In that sense, it is safe to say that people are expressing themselves in a more hybrid form in India.” “The pop culture references are regional, which we don’t see globally. Wattpad India, Devashish observes, has been gaining more visibility in Tier-2 and 3 cities. When compared to the global Wattpad community, the trend that is emerging in India, is the diversification of writers and the themes they write on. When you are promoted to Wattpad Stars, the editorial teamoffers insights on how to write effectively. Wattpad does not recommend topics for writers, even if they have a sizable readership. Since we don’t have a character limit, we encourage more long-form stories.”

“In romance for instance, people are exploring themes such as religious and class differences and forbidden tales of desire,” he says, “Anthology is another genre that is catching up. Romance, fantasy and horror are some of the popular genres that writers seem to be flirting with. It enables what is called a line-by-line comment option, where readers are allowed to express their thoughts on what they felt about a particular paragraph or sentence. Writing on the platform is not an exercise in brand-building, but in connecting with the readers. We do, however, allow writers to use certain words if it is necessary and helps in the character or plot building,” he tells me, adding that the decisions are made solely based on the content and not the type of content.ĭevashish Sharma believes Wattpad is ideal for long-form narratives “We don’t encourage the usage of the ‘F’ word, for instance. It does not censor your content, but the filtering is done only to reform the language that is used, to make sure that the material getting published meets all guidelines. But there is a “layered filtering” that happens in the larger framework of the platform.

There are no major restrictions on Wattpad India, a sister concern of the global player Wattpad. “Community-driven” is a word that Devashish tends to use throughout our conversation, when I call him to discuss the structure of the publishing platform, designed to encourage and support a community of readers and writers.īut how different is Wattpad from other storytelling platforms such as WordPress, Medium and Storify? “They focus more on non-fiction content, but our community is primarily driven on fiction,” he says, “Our writers are creating an imaginary world and we are finding an audience for them.” Storytelling made easy No, he wasn’t taking a dig at me when he says “writers write for ads”, but was merely addressing the elephant in the room. “Writers either write for ads or are looking to publish their content,” says Devashish Sharma, Country Head of Wattpad India, an online social platform where anyone can become an author.

Wattpad stories meaning