Why You Should Write for Episode
Episode Interactive has its pros and cons. It’s a great app that helps readers to connect with stories in a new and exciting way. Plus, it makes it really easy to chat with your new fans! I loved reading and writing Episode stories during my time on the app. However, learning the code can be a scary prospect for new writers. This is really true if you haven’t read much on the app before you start (which you should do). So I’ve had many people ask me what the point of writing for Episode is. It seems like a lot of work for nothing to them. That’s fair enough, but there are some great reasons why you should write for Episode.
So whether you’re new to the idea of Episode or a veteran reader trying to decide whether you should join the writing crew, there’s a lot of reasons why you should write. Some of them are good for you and some of them are good for the community as a whole. We’re always looking for new writers and new people to talk to. You’ll be welcome for sure! So before you make your decision, give me a chance to tell you why you should write for Episode.
It’s a Huge Community
There are so many writers and readers on the app. We come from all parts of the world and we all share a love of reading. It can be an amazing experience to write for Episode because so many readers have a thirst for new stories and will read anything good in a heartbeat. I’m not saying that it won’t be hard to get up there in the app. It will take some time, effort and social media on your part. But the audience is there! There are people out there who want to find stories like yours, so you will get readers if you try and your story is good.
Episode is big on Insta and has its own community forums for writers and readers to take part in. Despite drama from time to time, most of the users are quite friendly and happy to have a chat with you. Many are looking for stories that they can read and people they can make friends with. The bonds in the community can be very strong! I’ve met some great friends on there, and we’ve grown as writers together.
It’s a Challenge
If you’re a more conventional writer, making stories in the Episode style is a huge challenge. Not only are you going to have to learn some crazy code, but you’ll also have to work with what you’ve got. To be honest, even though Episode is slowly adding to its library, there are very few animations at the moment. And the art assets? Not many at all! The backgrounds don’t get added to very often and the new style, Limelight, didn’t even have flat shoes for women for months after it was released.
So how is that a good thing? Well, don’t they say that art thrives within limitations? Whoever they are, they’re right. My first success of a story, The Queen of Freaks, evolved from me working out what I could and couldn’t do with Episode. I couldn’t make the Faeries look too different from the humans back then, so I thought that the idea of two warring races was out of the window. Boy, was I wrong. After some thought, I changed the story idea for the better. I made a world of paranoia where everyone was worried they’d become a Faerie. That was something no one had ever seen on the app before, so they were keen to read!
Loads of writers have made comedy from the fact that INK-style characters can only eat pizza and cupcakes. Of course, all of the writers on the app know that struggle! It’s hilarious! We’re all in the same boat on the app and we work with it. When you do make something new or cool with the stuff you’ve got, you’re going to get a lot of praise and reads from it. And if that isn’t a reason why you should write for Episode, I don’t know what is!
You Can Get Popular
Once you get a little exposure on the Episode app, the chances are that people will start following you on Insta. They love your work and they want to keep up to date with everything else you’re doing in the
Then you can use that to promote loads of other stuff you’re doing! There’s no reason why you can’t branch out from Episode! You could start a blog (cough), write for a new app or publish a book, and the chances are that you’re going to get some people who follow you over. After all, many of them love you as a writer, and they want more. It doesn’t matter where you write then!
This is great if you’re using Wattpad right now. As a reader, I’ve followed my favourite writers over to Wattpad when they say they’ve written stuff on there, too. Even if it’s the same story! I just started writing The Queen of Freaks on Wattpad myself and a good portion of my following on there (though small) is people who read my story on Episode. I haven’t even advertised the new version to my fans yet!
It’s a Well-Known App
If you want as many people as possible to read your work, it’s a good idea to go for the apps with a lot of traffic.
You’re going to get a whole lot more reads from Episode than you are from most other apps like it. That helps to you build up that brand I was talking about and get as much feedback from your work as possible. Even if you don’t plan to make writing your job, it is a good idea to choose the most well-known and successful app for stories like this. Then at least you know that a lot of people are going to be using it already. You have an audience all thought out for you!
You Might Get Paid
Ok, with this one, I can’t stress enough that you can’t write thinking you’ll get paid. It takes just the right blend of hard work, skill, patience and luck to unlock Writer’s Payments, so there is no way that you can get money for sure. You just need to wait it out and see how the story goes, if I’m honest. Episode has very high stakes in place to stop too many people from getting paid, and they pocket all the money you make until after you’ve hit 500,000 reads in 60 days. That’s two months to get half a million reads! Ok, it’s over all of your stories, but it still seems kinda insane.
