Not styles—types. What do you all think this means? My mind’s going back to the experimental all-prose stories that were released to select beta testers a while ago.
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I guess I wasn’t a beta, lol can you explain?
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Probably the novels version that they once beta tested, perhaps?! 
It wasn’t great, to be honest… but maybe if all authors were granted access to the feature… then maybe we’ll get something interesting.
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I wasn’t selected either lol. From what I remember, it was basically like reading an article online. It was like the entire chapter was narrated in phone text format. I found a post about it here!
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Yes, “Novels”! I could not remember what it was called for the life of me. That’s what I was thinking as well. I thought they buried the idea because the community reception wasn’t great, but maybe not…
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That’s odd. 
It hardly seems interactive enough though, right?
Also, seriously, Episode is a “kid-friendly” app-- so how is “sizzling romance stories with choices that make the stories YOURS” appropriate marketing to 12+ audience?
I can’t write a cursey-words using detective, but we can market ‘sizzling romance’ ?
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I wonder. It’s definitely odd considering Episode stresses the visual part of visual-storytelling.
We’re not gonna talk about the epi-original nepotism or raunchy companies they partner themselves with. They break their own guidelines all the time, cooperate with morally grey companies when it’s time to make money, and claim plausible deniability with their privacy policies. Have you seen some of these ads 
“Care about protecting our young readers” my a*s
But I digress lest my thread be closed.
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Their name is literally “Episode interactive”…why are they trying to do a novel format as if this is Wattpad 
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Truth to power 
but no I haven’t. I don’t read on the app anymore unless someone needs a beta or if a friend or contest is happening and I really like the writer’s description. Other than that, nope. But we will digress. 
Yeah, that’s why I thought it was strange to have a novel style given they market as ‘visual’.
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Lol, it’s just a guess! They could be developing something completely different, but that was the only other story type I thought they might be referring to.
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They seemed to allow more descriptive sexual content in the novels, I’m not sure why they broke their own content guidelines for that… but they did.
Either way… they could’ve done so much with the novels. But it ended up being disappointing. The content felt rushed… and the sexy scenes were definitely not sexy.
What I mean by that is… the sexy scenes really weren’t as sexy as Episode thought they were.
And the stories [as a whole] didn’t make me [from a readers perspective] want to read on. Each one felt the same as the previous.
I feel like this could have been a great feature, if every story hadn’t of been romance. They could’ve added a mix of novels: One Romance… one Mystery, one Horror… perhaps?! Basically a nice mix, so that there’s something for everyone. I think that may have worked better.
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Episode’s definition of sexy is “He was so muscular, his kisses felt so warm on my neck I just want to marry him!” 
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It feel very “lets take the ivy app and write the stories in book style”… Why did it have to be ‘sizzling romance’ (this phrase makes me cringe almost as hard as the Ivy app description ) instead of a variety of genres? I get that romance is a popular genre, but it’s not the only one and certainly not the only one that people want to read.
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Accurate. 
But in the novels, it felt more… odd?! It’s hard to describe, but it’s like they were attempting to write something mildly kinky. 
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I can understand them wanting to test the feature with a focus on their most prosperous genre, but I agree they could have done a lot more. If it is Novels, I hope they take your (and other readers’) feedback into consideration. The demographic for the feature as it was seems disparagingly small.
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Episode really needs to stop being so sexual. Their app is supposed to be for kids but every single “episode original” story they have includes some “sexy” scenes…I really can’t imagine how cringey and inappropriate that would be in a novel-type.
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Agreed. Romance can be great, but it shouldn’t be the sole [nor main] focus of a story.
A little bit of mystery and drama built in, could make all of the difference.
Thriller and horror are both categories that when written as a novel, I believe could thrive on Episode. [So long as the authors descriptive creativity isn’t limited by content guidelines]
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If they really do pull through with this then they might as well change their guidelines that they don’t even follow themselves.
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As it stands, with current guideline enforecment, I feel like thriller/horror would be the genres that would get taken down the most for descriptions of crimes/situations lol Meanwhile Riccardo the Mafia Boss, 22-year old bad boy billionaire, can be mentally and verbally abusive but it’s totally cool because Suzy Stupid just loves him sooo much 
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It’s a long shot, but I would be so happy if the new story types came with revised guidelines and filtering to allow for more mature content. Though, I doubt it as they’ve stood firm on the issue in the past.
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