Wattpad Insider
Are you wondering what Wattpad is all about? Watch The Wattpad Story video to find out.
Join the best place to discover and share stories.
Sign-up for our monthly Wattpad newsletters!Blogs We Love:
Search
Tag Results
1601 posts tagged wattpad
Jane Sevier is an award-winning writer, most known on Wattpad for “Fortune’s Fool,” a mystery set in 1930s Memphis. Listen to our interview with Jane as we discuss her career, historical fiction, writing tips, and psychic powers!
1,464 Plays
Movies About Writers
I’m not trying to write a top of the best movies about writers. I’m just making a list of the ones that I really enjoyed – for various reasons of course, whether it had to do with the overly tackled theme of the writer’s block, or had some inspirational scenes attached to it, these are my favorite movies about writers.
Finding Forrester (2000)
In a way, I just couldn’t start with any other movie, simply because Finding Forrester was so cute and sweet and sincere that I almost cried at the end.
Starring Sean Connery and his manly voice in the role of William Forrester, a very successful and yet reclusive writer, this movie actually has some pretty good advice on writing. And, as I said earlier, some inspirational scenes as well.
Connery’s character, loosely based on J.D. Salinger, , through a string of events, ends up helping Jamal Wallace with his writing. Jamal is black and sixteen, and just about ten different characters say it’s remarkable that he’s black, sixteen, and also a good writer. The film also stars Anna Paquin will all her clothes on and Busta Rhymes.
As I said earlier, besides the melodrama and some pretty good jokes and some bad jokes and the inevitable romance and one or two cliches about writers (like all writers are notorious drunks,) this movie actually has some good advice on writing. Much like this one:
Forrester: Why is it that the words we write for ourselves are always so much better than those we write for others? Go ahead.
Jamal: Go ahead and what?
Forrester: Write.
Jamal: What are you doing?
Forrester: I’m writing. Like you’ll be when you start punching those keys. Is there a problem?
Jamal: No, I’m just thinking.
Forrester: No thinking – that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!
And, of course, there’s this fabulous exchange between the remarkable black teenage writer Jamal and Sean Connery’s fantastic accent:
Jamal: Women will sleep with you if you write a book?
Forrester: Women will sleep with you if you write a bad book.
Read more
How to get over an ex-boyfriend
WATTPAD BRINGS YOU A GUEST POST FROM AISLING FITZSIMONS, AUTHOR OF AISLING’S DIARY:
Hello my lovelies!
First of all, I want to thank all of my Wattpad fans for your amazing comments and support. I hope you’re enjoying my Summer Diary as much as you enjoyed my first diary. Stay tuned for a new chapter and episode every Tuesday and Thursday on Wattpad.
After sharing with you 5 things I wish boyfriends would do, on my second post I’m sharing my advice on how to get over an ex-boyfriend and move on from a breakup. This is the advice I usually give to my friends and I’d like for you to share your tips as well in the comments, boys included.
Read more
Why Science-Fiction Isn’t About Aliens (And It Shouldn’t Matter Even If It Is!)
Wattpad brings you a guest post from Nick Uskoski:
As I write Sigma/Star, my science-fiction story, I have come across one big problem people seem to have: its genre. I can’t tell you how many times someone has commented or looked at my work and said it looks so good and they find it really entertaining and enjoyed it but…it isn’t their type of thing. And by that they mean science-fiction. There is a general assumption made by just about everybody that science-fiction involves space, aliens, and the future (and I used to make that too!). The problem with all of this is that it is…well wrong.
As an easy example of how off quite a few people are on the concept of science-fiction, I have encountered numerous readers of the popular Hunger Games series who have no idea it would be classified under science-fiction. A story set in a dystopian future environment? The way to tell that it is science-fiction is simple: it creates a timeline that could exist, but does not, while featuring a special something called cognitive estrangement.
A fancy-sounding term, n’est-ce pas? The easier way to put it is that science-fiction presents some sort of situation or uses science and explanations to make you believe in the world. Once you have decided to put aside your disbelief that, for example, there really is a world in which young kids are rounded up and thrown into a televised gladiator event, then the actual magic begins. For you see, science-fiction is all a lie. In fact, good and proper science-fiction is usually more real than a detective novel or a romance. The secret behind these pretty images and fancy flying machines is actually commentary on the true world. Can The Hunger Games actually being making a statement about modern society or the oppression of the government or perhaps on society’s lust for reality television? What about A Canticle For Leibowitz, which expresses the fears of a generation past when dealing with the atomic bomb? Or how about Planet of the Apes, exploring the ideas of animal testing, what it means to be human, genetic manipulation, and evolution? Did you even know these books were about all these things or did that cognitive estrangement have you passing over it without realizing?