But if you’re not in this whole writing thing for the money, the idea of maybe getting paid can be a great incentive. I mean, Episode is perfect for you if you don’t need to be paid to keep writing, but at the same time, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Most of the other apps out there don’t really give you a promise of pay. On Episode, you have a goal that you can reach, even if it is very hard to get to. With an app like Wattpad, you have to be invited onto the payments scheme and there’s no way of knowing how to do that, or if it will ever happen.
Episode is a great bet for you if you’re not trying to find a job or some extra money. If you are, maybe you should try somewhere else. If you write for Episode, though, you do have promise. There’s always the chance that you can work towards your goal and make a little bit extra on the side for all of your hard work.
It’s a New Way to Tell Your Story
One of the things that
So most readers turn to Episode because it makes reading different and fun. You should use that as a writer, too! They say that reading is dead, but I think that it’s just evolving and we need to learn to stay on top. Episode is a great way to do that. For the first time, you can show how you want your characters to look. You can be in control of how the camera pans and cuts. It’s up to you how people react and when. You’re not just the writer! You’re also the director.
With such a new way to tell your story, it can be a nice break from hours and hours of staring at a blank screen, willing yourself to start a paragraph. If you have writer’s block, there’s always something you can be doing to help your story. Sure, you should also check out my post on writer’s block whether you’re a more conventional writer or you’re thinking about jumping into Episode, but you can also spend time making outfits.
You Can Get Reviews
Fanmail is great on Episode. Sure, you get some readers who just come off rude or demanding, but you can also get a lot of valid criticism. You can ask people on the forums what they’re looking for and many critics are willing to give out reviews for free. There are always people who want to help and love speaking about stories. You’re not alone! So use that as a chance to improve your work. Learn what your target audience wants and how you can appeal to them more. So many people are keen to give free advice! Why wouldn’t you use that?
What really helped me is how many non-native speakers there are on the app. You see, it can be really easy to make your language hard to understand or pretentious. Having that base of people who didn’t speak English as a first language to bounce off helped me to make my story accessible to the readers. I didn’t have to change too much, but if my critics couldn’t get what I was saying, I knew that it was a fault with my writing and that I needed to tone it down a little.
There’s nothing wrong with big words! In fact, I did a blog post about how to use them well. Non-native speakers can learn things from context. In fact, that’s the best way to learn! It’s just about how you write the sentence. If you write for Episode, though, you’ll have a really good idea of how well you’re doing with making the words work. It’s a great way to adapt your writing style to fit a wider audience without losing what makes your style yours.
No One Expects Perfect
We’re all learning. There are very few professional writers on Episode. Most of us just do this for fun, and a lot of us are teenage girls. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that some of the featured authors are complete amateurs! So if you’re looking for somewhere that you won’t be judged too much, Episode is the place for you.
None of the readers are going to expect your story to be perfect. We’re used to stories with bad pacing or a weak plot. We’re also used to finding the good in those stories and helping writers to make them better. So if you write something with good grammar and take time to think about the plot, you’re in the money. The chances are that most people will jump on the story. Our bar for what is good is a lot lower than the bar for published books.
I don’t mean that in a bad way at all! It means we’re all in this together and we’re all on the app for the same reasons. It means you can really stand out when you put a little extra thought into your story. I write for Episode because I know I can make stories people will like. Most of my readers are less critical of my mistakes than they would be on some other platform, so I can use this to grow and get better without people judging me too much. They know I’m just starting out, so they don’t expect perfect. They just push me and give me great advice instead! It’s a great balance.
You Can Add Diversity
I know there’s something that makes you special. Do you have a story to tell that’s different from all the other stuff we’ve read? And I don’t just mean POCs or other minorities. We want stories set in new areas, about new jobs and different social classes. What can you give us that is new and fresh? Please, please write for Episode if you can add something we’re not used to. We’re looking for people who have lives we’ve never seen written about.
All of the stories at the moment seem to be set in the US. Sure, the number of black MCs is slowly growing, but they’re pretty much the same as their white counterparts. They all live in the US, go to school or uni and have a middle-class life. They’re all able-bodied and have serious first world problems. Chances are that their biggest issue in the story is how to make the bad boy like them. Oh, did I mention that most of them are girls? Ok. We’ve seen that done before. We’ve seen it done too many times — sometimes well and sometimes very badly. What can you give to the Episode world?
