5 June, 2019
[This guide was copied, as is, from Wattpad. At the time, I had no intention of posting it here. Please excuse any discrepancies.]

This section covers one of the unique situations the internet has brought upon the literary world: whether to write a book in full before publishing it, or to update it little by little on a hosting site like Wattpad. As a Base section, it has little to no examples drawn from canon Warriors.

Let me get my opinion out of the way. I would rather every writer on the internet wait to release their stories until after they have written them from beginning to end. The internet has given amateur writers the ability to publish chapter one without having written chapter two. Wattpad, fanfiction_net, and other writing-focused websites facilitate this method of writing with built-in word processors. In the Warriors fandom specifically, it is the only way to finish a book… or to not finish a book. I see so many stories published, but none updated. Nor do they get rewritten when updates are years apart Nor should updates be years apart! Some stories are just not posted at all, even if a cover and character list has been made for them. Most stories are abandoned halfway through. All this stems from updating your story as it is being written.

But that is just my opinion. Now that I have gotten that out of the way, it is time to discuss why the Warriors fandom (and to an extent other fandoms of younger readers/writers) do when it comes to posting work on Wattpad or other story hosting sites.

PUBLISHING WHILE WRITING

Updating our Warriors fanfictions is such an easy task. All we have to do is put a cover up (usually a picture of a cat with a script typeface title), add a short, ambiguous description so that you can change the plot later, and post the first thing that comes to our mind. Almost every one of these fanfictions start with a character index like the canon novels, especially if non-canon clans are used. And just like that, the first part of your fanfiction is done. Despite my passive aggressive bashing of this method of writing, I do know and understand why some people write this way. There are definitely benefits.

Time flexibility is one big reason to publish a story as you write it. It takes a long time to write a book, let alone one you like. What if you do not have three to four hours of uninterrupted time to sit there and write a chapter or two of a first draft. So you type it directly into a cloud word processor like the one on this site and get halfway through. You can write for as little as 20 minutes and not finish a chapter, only to come back later to do so and post it for all your followers to see. Not having time to write is an important factor on whether you actually write something or not. If you literally write whenever and wherever you can, little by little, you are more inclined to finish.

Motivation from your following's feedback is another advantage to updating a story while it is being written. Assuming you are not a professional paid writer, time is almost a non-factor when motivating you; there is no deadline. When users respond to what you have written in chapter one, you are more likely to finish chapter two. You will make time to finish chapter two. We want people to read what we write, ideally. If they have something to say about it, more power to you in regards to motivation. Anything that keeps a story from being abandoned.

This may sound like I am endorsing ego stroking, but it is not necessarily a bad thing to write something that you want others to see and discuss. And it is definitely not the only motivation people have had for writing. Some poets have dozens or even hundreds of poems surface decades after their deaths. Aristotle spoke and wrote his philosophy simply to explain why he was right; the fact that people listened and believed him was a bonus. Writing to your fans only becomes a problem when you write to please them. Do not do this. There are enough Jayfeather x [your OC] fanfictions out there, written for nothing more than likes and views. And they generate a lot of likes and views, just as they do in other fandoms.

On to the cons: one disadvantage to publishing a story while it is being written is consistency between chapters. Especially in this fandom, I have seen consistency errors like you could not believe. If you are writing one chapter in March and the next in April, this is bound to happen. You forgot that detail about your main character's eyes. You neglected that prophecy you started in chapter one for a little too long. Your characters forget their development, because you forgot what they were like at the beginning. Consistency errors can make or break a story for those who notice. No one complained too much when Firestar temporarily had blue eyes (I think they were blue in one book; do not quote me on that). But what if Firestar, all of the sudden, lost his tabby stripes? Or worse, what if we found mention of Scourge in the Dark Forest during the Omen of the Stars arc? These errors could be much worse, given that arc and the first were written years apart. If the books were just published chapter by chapter, these errors are not outside the realm of possibility.

A not-so-straightforward disadvantage: the ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously. When we have not committed to finishing one story, we can quickly move onto another. As I mentioned in the pros, there is little incentive to finishing a story that you have started. What if you like one of your supporting characters better? Just drop your current fanfic and get to work on your new super edition, even before the book they first appeared in is halfway done. Have a cool idea for a new story, starring original clans this time? Nothing is stopping you from simply writing both it and your first story at the same time. This would inevitably delay updates for both.

Working on multiple stories at the same time is something the Wattpad community is notorious for. Update schedules, ETA calendars, 'random thoughts' books containing spoilers for their other books; it is especially common in the Warriors fandom. We are just one person each. Splitting your attention between even two remedial tasks is enough to slow our efforts on both. You would not want to do that with both fanfics and real life. It can be very tempting to make a second story with a fresh idea while your first has not been finished; worse, if it has been posted half-finished. You may never get back to it.

Those are just some of the things that may come up when publishing a story-in-progress. Next, we will talk about the other option: writing a start-to-finish first draft.

THE FIRST DRAFT

This may not be something you have ever done as an amateur or fanfiction writer. An overwhelming majority of us do not. If you are updating your story as you go (or planning to), then you do not have a first draft. To have a first draft means you have finished writing your story, in full start to finish, and no one has seen it (save the possible editor-friend). If you post chapter ten without having finished chapter twelve, then you have not posted a first draft. You have posted a finished work that will be read and discussed by your followers as is.

You can probably guess that the pros and cons of writing a first draft over updating as we go will be opposite. You would not be wrong; there are many perpendiculars here. Some of you will skip straight to the "which is better" answer. I would not recommend skipping.