Read more
Your Friend, the Satirist
Wattpad brings you a guest post from Brian K. Henry, author of SPACE COMMAND AND THE PLANET OF THE BEJEWELLED CONCUBINES:
Satire has always been one of my favorite genres, probably because I’ve always thought society is so screwed up it could do with a lot of satirizing. The satirist makes their whole project from picking out the dumbest and most outrageous things going on in the world and helpfully pointing them out to you, the reader, usually through some kind of exaggeration or new perspective. A typical satire takes some element of contemporary life and uses a skewed look to reveal just how off-kilter it really is.
America has a great tradition of satirical writing, going back to one of the U.S.A.’s first full-time writers, Washington Irving, who wrote a comedic fictionalized history of New York, and even including Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe is famous for his horror stories, he also has wickedly humorous satirical pieces, such as “The Man That Was Used Up” about a heroic soldier who’s become nothing more than a heap of prosthetic body parts.
Read more
When Words Fail, Music Speaks.
Wattpad brings you a guest post from featured writer Leah Crichton:
The one question I get asked a lot as a writer: “Where does your inspiration come from?” You may be surprised at my answer but I doubt it. In fact, you may be inclined to agree.
There are so many things about this life that give me cause to celebrate each day. My family, coffee, butterflies, lip gloss, black and white photographs, reading and of course…writing. For me, writing goes hand in hand with one other thing that I couldn’t possibly live without.
Some people say silence is golden. And that’s fine, for them. But for me, silence is dreadful. My iPod is like another limb. I’d be lost without it.
I. Love. Music.
What does my major obsession with music have to do with writing? It is single-handedly, where most of my inspiration comes from. My first novel, Amaranthine was inspired by two songs that played back to back on my iPod.
My second novel which will be featured on Wattpad, Celebrity Status has also been inspired by music.
The book shares its title with a song by a Canadian band, Marianas Trench. As the title suggests, it’s about becoming a celebrity. The first time I heard it I thought it would make a good premise for a novel.
So many musicians live on my beloved iPod. I have playlists for reading, writing, cleaning, working, dancing… breathing. Some of my other favorite bands to write by: Better than Ezra, Breaking Benjamin, Lifehouse, The Maine, Mayday Parade, Every Avenue, Hedley, Maroon Five, The Midway State, Simple Plan, Three Days Grace, The Fray, Augustana…just to name a few.
Read more
Wattpad Cover-Off: “Bubble Tea Girl”
Which version of “Bubble Tea Girl” by Althea Liu do you like better - 1, 2, 3, or 4?
A Born Storyteller: Comic Strips, Advertising, and Novel-Writing with Bill Cokas
Listen to our latest podcast here!
Aspiring novelists often don’t realize that the world is their oyster. From comic strips, to TV advertising, teaching, and creative writing, author Bill Cokas takes us through some exciting possibilities for a career in storytelling. Listen to our interview as we discuss his journey towards novel-writing and self-publishing.
Contact Bill and read his stories for FREE on Wattpad!
Plus, find out more on his website at www.margawriterville.com.
57,910 Plays
The winter is upon us. The Survivors are in chaos. The war is coming.
Aliens of the Deep: Dive Into An Underwater Adventure
Stephen Francia presents ‘Depth Charge Illuminations’, the first novel of the ‘Depth Charge’ trilogy.
Born in the country town of Orange NSW Australia, Stephen is married with three children and currently resides in Sydney. At 38 years old, he suddenly felt the need to ‘do something’ different in his life. With limitations on time and funds, he decided to pursue writing, knowing that his research and imagination could take him to places and worlds he could not travel to. Starting out on Wattpad, this journey has taken him into different genres and writing forms.
Man has been looking to the skies for years to establish if aliens exist. Unbeknownst to us, we were looking the wrong way! When Microbiologist Bill Langford sets off to open a sealed ocean CORK, the horrible truth is soon revealed. We thought that everything in the deep ocean, although mysterious, was quite normal and harmless. We were wrong! James Cameron recently went solo into the deep abyss of the Mariana Trench – he found nothing. Mankind will soon find out that there are reasons that the deep sea creatures do not like to be found.
Anyone who has gotten close to the truth about the creatures has mysteriously disappeared.
Read more
Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule! Contest Winners
Midlister Dreams in the Age of Ebooks
Wattpad brings you a guest post from J. Alexander Greenwood, author of Pilate’s Cross on Wattpad:
My grandfather was a midlister. Sean McLachlan aptly describes this devoted breed of writer:
They’re not rich, they’re not famous, but they make their living by writing and they’re responsible for the majority of all published titles. They’re called midlisters, and they keep the publishing industry running.
