This year, the Wattys judges are looking for stories that are IMMEDIATE, ENGAGING and COMMERCIAL.

What is "Immediate"?

Immediate means the story gets right to the point. We want the audience invested from the very first chapter. Your first chapter should give them a taste of the reading experience they're about to have.

From Chapter 1, your reader should think "this is why I picked up this story." How does this work?

Put the hook in the first chapter.

The hook is the first major event in your story that sets the tone, establishes the characters, and gives the reader something to invest in.

Examples of hook:

● A body is found gruesomely murdered

● The ignored fourth son suddenly becomes king after the rest of his family dies in a mysterious accident

● The main character witnesses aliens arriving on earth

● Getting trapped in an elevator with a cute stranger

● Finding out your new boyfriend is the son of a mafia don

In all of these cases, A successful hook is emotional, specific, and establishes the stakes and tone of the story. These are high-tension, high-emotion moments that immediately grab the reader's interest and promise them a certain kind of reading experience. Start your story on a note that's high tension, high action, high emotion, or all of the above.

NOT a hook:

● Waking up and getting ready to go to school or work

● Background information on the history of the kingdom

● Explanation of alien biology

● The protagonist's normal day in the life

These examples don't work as hooks because they're not focused on the present action of the story (the "front story"). Backstory and exposition don't go in the first chapter; sprinkle them throughout the chapters that follow. While it's common in a lot of novels and TV shows to show the protagonist's life before the story, the techniques that work in movies and TV shows aren't always the best choice for Wattpad. In Wattpad stories, the time available to hook the reader is really limited, so we want to focus on the moment of change where the story starts and not the circumstances leading up to it.

Story vs Story World: Focus on the Protagonist

Keep in mind that the inciting incident is focused around the protagonist and not the world. If your story is set in the zombie apocalypse, the conditions that bring about the zombie apocalypse may or may not be the inciting incident. If your protagonist is a scientist trying to stop the zombie pathogen from getting out, then the inciting incident could be the moment where the beaker breaks and the virus escapes. Whereas if your protagonist is a teenager trying to navigate life in their small town where half the inhabitants already have the zombie virus, the actual apocalypse itself is backstory and the inciting incident is something more personal to the protagonist, like finding out their brother is still alive. In both cases, the inciting incident is something that drastically changes the protagonist's life and challenges their assumptions about the world, but the stories they kick off are very different.

Determining your Inciting Incident

If you're having trouble thinking of an inciting incident, here are some questions that might help:

● What is the moment where everything changes for the protagonist?

● What new problem does the protagonist need to solve?

● What new question does the protagonist need to answer?

● What event challenges the protagonist's assumptions about the world and/or themselves?

It can also be helpful to think about your favourite books, movies, and TV shows. What was the moment that made you want to find out more about the story? That got you invested? Why did that moment work for you, and where in the story was it located? Keep in mind that a lot of popular books might not have the inciting incident or hook in the first chapter. While that works for a lot of books and other media, in Wattpad stories, we want to focus on having that hook right up front in the first chapter.

Writing the Opening

Okay, you've chosen the best moment to open your story. How do you actually write it for maximum Immediacy? Here are some ways to think about writing the opening. These are great elements to focus on to get your reader hooked.

Meet the Characters

Who are these people, and why should the reader care about them? Your opening chapter should ideally allow us to meet at least one of your main characters. This should not be a full description of the character and their entire backstory. Think about it: when you meet someone for the first time, you don't generally give your entire personal history. Rather, this is the first taste of who the protagonist is as a person. This is the spot where you introduce the first of the protagonist's goals and motivations. What do they want and why do they want it? How does the inciting incident affect them? Focusing on goals and motivations allows your reader to get to know the protagonist in an effective and dynamic way that simultaneously creates investment in the plot.

Focus on the Action

What's happening in the scene? Keep the focus on the present action of the scene, not what has led up to it. Keep the exposition to a minimum–only what is absolutely necessary for the reader to understand what's happening.