First, we gain consistency when writing the entire story first. The first draft gives us an important ability: proofreading. Even if you make no passes at editing, you will undoubtedly catch more errors when copy/pasting from Word or Sheets than you would if you just wrote it directly to Wattpad or fanfiction_net. That missing apostrophe, that one cat's fur color, all could be caught before being posted if you had a first draft (and an outline). It is just one more checkpoint your words have to go through before being posted. By eliminating the small errors, you are more likely to focus on the big ones; more on that later.

A first draft also allows you to focus and trim your writing and plot in general. This is discussed in depth in another section, so I will summarize it here. You get a chance to slim down your story by trimming away excess details, events, or even characters. Trimming your story is obviously going to shorten it. And Warriors fanfictions tend to hit under the 40,000 word mark (the average length of a novella) all the time. But more concise writing, even if shorter and more straightforward, is more entertaining than a jumbled mess that has so many things happening that even the author has failed to keep up with the details.

Of course, there are drawbacks even with the way professional authors write. Despite what people (like me) will tell you about drafting their work, Wattpad and other hosting sites work differently than the real literary world. The sites are like hybrids between social media and a publishing company, leaning more towards the social side. You have seen them. Some variation of 'the good girl and the bad boy' is always on the front page. That popularity contest many writers on this site run with is very real. Even more so in the fanfiction communities across the internet.

The amount of content you can put out is limited, as you have to finish your whole story before publishing a single chapter. Like I mentioned, social media/publishing hybrid. Content streams are important to your followers and the algorithms these sites use to generate traffic. A reliable update schedule is just as important to both. And without deadlines being forced on you by your legion of fans crying for the next update… you see where I am going with this. I, personally, am not a big fan of social media. I want my readers to enjoy the story as it is released, knowing it will be posted in full and edited with few errors. But I am a very, very small minority. Constant content is important to your followers. Just look at my follower count compared to others, my traffic compared to others. Waiting months or even years for another story to be posted on my account is not exactly good for growing a fan base.

This can be a huge turnoff for some writers. Other sites like Tumblr and DeviantArt allow simpler uploads and status updates to keep fans around for a bit longer. But the main content of both sites is images. Wattpad's is literature. And it generally takes more hours to write a 60,000+ word novel than it does to paint a digital picture (this is not indicative of the skills needed for either task). Many people may not be willing to wait so long for updates. They do not think of you in the same way they do J.K. Rowling or the Erins. Six plus months for updates could be too long to wait on an amateur writer when there are thousands of other amateur writers out there on the internet. People would rather be drip-fed content than waiting for huge updates; just look at YouTube as an example. Writing first drafts does not have to kill your fanbase, nor would it. It can limit its growth, though.

Another big disadvantage is your motivation could be sapped in the span of writing your story. This is huge. I have friends in real life that want to write novels. But that first draft can be a daunting task. I also have friends in real life who use Wattpad to update their story as they write, editing only chapter-to-chapter as they are posted. At the very least, they have written something. Between the months, even years, it takes to write a book, motivation could be sapped by a lack of progress, life interfering, no sense of direction, or too many senses of direction. If your motivation is to have people reading your work (not necessarily have lots of votes), writing an entire novel from start to finish to get those readers can seem like a huge chore. And this does not even count editing or promotion. Who knows how many times that book can be pushed behind a continuous stream of other tasks.

So there it is. Pros and cons to writing both first drafts and updating a story as it is being written. As usual for things like this, there is no always correct answer. Now for the moment of truth.

SO WHAT IS THERE TO DO?

There seems to be good and bad with both options, but that was all just observation and fact. Authors and literary experts will tell you that writing a first draft is done before anything. No one sees the first draft except for editors (or no one if you self edit, like most do). Only the subsequent edited drafts are ever shown to the public or publishing company. Whereas, on literature-hosting websites, almost every single user writes their stories just once, posting each chapter as it is finished. No outline, little editing. Therefore, their first pass also becomes their final draft.

My opinion on the matter is not important, nor is it definitive of an answer for this very specific question. But from all the personal research I have done for this section, I know many of you would benefit a great deal from writing a first draft before ever posting your story to Wattpad. Many Wattpad stories (not just the Warriors fanfics) have glaring errors in consistency, grammar, and the strength of their plot and characters. Yet these problems usually go undetected due to the younger sku of people who use the site and the sheer amount of content posted daily. The same happens on other websites with mass appeal and user-generated content (DeviantArt, fanfiction_net, Instagram, etc).

From the way I typed the above statement, it sounded like I just insulted the whole of Wattpad. I have not. All of us are varying skill levels, from beginner to even professional paid authors who use the sides. But, in this fandom, we are all amateur writers. And that does not mean unskilled. All of us could benefit from writing a first draft; there is a good reason authors do so instead of publishing sections in rapid succession over the internet (some do on Amazon, though). Writing a first draft helps the story, plot, and characters improve. More importantly, it lets you focus on improving as a writer. But it also means there is less of a chance of you finishing because other things can get in the way. It can also interfere with growth on your sites. My stories may be consistent, and of filling length and content, but it has done me no favors when it comes to growing my account and keeping me motivated.

IN CONCLUSION…

This is a tough question with no correct answer. Take advice from professional writers, there is only one answer. Take advice from Wattpad users, there is another singular answer. You choose how you want to write your story; no one can force you to write one way or another. I did not write this section to convince you of one way over the other, but to simply give insight as to why someone like you would choose to write the way they do.

Sometimes the 'what' is more important than the 'how'. Stories that people read, and that you enjoy writing, are always going to keep you motivated, consistent, and improving.

- Tyto