We need it and we love it. Sure, there are some cliches that sell. I’ve made a post about that before! But can you put a spin on it? Can you set it in a place we’re never visited on Episode before? Do you have an idea for a story about a disabled character finding love? Can you write a fantasy about somewhere that isn’t basically just medieval Europe? What about a story where the MC’s happily ever after isn’t married with kids? Great. We need you.
Readers Want New Ideas
If you take a few minutes to look at the ShanniiWrites Forums, you’ll find that many of the fans are sick and tired of seeing the same old stories on the app. They don’t just want diversity. They also want writers to make the stories unique. You see, we spend so much time on the app that we end up producing the same things over and over again. It’s kinda like when you’re a kid and you read a new book. Suddenly, everything you write is a rip-off of that book, until you go and read something new. Then the cycle starts all over again.
On Episode, this is a bigger problem because most of us are blind to how much we’re just reproducing what we’ve already read. So the readers complain. They’re looking for new and original and not many of us actually give it to them. They want their minds blown! Maybe it’s a good idea if you’ve never even read a story from the app before, then. Sure, you should probably try a few out before you throw yourself into writing, but you haven’t been stuck in the community for years. You’ve taken influence from other places.
In a sea of stories that all look and sound the same, you have the chance to write something new. You have the chance to be the change we’re looking for! And that could get you lots of reads… if done well. So if you think that you can give something to the app that we’ve never seen before, you should write for Episode. You’d be doing a lot of the readers
You Write What You Want to Read
If you’re already an Episode reader, you’ll know the struggle. Authors tend to write the same old stuff (as I mentioned before), so it can be hard to find a story that appeals to you. One of the main reasons I started writing my story on the app is because I was looking for something like it. I’d been on Episode for so long that I’d read all the stories I could find that appealed to me. I was stuck. So instead of waiting for people to give me what I wanted, I made a story for myself!
The good thing about doing that is you know that the story will appeal to at least one person: you. And if it appeals to you, the chances are that there are at least a few other people who’d like to read it, too. So you give yourself the chance to find what’s missing on the app and what you want to see more of. Then if it’s not there, you can fill in that gap and make stories like no one else.
If you’re thinking to yourself “where are the romances about good guys who treat the MC well”, then the chances are that someone else is thinking the same thing! Then you can write stories that are missing from Episode. Anyone who has the same thought as you will jump at the chance to read what you make. You got the idea pretty easily and it’s just up to you to keep the standard high.
People Want to Help
You’ll never run out of advice. On the forums, there are writing prompt threads, diversity help threads and tonnes of people with Episode experience. Plus, there’s a whole section for people to ask for help with coding and other story points! Most of the questions get answered, no matter how silly you might feel answering them. We were all at the point you’re at. Plus, because the app isn’t too old, most of us were complete beginners not too long ago. We know how it feels and we’re not going to judge you too much.
If you need help, you have blogs like mine and there are guides on the writer’s portal. And while there’s plenty of help out there, it’s not like book writing where there’s so much advice and most of it conflicts. We’re growing together and we use the chance to ask each other questions and create polls. You have your target audience sitting in front of you waiting to be asked questions. They’re really keen to be part of your writing process if you want them to be, which means you’re really not alone. That’s what can make writing for Episode a dream.
You Have Nothing to Lose!
Even if you don’t become Episode famous, what is there to lose, really? Time? Well, not if you take each moment you spend coding as a learning tool. Even though I think Wattpad is a better platform for The Queen of Freaks, I’d be silly if I pretended that writing it on Episode didn’t help me learn more about my characters, the story and pacing. I mean, who’d have thought that it would be so hard to find clothing for every single one of your characters? I guess I’ve just never really needed to think about what clothes they wore until I made them on Episode. It helped so much. Now I can tell my artist if a top doesn’t look “very Theo” and why.
Really: even two readers from Episode is better than none. That’s two more people who love your story and two more people who might follow you to another platform. There is really nothing you can lose from writing for Episode, as long as you manage your time well, so why wouldn’t you?
So take some time to think about Episode! Plan a story on there, even if you don’t publish it. It can be a great writing exercise. And if you have a story you haven’t pressed “publish” on, bite the bullet and do it! We appreciate each and every new writer.
Happy writing!
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