@Melani3 Mine is a portion of sci fi, drama, romance, fantasy, mystery and even comedy. Please advice me on what genre should i park it 
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The entire point of this thread is people mislabeling their stories. If stories are sci-fi in genre and there’s not a genre for it then these authors have every right to be concerned about where they need to place their stories so they can make sure they don’t get penalized in regards to these new rules.
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Personally I think this is a great idea. I just hope Episode keeps in mind some stories can really work well in more than one genre. 
I also hope they figure out the sci-fi deal. Those authors deserve to be able to properly place their stories. 
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I am proud this is a thing the team takes serious measure now.
I’m just wondering how do you determine some cases. Like obviously you can tell that a romance with only a few horror elements wouldn’t be as suitable to be in Horror/Thriller as Romance or Drama, but what about the grey-ish areas of Romantic Drama stories or something similar?
Sorry if I sound confusing, I’m just really excited about this
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It’s about authors intentionally mislabelling their stories for personal gain. That’s why I said the sci-fi situation doesn’t apply because it’s a different context. No one stated that all stories should or have to fit rigidly into a single genre. Most stories have many different elements. But Melanie is talking about stories where it’s obvious the author chose a different category pre-review because once the story is reviewed, the author re-labels it within the appropriate genre. If someone is writing a romantic comedy, it likely could fit into romance or comedy. But someone writing a mafia romance and labelling it with the comedy or mystery genre and then changing the genre to romance or maybe drama after the story was reviewed is a clear-cut case of intentional mislabelling for personal gain. This topic is focusing on the clear-cut cases. I’m not saying people shouldn’t or can’t want a sci-fi genre, but an author putting a story in a genre it best fits in because there’s no specific genre for it or because it could fit equally into more than one genre are totally different scenarios than the clear-cut, intentional mislabelling to which this topic is referring.
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I’m well aware of what Melani means. I was just pointing out that for sci-fi authors it might be a bit hard to determine where to place their stories.
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My story doesn’t really fit any of the genres on episode. It has drama and fantasy elements. As it is social story, it reflects on society and none of the genres on episode would truly fit. I think it leans way more towards drama. My question is would it qualify for the reveal contest still because I’ve been working nonstop on it for the past two days? 
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I agree too much with this statement. I’d say drama, as most sci fi tend to be dystopian, or fantasy as a back up. It really depends on if it has more elements on one genre over all the others.
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Thank youuuu!! I’m so tired of seeing all of these romance-centered stories flooding the action, adventure, drama, and fantasy genre. I’d like to know how you guys will choose how a story belongs to each genre. For instance, the story I’m working on is fantasy and has many fantasy elements, but it is also very much an action story. Maybe adding the ability to put a story in multiple genres would help authors with this problem as well (same kind of review stuff you’re doing to make sure they aren’t skipping lines, just so authors don’t have to worry about receiving this email).
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I’m curious too. I’m assuming that they’ll just be looking for the obvious ones based on cover and description? Because otherwise, they’d actually have to read the story and then they’re wasting time reviewing anyway? lol
So something grey area will likely be fine? That’s obviously just my assumption.
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I assume the same. Like the stories with descriptions having serious romance elements but are in the Mystery or Comedy genres would be easier to notice
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I mean either way they’re not really penalising people. Like worst case scenario they email you and tell you which genre your story goes in and they’re really focusing on the clearly & intentionally mislabeled ones. It doesn’t seem like they’re going to tell you to take your story out of comedy if it’s a rom com (for example) and they’re not removing stories because of it. Just that if you’re putting a story in a smaller genre it doesn’t belong in prior to review, you will face the consequence of moving further back in the queue of the correct (and often bigger) genre. But I think most people don’t have anything to worry about. I’m sure the review team knows most stories have aspects of multiple genres
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I’m sure they’ll just be searching for the blatantly obvious ones, like a CEO-billionaire love story in the horror section or something like that.
I would like to know some more details of what their rules are, just for that piece of mind for those of us with multi-genre stories .
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That seems reassuring
I support it too but since I know that episode labels sci-fi as fantasy I wanted to ask if I could leave it on action. I don’t know where they draw the line, I hope that you’re right and that they’ll only change other stories but I really don’t want to be on fantasy so I asked
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what is it most. like what does it mostly revole around.
like if the story has magic. but most of the story revolve around romance then it is a romance.
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Thanks.
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Thank you Melanie, for the helpful advice. I’m very new to the forums, and currently writing my first story and will send for publishing and for reviewing soon. I’ts good to know about genre categories and try to attempt to do it correctly in the first instance with causing possible delays etc.
Thank god this situation is finally addressed. Thank you!
@Melani3 I think you guys need to provide proper definitions of each genre. I know you’re speaking of intentional genre changing to trend/get reviewed but there are stories which fall under 2 or more genres so sometimes the author switches between them.
This way authors can recognise which genre their story fits better under and they can keep it under that one always.
Further I think if the genres with a larger number of stories (romance and drama) were reviewed faster and more efficiently then phen authors might not resort to genre swapping just to get reviewed. Because we all know this only happens with romance/drama stories purposely placed in other genres.
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