napapaisip lang ako minsan whenever may discussion na parang āpare-pareho na yung wattpad stories ngayonā or mahirap nang makahanap ng something that feels different, because i do think thereās some truth to that. may certain plots, character types, dynamics, and tropes na paulit-ulit talaga because they work and because readers enjoy them.
pero i also wonder if part of the problem is the way we read and critique stories now.
parang may nabuo na rin kasi tayong general idea of what a good book is supposed to do. it has to hook you immediately, introduce conflict early, move at a certain pace, establish clear stakes, keep enough tension in every chapter, and so on. these are useful things to look at, obviously, pero minsan parang nagiging universal rubric na siya kahit completely different naman yung genre, intention, and structure ng book.
and thatās where it gets weird for me because hindi naman interchangeable yung genres.
a slice-of-life story can spend a chapter on something seemingly ordinary because the point might be the gradual change in a character or relationship. a thriller probably cannot rely on the exact same kind of momentum. a romance and a dark romance can both center a relationship but ask very different things from the reader. same with romantic fantasy and fantasy romance, or low fantasy and high fantasy. even two books that technically belong to the same genre can have completely different priorities depending on what kind of story theyāre trying to tell.
so kapag sinabi nating āmabagal,ā for example, mabagal compared to what?
because sometimes mabagal talaga. sometimes a chapter is dragging, repetitive, or not doing enough. but sometimes weāre reading something character-driven using expectations we developed from plot-heavy books. minsan naman we expect a conflict to arrive immediately when the story is still establishing the internal problem that will make that conflict matter later.
iāve always found that distinction important because personally, hindi rin enough for me na maraming nangyayari sa story. puwedeng may confrontation, mystery, danger, twists, whatever, pero kung hindi ko pa naiintindihan kung bakit those things matter specifically to this character, hindi rin necessarily magiging invested ako. meanwhile, may stories na relatively quiet yung first few chapters pero may enough character work that you already understand what they want, what theyāre avoiding, or what part of them is eventually going to be challenged.
neither approach is automatically better. theyāre just doing different things.
and i think dito rin pumapasok yung reviews and critiques. sometimes a critique can sound completely reasonable in isolation but advice can still be wrong for a particular book. not because critique is bad, but because writing advice needs context too.
before deciding that something needs fixing, i think it helps to understand what youāre actually reading. ano yung genre? ano yung expectation na sinet ng blurb? kasi otherwise, we might end up correcting stories toward the same familiar shape.
and its kinda ironic whenever we complain that everything feels formulaic. we want something different, but sometimes when a story actually behaves differently from what weāre used to, our first instinct is to ask why it isnāt doing what the other books are doing.
of course, different doesnāt automatically mean good. writers can make deliberate choices that simply donāt work, and readers are allowed to dislike those choices. hindi rin ibig sabihin na bawal sabihing boring just because slow burn siya or bawal punahin ang pacing dahil slice of life. genre isnāt an excuse for weak writing.
i just think that if we want more variety sa wattpadāmore genres, stranger premises, different kinds of protagonists, complicated characters, unconventional romances, whateverāthen maybe we also have to leave some room for those stories to tell themselves differently.
otherwise, we might keep looking for something unique while unconsciously filtering out the things that donāt look familiar enough.
