I'm wondering because I had to put mine into Fantasy Romance but it's actually a supernatural romance. What's your opinion?
created
Sep '20last reply
Sep '20- 39
replies
- 1.8k
views
- 28
users
- 107
likes
My main opinion on this is that every writing site should have separate "fantasy" and "isekai" genres.
Id like the category supernatural or paranormal as a category.
as yours mine is not under fantasy romance while it should be paranormal /supernatural
I think paranormal or supernatural would be a nice addition because the fantasy genre is so over-saturated. Same with having a separate high fantasy genre. Taking broad categories like fantasy and romance and having subsections would be nice. I also don't mind the simplicity of the limited genres though, so I'm a little torn.
Yeah supernatural should be on its own rather than under the broadness of fantasy. Supernatural/paranormal brings the proper expectations rather than fantasy which let's be honest has the dragons, kingdoms and magical vibes for the average reader.
I agree with you on paranormal and supernatural. With Halloween coming, this would be even better.
I write horror and would love to connect with more folks who love spooky stuff!
A lot of folks have talked about the selection of genres currently available to choose from so I think yes is a pretty unanimous answer across the site. I'm a person who's browsed old DeviantArt and AO3 so I'm used to there being lots of tags to choose form as well as rating systems. Tapas is still relatively young and thus still growing and changing.
Given staff responses in the past I imagine they're considering adding more over time but are also looking to make sure that those additions will have content to put into them. So if anything I guess it's kind of a "build it and they will come" situation. You want X tag share stories that would fit under it.
I agree with everyone else, I think there should be more genre tags. And yes, isekai needs its own tag... I don't have an issue with them but they do dominate the fantasy tag when I want to read straight up fantasy lol. (I have some friends who write fantasy that isn't isekai and they tend to get buried... sigh) I know it's a popular genre but yea, just my thoughts haha!
I agree with more categories. I just put my novel back into action because "fantasy" can mean so many different things. As my novel is almost an action-adventure in plot I put it back there despite the fantasy setting.
Fantasy can mean, a political drama, a romance, a slice-of-life, completely fantastical with themes of godhood or paranormal. It could also be a military tale involving wars and armies. Or it can be a simple adventure story full of action.
I think separating paranormal/supernatural from fantasy is really important because paranormal stuff is SO distinct from classic fantasy and even urban fantasy. It comes with it's own genre expectations and really needs to be distinguished, and so giving both individual genres room to breathe. I don't think tapas staff would have a hard time filling either genre either. There's plenty to go around, and I reckon paranormal authors would jump at the opportunity to put their work in a new genre and stand out.
I would say there should be a new adult and young adult categories but I don't know if that is needed. It still would be nice to separate work from young adult and new adult for many creators.
I think especially with the new influx of wattpad creators on the site, a paranormal/supernatural genre is warranted!
And supposing they brought some of their readers over with them, those readers would certainly want a distinguishing genre for the content they seek.
Gotta put those werewolves somewhere! LOL
I'll tag @ratique so that this topic may be tracked.
Paranormal is one that's been already brought up, but I'd really like Adventure. Action isn't quite what a lot of fantasy stories are, with journeys and interesting new places over fights or thrills.
same. Im main romance Now... because it's a paranormal romance. but I think paranormal would fit better
Except that "isekai" is just the "Adventure" genre with maybe a split of "Fantasy" like you said. But look at the genre's for The Chronicles of Narnia, which is 100% "accidental adventure" and that's categorized as "Fantasy".
Adventure tends to be hard to define, and doesn’t have readership base. Writers would pull back to fantasy once their books are not being read. Fantasy and sci-fi pretty much always have adventure if they main adventure. Which leaves adventure without a speculative component, something that is rarely written online. Action takes care of the rare but existing spies and non-supernatural assassins thrillers. So there is some audience share. You probably are better off with izekai split, since it is a big subgenre online and fairly easy to qualify.
Even then, I feel like it'd work better at least to select as a secondary genre. You can get a lot of weird first impressions depending on what follows the primary Fantasy tag.
This is why I've struggled with finding a genre on this site. I write Paranormal Fantasy but most people looking for fantasy want High Fantasy. Even outside of Tapas when a lot of people say they like Fantasy they mean High Fantasy over Urban/Paranormal Fantasy. I feel like High Fantasy is a lot more popular than other branches of the genre.
As secondary genre, it’s great! But the problem is that Tapas does run every genre separately, so it gotta fill up with the books... I think Action/Adventure might fit the bill, sifting away those few stories that do not have a big fantasy component
Genre labels have a role to play, but I'm wondering whether tagging not working as promised is also part of the problem?
Series tags do work to an extent, but I've found the more specific the term is the better it works, especially if it's a single word with no breaks in between.
Like I search "polyamory" and relevant series show up great even without having to specify 'tags' in the results!
But then I search "age gaps" and as the search goes through titles first, I get a lot of irrelevant series with "Age" in the title. And when I specify 'tags' there are no results despite using the tag myself on one of my series.
It's a bit of a worry given how randomly, in practice, various readers probably run searches for what they think they want ...
Like a lot of the above responses, I would appreciate the addition of the paranormal and adventure tags at least. It was so hard to decide which one of the current tags for my stories, luckily you can get sub-categories, but even those didn't cover exactly what I wanted... so complicated! lol
Overall, I think taking inspiration from the Wattpad categories might be a good idea, and would make people happier ^^
I agree with everyone else saying that supernatural/paranormal would be very nice additions to have.
I'm currently labeling my story as a "fantasy/horror/mystery" and tagging it as "urban fantasy", although truth to be told I don't feel like the "horror" part is all that prevalent in my story (I mean, yes, there will be vampires, werewolves and some gore, but... more like what you'd see in a "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" episode than a "Saw" movie? XD) and I'm only just starting to realize that most people apparently think of the "fantasy" genre as something more LoTR-esque rather than modern/contemporary? D: Anyway yep, more sub-genres would be neat! High fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, dark fantasy... honestly, there's plenty of labels that could be added, and not just for fantasy 
I think more filtering options for all genres could help both readers (who could then find the exact type of content they want to see) and creators (who'd have a chance to become more noticeable in their specific niche instead of getting lost among thousands of different comics/novels all lumped under the same genre).
I actually really like the idea of sub-genre drop downs within the larger categories - gives a good opportunity to include novels that have crossover genres, whereas right now, it seems as it there's not too much use to the secondary genres besides giving readers a more refined idea when they click on the novel.
To use paranormal romance as an example - the author could choose to have romance as the primary genre and it won't show up in paranormal but if someone in paranormal selects "paranormal romance" from a sub-filter it shows up?
I guess that might be difficult to code and you get the further limit of actually choosing which sub-genres to represent when there's a nearly infinite amount of them, but it would be nice to see more refinement options, especially in some of the incredibly broad genres.
In my opinion, the Mature section should be better divided. Feels 90% BL and GL only when you click the icon. BL and GL have their justification just like any other category.
Yes! I'd love it if they'd add 'supernatural' as a genre, my comic is a supernatural comedy, It'd definitely help me out if they'd add that one 