Amp up the Emotion

The event you've chosen should matter to your protagonist, and we need to see how and why it matters. If the event doesn't matter, or your protagonist is bored, that's a sign that you may not have chosen the best inciting incident. When you're writing, focus on the emotion by using descriptive language to create an emotional experience for your reader.

Establish the Conflict

What's the problem the protagonist is faced with? If that problem originates in the world around them (evil warlord trying to take over the world, murderer on the loose) that's an external conflict. If the conflict is mostly about how the character feels (like they don't fit in, that they'll never love again), that's an internal conflict. Your story should ideally have a combination of external and internal conflicts, but it's normal for a story to tilt one way or the other. For example, a mystery can have an internal conflict about how the detective feels burnt out from the job, but the external conflict of solving the murder is more important and drives the plot. Similarly, a romcom can have an external conflict about the characters having to pretend to date to throw off the tabloids, but the internal conflict about whether the leads can trust themselves and each other enough to fall in love is the main conflict of the story. Your opening chapter should introduce us to the main conflict in the story, which is ideally set in motion by the inciting incident.

Hint at the Stakes

A conflict does not have to be world-shatteringly big to matter (not every story is about the end of the world!), but it does need to matter intensely to the protagonists. The stakes are why the conflict matters to the characters, and thus why it matters to the readers.

Keep it Relevant

Central to the idea of Immediacy is relevance: making sure you are giving your reader the most important, interesting information about a scene. Every element of your chapter should work together to convey the story to the reader; everything should be relevant to the story you're trying to tell. While it seems like it should be helpful to the reader, imparting a ton of information can actually impede the reader's ability to understand what is going on and what the important information in the story is. It's like a forest: if the trees and underbrush are really dense, a traveler can't see the path through. We want to make sure the reader can see the path, and part of that is trimming back areas that are too closely packed.

Relevance is also about emphasizing what's important. If something is really important, spend more time on it: describe it more in-depth, give the characters more of a reaction to it, or spend longer in the moment. What you focus on enlarges, so what do you want your reader to think about the most?

AVOID Exposition and Backstory.

Exposition is when you summarize and explain things to the reader, sometimes called "telling." Telling can be a necessary part of writing when you need to skip over stuff quickly, but it should be used for things that you want the reader to skim over, not linger on. Generally, things you explain through exposition have less impact and emotional resonance for the reader. In the opening chapter, when you're really trying to hook the reader's emotions and get them invested in the story, it's best to avoid exposition or explaining as much as you can, and instead focus on showing the reader a high-impact moment that helps them get invested in the story.

Similarly, backstory is everything that happened before the beginning of the story (the Inciting Incident). The history of the world, your protagonist's childhood, how they came to be where they are, all of that is backstory. Generally, if it comes before the inciting incident, leave it out of the first chapter. You can drop hints or make allusions to backstory events, but don't give the whole explanation. It's much more effective to tease your reader with a bit of backstory to create interest.

AVOID holding back the hook.

Cliffhangers are a great way to keep your reader engaged, but you have to hook them first. If your first chapter is a build up that cuts off before the hook, you risk losing your reader. If you want to use a cliffhanger in your first chapter, you can cut the chapter at its most climactic moment; where you've introduced the hook but haven't yet allowed

the characters to react to or process it. Review the examples in this module: a lot of them end with a climactic moment that sets the hook but leaves the reader wondering what happens next.

Choosing an Opening: Inciting Incidents

How do you pick the most effective, Immediate spot to open your story?

Think about the moment when everything changes for the protagonist, the first event that causes the protagonist's life to go in a different direction. In screenwriting, this is called the Inciting Incident. This is a great place to start your story, especially in terms of Immediacy. This is the event that kicks everything else off and sets the rest of the plot in motion.

In a rom-com, the inciting incident is almost always the moment where our protagonists meet, perhaps by colliding in a busy hallway and spilling coffee on one another. In a sci-fi story, this could be the moment of first contact with aliens. The inciting incident should match the tone and scope of your story and create the conditions for the rest of the plot to happen.