate-your-story-in-my-native-language PMs that some Wattpad writers get, which could be another potential way for you to expand your audience reach if you could sort out some kind of system where views, votes or comments would come back to you. But I'll devote this chapter to matters of story length and frequency of updates, which I think are high up on the list of factors that affect a story's performance.

Picking up from where we left off in the last chapter, every time you say you caught Writer's Block and can't deliver, your reader puts you on snooze. If you do it often or long enough, they might never come back. Yeah, they may still be a number under your Follower stats but, believe me, you've already lost them.

I know some authors who postpone updating every once in a while and make amends effectively. But these authors are Rockstars to begin with so they can afford to do that. They update once, even twice a day anyway and come back big-time after a brief hiatus. I don't think a writer who's just building up their following could do as they please and then their readers would welcome them back with open arms.

Personally, what I do is upload a story on Wattpad that I've already finished and polished. I can't create and post stories regularly on the fly. If I tried, I know I would mess up the update schedule or come up with a slipshod story, both of which are big no-nos for me because of, if you remember, the rule of first impressions and the unspoken contract between writer and reader.

I envy those writers who can spontaneously do these two things: create and post regularly. I just can't. I don't function that way as a writer. I imagine it's sort of like author multitasking. Other authors fuse pre-writing, writing and rewriting seamlessly – or at least they say. For me, that would be like running as fast as I can with both my hands behind my back – ninja-style. I just know I'm bound to trip and fall on my face if I do it like that.

At any rate, if you're gonna put up a story on Wattpad that you're dynamically creating or editing, I would suggest you maintain a steady buffer of at least one chapter ahead. This way, if ever there was an emergency and you couldn't come up with the next installment, you can just go to your manuscript bank and make a withdrawal. But for me, I'm going to post stories that I've already completed. Period.

Why don't I just put my entire manuscript up on Wattpad if it's already complete anyway? And waste all the potential views, comments, votes and audience build-up? No thanks. That's not the way Wattpad works.

All right, time for a recap.

About story length, we've already established that chapter length on Wattpad can still follow tradition i.e. print publishing. But what about the length of the story as a whole?

The same logic applies. Since Wattpad, for many, is a springboard towards other writing opportunities, traditional publishers are high up on the list of partners that Wattpad has and traditional publication is high on the Wish List of aspiring writers. So, 40, 000+ word count for a full-length novel.

I also think the time-tested length of print books is a good template to work with. It gives writers enough space to build and then resolve the story. Anything shorter might make the reader feel like it's been rushed. And we can't blame them because most of the stories they've encountered in their lives come in the same institutional sizes.

I guess it's like movie length. If you watch old movies, you'll see they're strictly 2 hours long. (Not to mention the pre-movie credits are enough to make you nod off.) These days, movie length still plays around that length prolly because movie-goers can only sit still so long or they've gotten used to that duration, but you can definitely see more cases of 1.5-hour movies than in the past.

And then, there are the Lord of the Rings adaptations which are as long as their written originals. Similary, maybe you can pull off a Games of Thrones-length serial and monetize that as a Paid Story. Just a thought! 

Up Next: Last Words on Story Length

Stay Phenomenal!

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Hi guys, 

My novel The Boyfriend App has already been published. Yay! 

If you're familiar with the version uploaded here on WP, I added 6 never-before-read chapters plus 1 juicy fan-service bit that reveals what really happened to our beloved leading guy (bot?) Ecto. Plus, there's the gorgeous new cover designed by the publisher. 

If you wish to have a copy shipped to your place and sitting on your shelf, just visit my website www.phenomenalpen.com for details. 

Thanks!