New Episode Genres Added: LGBTQ+ and Science Fiction

Hello Episodians!

We’ve heard from our authors that it can be difficult for readers to find your stories when they don’t perfectly fit the genre they’re in. One way many of you have suggested making this experience better is to add additional options for categorizing your story – and we’re excited to announce today that we’re introducing 2 new genres to help with that: LGBTQ+ and Science Fiction! These genres should make it easier for the stories that fall under these categories to have their own places to be recognized, and to create distinguished shelf space for their unique thematic and plot elements.

LGBTQ+ is a genre meant for stories that focus on and feature characters who identify as one or more of these identities. Their stories do not necessarily focus on romances, but should have their characters’ identities be a significant part of their narratives.

Science Fiction is a genre for stories that focus on scenarios based on technological or scientific plot elements and/or settings. These can include stories about futuristic scenarios, stories set in space or focusing on aliens, or stories about technological advancements.

These new genre shelves will appear in the app as subgenres of Drama and Fantasy respectively. Our team is currently working to update the standards that allow a genre to stand on their own, as opposed to being a subgenre, and so these genres will be monitored over time to see if they meet those standards.

While these genres are currently available to authors in the Writer’s Portal now, our team is planning on turning these genres on the app tomorrow (Thursday, Pacific Standard Time), provided we have at least a minimum of 3 reviewed and approved stories in each genre. If you plan to update your story’s genre, please do so as soon as possible, so our leaderboards have plenty of time to recalculate!

If we do not have the minimum number of stories, we’ll be checking the number of stories every 24 hours until we hit that minimum, and setting the genre live then.

Note that these genres may temporarily appear much smaller than others depending on the number of approved stories available, and will expand over time.

As a reminder, please do not move your story to a genre it does not fit into, as our team will not review it, and it takes a place in line from a story that does fit into that genre.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments about our new genres, please contact our support team!

— The Episode Team

Update (3/4/21): Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and feedback about the LGBTQ+ genre. Based on your feedback and the intention for the LGBTQ+ genre to focus on identity-based narratives, LGBTQ+ will be temporarily shelved with Drama, rather than Romance.

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OMG that is amazing finally we get scifi
Edit the default covers, they look so good

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Yay! Thank u for the new genres! (:

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Time to de-clasisfy my sci-fi stories from action & fantasy and put them in their new genre :eyes:

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Omg, thank you so much! I can’t wait to do this!

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This is incredible. I especially appreciate LGBTQ+ having its own shelf, as I love writing and reading about people with diverse identities. And the sci-fi genre is awesome! I look forward to reading anyone’s :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Nice! Changing my thriller lesbian story to the LGBTQ+ genre for sure! And I’m glad scifi is finally getting its own shelf

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Hi don’t mind me saying that I’m early!
Yippee!

Thanks Episode!

I am so happy about this… When can I put my story under the sub-genre LGBTQ+??

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Right now

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Thanks. :wink: I found it…

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Yes! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: We finally got the shelf we needed: Sci-Fi!

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LGBTQ+ is a genre now? Wow, thanks. This solves nothing! :neutral_face:

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Is LGBTQ+ a genre now? Lmao. Sci-fi makes sense because it’s a real genre, but throwing of all genres stories together just because the characters are part of the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t actually help people find stories they want to read. It would be better for stories within a genre to have an LGBTQ+ tag. I don’t want my stories to be pigeonholed just because they all involve LGBTQ+ characters

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This is amazing :blob_hearts: :blush:
Thank you Episode! :rainbow_flag: :fist:t2: :fist:t3: :fist:t4: :fist:t5: :fist:t6:

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Thank you so much!!! I can finally put Future My Love in the right genre :ok_hand::joy::heart:

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So if LGBTQ+ is a genre, can stories that have male/female love interests be in there or only female? Cause that’s like a trillion stories… still, it’s cool!

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While, yeah, of course people should still include LGBT individuals in their stories, I think this is supposed to promote primarily identity-based narratives. It would probably be better if there was “Coming of Age” shelf for this to go under but meh :pp

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A story can have an identity-based narrative and be a romance, or a horror, or a thriller, or anything really. LGBTQ+ narratives aren’t a genre, it’s a part of a character and a story.

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I really like the sci-fi genre, but for the LGBTQ+ one… I don’t really think making it one whole genre makes sense, since LGBTQ+ options are something that a story contains, and therefore should be considered as more of a sub-genre, or like @/hibiscusgravy said, a tag. Just imagine how many different main genres of stories will be under the LGBTQ+ genre.

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