First round is 2000 words, then 10000, then complete.
They judge the content. Wordcount is there as a qualification.
But really, you don’t have to win to gain from it. Each of the stories I wrote for the contest got a good following from the start.
You know how above we were talking about being in the top x% if you have y number of reads? All ONC books get good reads (I don’t mean millions, but good by comparison). The contest works as a promotion machine and while all other times your stories get buried under millions of stories on Wattpad, during ONC, you get exposure.
I haven’t really been on the website for nearly two years. I go on there to check notifications once in a while and to see where my stories are at (read count wise), but I don’t really message anyone or do anything. I really want to get back into doing stuff there.
Reach 50,000 reads on my most read book.
My most popular story has over 34,000 reads (which actually surpassed my other popular story by 4,000 this year). And it grows every day… slowly, but surely. I’d hope to see it grow to 50K by the end of next year. If not, I’d be happy to see it at 45K.
Write and finish a story for next year’s Wattys.
And finally, I’d like to participate in next year’s Wattys, but they’re most likely doing completed works (as they have for a while now), so I hope to start a book and get it finished by then.
For me, I want to get somewhere between 20-30k reads for What Comes After and possibly get back into book clubs just to get more feedback on my story. I’m also aiming to complete the first half of What Remains Here, so about 120-150k words next year, and I also want to at least try to re-boot my zombie apocalypse book, which has been on hiatus for a long time, though I still don’t really know what direction I want to take it in.
20k reads on at least one of my stories. Since Stag and Frog is currently at 16k and pulled about 4k reads last year (it’s a niche fanfic that I don’t do any promo for currently, so reads trickle in unevenly), while SLB is at 8k reads, and seem to pull about 1k reads a month (even after being completed, which is promising) this feels realistic.
Get some kind of recognition, from somewhere, that my writing is at least decent. With this I mean, like ONC shortlist, amb picks, honorable mention, etc, or a Wattys shortlisting (dreaming about winning just feels way up in the clouds, and can only lead to disappointment).
Do I secretly dream about loftier things? Yes. But Wattpad is just such a fickle place where dreams tend to shatter the moment they are mentioned. So I’ll keep those to myself
high-five! let’s make them reality 
