Whether Archive of Our Own, Commaful or FanFiction, there are a great deal of websites out there for aspiring writers to freely create their own stories. But the most popular is Wattpad, a social reading website launched in 2006. On the site, authors can write original content for others to read, with some authors racking up hundreds of millions of views. Every so often, one of those writers is lucky enough to have a narrative so popular, it makes its way to Barnes and Noble and ,even more rarely, some of these stories become feature-length films.

It’s no secret that a handful of today’s media got its start on Wattpad, and given Hollywood’s pause on original ideas, it’s only a matter of time before half of its authors start signing deals with Netflix. From the infamous After and The Kissing Booth, to the lesser known Cupid’s Match and the Spanish-language Netflix movie Through My Window, many recent films have the popular platform to thank for their existence. As with adapting, for instance, Stephen King or Nicholas Sparks novels, these Wattpad stories are essentially undergoing the same treatment, even if having been written online before actually becoming traditionally published — while they are Wattpad stories, they are stories nonetheless. Through the mixture of 14-year-old-girl-fondness and mockery of adults seemingly having never visited the site, here is everything to know about what Wattpad is and why studios are turning to the platform for movie ideas.

Related: Movies Like Through My Window to Stream Next on Netflix

What is Wattpad & How Does it Work?

atdmv_kissingbooth
Netflix

Wattpad is a website designed for writers to compose and share authentic stories. With its intractability, its users can also comment on entire chapters, or even on specific lines in a piece of work. On the site, creators can design their own book titles and covers, and are free to write anything from fantastical fantasies to raunchy romances. 90% of Wattpad users are Gen Z and Millennials, and users spend a combined total of approximately 23 billion minutes per month reading and telling stories.

After five years in development, creator Allen Lau finally fulfilled his dream of making reading accessible on mobile devices, thanks to help from his colleague Ivan Yuen. Wattpad went on to become the Top Canadian Startup in 2014, and in that same year it passed 1 billion minutes of reading per month. Today, Wattpad is the most used social storytelling network, with over 90 million users and stories written in over 50 languages. Where it may be difficult to immediately get a story published by Simon & Schuster or Penguin Random House, Wattpad gives writers a head-start with stories like Did I Mention I Love You? by Estelle Maskame or Chasing Red by Isabelle Ronin getting their kickoff online but later being printed by big publishing companies.

Popularity of Stories Written on Wattpad

After We Fell
Voltage Pictures

In 2014, Anna Todd’s fanfiction, After, became Wattpad’s most popular story at the time. From there, it was published by Simon & Schuster, and became a New York Times Bestseller. Despite its lowly regarded storytelling, like the frustrating characters and especially the toxic relationship, the compelling, so-bad-it’s-good college drama had enough twists and turns to confidently make it to the big screen. While its movie, and its two sequels, were met with criticism, they still managed to gross enough money to be considered successful.

Though these stories attain an abundance of views, like Through My Window, a Netflix movie that had achieved over 350 million reads, the word “Wattpad” just might send people running the other way. With the knowledge that Todd’s story was once written as a One Direction fanfiction, to this day her writing is mocked and seen as “embarrassing” for its origins. Because after all, writing a fanfiction so prosperous it acquires a billion reads and leads an author to a movie franchise is something to hide your face about.

The Kissing Booth was written on Wattpad in 2010 and with time had received 19 million reads. It isn't shocking that a story so popular would make it to the silver screen, the same way a renowned not-Wattpad book would do the same. The 2018 Netflix film was one of the most watched movies in the country – “and maybe in the world,” according to Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive officer of Netflix – accumulating from viewers, rewatchers and ironically hate-watchers who, ironically, would later go on to question how the teen phenomenon would earn two follow-up movies.

Related: Here Are 5 of the Cheesiest Romance Movies Ever Made

Does Wattpad Mean “Bad”?

atdmv
Netflix/Nostromo Pictures

Wattpad? More like Wattbad in what is both foolish wordplay and a common misconception among the media-ingesting community. Whether the increase of hate speech from the pandemic restricting so many unhappy people to their homes, or the advancement in technology that warrants users to spend more time online, a frequently implied fallacy is presented as so: if it’s made for or by women, it’s bad; if it’s a romance movie, it’s bad; if was written on Wattpad, it’s bad. Considering After and Kissing Booth are "culprits" of all three, evidently the two are an easy target for defamation. And due to the uproar of slander regarding the stories, it’s often a belief that all Wattpad stories follow the same formula of a pick me-girl falling in love with a mysterious bad boy with daddy issues.

Yes, it’s true that stories written on Wattpad can be bad, but the same can be said about bigtime Hollywood movies. Neither Cats nor The Emoji Movie began as Wattpad fanfictions, but both were universally panned, even with all star casts and familiar source material. While it’s true that Wattpad stories can be, or tend to be, incredibly cliché, there is far more on the website than what can be looked at as of poor quality. With countless stories, there is undeniably something to satisfy everyone.

Ultimately, almost everything is an adaptation nowadays, with movies and TV shows drawing inspiration from comic strips, video games, theme parks and of course other movies and TV shows, so with an influx of popularity upon the website, unsurprisingly the movie-making industry would add it to its list of places to find ideas. Debatably “bad” Wattpad stories aren’t bad because they were written on Wattpad, “bad” Wattpad stories are exactly that: bad stories that just so happen to be written on Wattpad. And “bad” or not, when all is said and done, these Wattpad stories are entertaining someone.