Personally, I think if you are changing yourself because of someone else, it’s not genuine change. They can help support you, they can be another reason you want to change. But if you aren’t making the changes for yourself, because you want to be a better person, for you, then it’s not going to last. Because if you change for a love interest, and then something happens to that love interest, they leave you or die or whatever, you aren’t going to stay changed. The entire reason you changed is gone now. There’s no point in sticking with those changes unless you did it for yourself.
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Not disagreeing in that.
I’m disagreeing that timing has jack to do with when personal change starts or ends and that the trigger for “bigger than that” can be petty, but it will have to shift to “bigger than that”.
Which is why it is fine to have characters that are not destined for each other.
Have the damn epilogue be about someone he gives all the things he wished he could have done for the MC, make him happy, give her another book with a better man.
This isn’t cookie cutter.
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I get your point, I just never contradicted it or said anything suggesting that timing for personal change can’t align with a romantic interest developing. It certainly can. I was just talking about cause and effect, and I don’t think romance should be the cause of personal change. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear beforehand.
Well, we were talking about the must haves for writing something toxic, not for what we personally handle…so I didn’t catch that difference.
See, me personally, cheating is a no-deal thing. I’m not sticking that out. Now that I have kids, it’s more complex, but that’s still my inclination.
But people I write about aren’t me, and so, I’m inclined to write a cheating that is a wake-up call for a character, that doesn’t ruin the relationship.
And therapists back that up, but they list specific criteria that has to be met for the couple to last, like self-ownership, often a 1-time thing where the behavior scares the cheater shitless. And a big part is that they thought the damage would be an angry spouse–not a thoroughly devastated love of your life reacting as if you had suddenly died on them. Watching someone totally fall apart gets to people who thought they were only going to be in trouble.
Shrugs
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I saw the title. Why does this remind me of Severus Snape from Harry Potter 
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Actually he’s a good example of this trope. You think he’s a bad guy, everyone else thinks he’s a bad guy, and then you discover he’s actually not a bad guy at all. Just not so great at expressing himself or proving anyone wrong. 
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Yes, one of my MC’s follows this trope! He comes off like an arrogant jerk but he’s not really, just following along with what he thinks people expect from him (it’s a teenfic/high school football story).
OP, the trick is to find the right tags. I don’t use the badboy ones at all. The story has 1.8mil reads, so it’s doing okay.
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What tags do you use if not bad boy? When I checked, it seemed like the good all long tag doesn’t even exist. And yep, that pretty much sounds like my male MC too. Can come off cold, and scary, but he’s just got a lot on his shoulders, and gauging who he can let into his inner circle. He’s a very calculating, clever man, or at least he tries to be.
Just the genres of where the story fits: quarterback, football, highschool, teenfiction, goodgirl, enemiestolovers, series, slowburn, cute, chicklit, youngadult, comingofage, loveatfirstsight, etc.
Not recently but it got to #2 romance, then #8 when I finished the second book. That’s where most of its reads are from but it sat at #1 quarterback for 3 weeks before it was bumped up into romance both times.
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Your story sounds like it fits into the general genre that is popular on WP aside from werewolves/vampires, and of course, bad boy romances. And if it’s aimed towards teens, with WP’s authors/audience full of teens, it sounds like people will definitely find your story easier. Mine doesn’t really fit the “norm” on WP so I guess that’s why it’s kind of buried there amongst the chaos? 
I do change up tags here, and there to see if it makes a difference, but it doesn’t. I’m hoping once the story is complete, maybe it’ll draw more people, but I’m not holding my breath TBH.
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Wattpad usually gives a rankings boost once a story is complete. I’ve only had this not happen once, but that story’s a lot more mature content (and the algorithm froze for 2 weeks, that’s my excuse at least!).
Hang in there! My first story had 9k reads when I finished it (on 133 chapters at the time, from 10 readers, 9 of which were R4R’s). It didn’t get a rankings boost until 6 weeks later but that was before the daily rank changes.
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