Is It Slice of Life or Just A Regular Romance

[Daiesha]

Hello!

So I have a novel and want to know if it counts as Slice-of-Life or just a regular romance. So this is the blurb:

A spring in a desert, a bright star in the sky, she is the woman who warms my heart with every action she does. She is an extraordinary woman and a mystery. I have fallen in love with her. Everything with her felt like a breeze. Some would say we fell in love too fast but I do not believe that. Well, that was before she disappeared. Four years later, she is back but appears a bit different. Actually, now that I think about it her personality is the complete opposite from before.

To add more to it there is no true supernatural stuff. The female lead is a CEO and so is the male lead. They both compete with each other (well more like a one-sided competition. The male lead is a little more playful with it). But besides that everything is pretty normal. They go out to eat, hang out with friends, and live the lives of normal people in their thirties in a made-up city. There is slight drama though but it is more like experiences people face.

I am mainly asking because I hear different things count as slice-of-life such as Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid Is A Slice Of Life With Dragons and Fruits Basket.

[Katzalcoatl]

Hard to say. Just reading the first paragraph, it would be considered romance.

But that's not the summary or is it?

It is just a fraction of your work. While it may count as romance from a western perspective it may not be considered romance on tapas depending on the rest of your work.

Now tapas is influenced by korean novels/works. There are lots of CEO x employee works. They don't start with romance but it does evolve that way and it eventually explodes in your face. And it is basically filled with romance afterwards with few problems here and there. Like others finding out or a rival company causing troubles. CEO losing it all but with the support of the worker everything is solved.

Basically all the typical cliches.
If your work fits this description then it is romance.

Now if your work has almost 0 romance and if your MCs encounter no problems that make stronger their romance (like an ex showing up or some other cliche) then it is probably slice-of-life.

Now kobayashi is in no way romance it focuses more on family without blood ties relations.
That work is mostly comedy not slice of life.
And even if it does have a slice of life vibe it is not considered as such since that's not the typical life of an everyday person. There is lots of magic, comedy, isekai reverse, among other plots making it not a slice of life scenario.
In this anime/manga we rarely get to see kobayashi's life at work we mainly see the interactions with the dragons who typically cause comedy using magic (not very slice of life).

Now it does suggest yuri but it never shows it. Maybe by the end we get more romance but until then we only see the maid dragon love kobayashi wanting her to eat her dragon tail while kobayashi just sees her as a sister and kana like a daughter.

Now I said all that but comedy and slice of life can coexist but usually we see scenarios of everyday life and things we can get identified with. We all did goofy things with our friends or we all got a job with a mean boss but we never had a maid who was a dragon trying to feed us their tail and who also involved us in many dangerous situations against other dragons.

Having said all that.
Just reading what you wrote your work should have main tag genre romance and subtag slice of life.

For me it seems like a modern Romeo x Juliet scenario so I would consider it romance.

[Daiesha]

Most definitely! I normally post my novels on Kindle Vella but they have tags and things. I saw Horiyama (hope I spelled it right) tagged in some list as well so I got confused but yeah I will make sure to have romance and slice-of-life. Thank you so much!

[cherrystark]

I really don't know a lot of about Asian writing tropes, especially in terms of romance but I've noticed with a lot of Western romances that stories billed as "romance" usually can be labeled by the trope. For example: billionaire, biker, age gap, reverse harem, alpha romance. The concepts can get pretty ridiculous imo.

However, if the story concept is simply A falls in love with B, they have a few problems and live HEA - slice of life/romance works for the tags.

[Daiesha]

Most definitely! That's what I was thinking too but I was not 100% sure. Thank you so much

[system]

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