[…]
They’re the serious professionals whom publishers rely on to produce good, marketable books year after year, spanning all genres from nonfiction to fantasy to romance to young adult. They’ve moved beyond the small press to win regular paying contracts, but they do not have bestsellers.
Robert E. Trevathan
My grandfather wrote historical fiction. Specifically, he penned Westerns. A Michigan boy who saw combat in the South Pacific during W.W. II, his true love was the Old West–a passion that was fed by his posting in Oklahoma as a base historian for the Air Force. He won an award here and there and was published by respected imprints including Tor, Avalon and Manor. As far as I know (and sadly he’s no longer around to ask) he never made a huge amount of money on any of his dozens of books and short stories. He wrote because he loved telling stories.
“Ballanger” book cover
Starting in the pulp cowboy field, as the years went on his work earned respect and praise for historical accuracy and reader-friendliness. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame a few years before his death.
I learned from him some things you can learn from any true professional writer: read a lot, write every day, edit, edit, edit and most importantly: don’t quit.
Another important thing I learned from him was the quality of discipline. Grandpa Rob awoke every morning at 4:30 a.m. and turned on his egg timer. He wrote for precisely an hour every morning.
I’ve read that the British author and red mailbox inventor Anthony Trollope did the same thing (and if he finished one of his massive novels with time to spare, he would start on another until his time ran out).
Read more
Wattpad Cover-Off: “The Viscount’s Daughter”
Which version of Caitlyn Duffy’s “The Viscount’s Daughter” do you like better - left or right?
Listen to our podcast - Write What You Know: Legal & Crime Thrillers with Mary E Martin
Why are writers always told to write what they know? Listen to our discussion with Mary E. Martin about how her years of legal practice in Toronto and her art interests have influenced and inspired her writing career. Find out more about her legal thriller “The Osgoode Trilogy,” art-world mystery “Trilogy of Remembrance,” and more about her current projects.
113,054 Plays
What if Superheroes were Real?
Wattpad brings you a guest post from Darrell Pitt, author of The Steampunk Detective and Diary of A Teenage Superhero:
How would you feel if you saw a man flying across the city skyline?
New Yorkers were recently faced with this issue when a marketing company set up some remote controlled figures to fly over the city of New York to promote the movie Chronicle. It must have been an eerie sight. After all, flying people are not something you see every day of the week.
The power to fly would be astonishing in itself, but what would it be like to have a range of superpowers like Superman or Green Lantern or Captain America? Would you use those powers for good? Or would you use them for evil?
Power like that can be intoxicating. You probably recall the scene in Spiderman where Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben says, “With great power comes great responsibility.” It’s not too surprising that the idea is not new. Many writers have expressed similar sentiments. Among them, John Acton, a British Lord wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887 saying, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
Peter Parker learns about responsibility the hard way.
That’s an interesting idea – great men are almost always bad men. Is that why so many politicians are so poorly regarded? Is that why movie stars and singers and powerful business people so easily fall from grace? Is it because their powers are so great and yet we see them to be all too human in their failings?
In 1986 Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons released their groundbreaking comic book series Watchmen. In this series (and the movie of the same name) we are faced with an alternative Earth where superheroes are real. In fact, not only are they real, but they are just like you and me. Except for one person – Doctor Manhattan – they don’t have superpowers and are driven by desires far more complex than justice and freedom.
The characters from Watchmen.
Some of them are insecure. Some are psychotic. Others are vigilantes working with the government. Still others operate so far beyond the law they are more like criminals than the evildoers they pursue.
The movie Chronicle follows a similar concept. In it, three ordinary teenagers receive strange powers and we get to see how they deal with their amazing abilities. Do they use them for good? Or do they become their own version of a super villain? You’ll have to see the movie to find out.
Suffice to say that super powers don’t necessarily make us better people.
How would you feel if you encountered someone with the ability to fly? Or someone who had super strength? More than likely you might feel a little afraid. Probably very afraid. There might even be laws to control people with such power. They might even be automatically regarded as villains.
In my book, Diary of a Teenage Superhero, I explore the ideas of giving a group of teenagers, super powers. They mostly choose to use their powers for good, but they could just as easily use their powers for their own ends. In the sequel, The Doomsday Device, we see our heroes as they are drawn back into the clutches of The Agency. I’m currently working on the third book in the series and it’s due to be released sometime later this year.
The cover of the sequel to Diary of a Teenage Superhero - The Doomsday Device.
What will happen to Axel and Brodie and Chad and their friends? Will they continue to fight for truth and justice? Or will they be corrupted – possibly even consumed – by power? There’s one thing I will tell you. There are tough times ahead for our team and not everyone is going to survive the journey.
Until next time, good luck and happy reading.
