Novels: a redundant category? Have your say

Quote by techgoddess
, I would change my rank to Banksy of Lush.

Make it your title. 😁

My first thought was to keep the category because a novel is not (necessarily) the same thing as a series, but then I realized that the point was "Novel" as a category. I agree that we don't need the category, but there should be a way to flag the series as a novel, a longer, disciplined work with a beginning, middle, and end, and not a never-ending series. Using tags can help (e.g., Novel-in-progress and Novel), but perhaps we can add a Novel icon (like we do for comp entries, RRs, etc.). Perhaps an author gets a Novelist badge when they ask for one ("Hey, mods, my novel is done!").

A Novel tag and a Novelist badge sound like great additions. Combined with the series link, that would sort 95% of cases and still retain searchability and browsability.

The only difficulty still remains about how to categorise multiple chapters of differing genres that were published as a single submission. Mulling that one over. Splitting them into single, smaller chapters is the only logical approach but it's potentially a lot of extra work we could do without, for the sake of better indexability.

Coming late to the party but I agree the category is redundant. I think while any novel will be spread over a number of chapters already, it could go with the overarching theme of the novel; be that teen, lesbian, love story etc. Ii the author doesn't want their story spread over different categories for different chapters.

For example, I saw deviantsusie was vocal about keeping hers as a novel but her overarching theme is a teenager growing up in Ireland. There are chapters that deal with seduction, bdsm, reluctance etc but it could be all still be a teen novel.

I think the badge for novelist and a novel tag as the first tag would help.

Presently you can stumble into the middle of a novel without knowing it until after you have clicked on the story title if they haven't included a chapter number. If novel is a tag, that might help.

My novel is split into chapters, linked together but posted in different categories depending on the subject matter. I think it's a redundant category.

I just saw the title of this thread and was genuinely shocked, having written four novels and posted them here. My fifth novel was going to be posted one chapter at a time starting this British autumn. I am currently busy writing it.

I have never bothered looking down here at the bottom of the forums before, I knew there was a whole section that I might be interested in. Will, now read past the title and vote to see what others have said!

BTW: Shouldn't site announcements be at the top of the forums tabs?

Instead of writing my next novel, I have come back to write a more considered answer now that I have read all the comments. This is important to me, and I will say right up front that I agree with what techgoddess has written here.

So why did I start writing on LushStories in October 2023? The answer is because I thought you could publish whole books here in one go. It was the reduntant ebook tab that we all have on our profile page that threw me. So after being told that it was not possible, I created a forum thread, How to make an eBook? which only confirmed it wasn't possible.

Frustrated, having several books written (though they would have needed work to pass moderation) I took them apart and re-edited them and my first novel was published - one chapter at a time - Book 1 - “The Alpha Man In Me” I might be the only person on this site whose first story published here was in the novels section. That remained true for my second book Book 2 - "Bonding" and before I knew it I had over sixty stories in the novel genre. It was only in my third novel that someone suggested to get more readers (and to help me obtain an Omnium Badge) that I should move some of my book chapters out of the novel genre.

So, that is my story. I came here to write novels, and I like having a novel genre. I think it would be a mistake to get rid of it!

And if, disappointingly, the novel genre goes, would it be possible to have a novel badge for anyone who writes a series with over sixty thousand words in it?

One other thing, if I moved all my novel-genre stories into different but appropriate genres I would have only six genres left to get my Omnium badge. Surly that devaluing that badge as atm I only have stores in twenty-one genres.

Has any decision been made on this?

I currently have 65 stories in the novel genre and another 5 novel stories in my draft folder waiting to be published. Looking through my already-published stories, there are a few chapters which are in the novel genre for a reason. Not a lot of sex (if any) happens. These chapters do not readily fit into any of the genres, as they are more about character and story building.

If the novel genre disappears, the only genre I see that these might fit in is "Love Stories." Would that work?

Quote by wxt55uk
if I moved all my novel-genre stories into different but appropriate genres I would have only six genres left to get my Omnium badge. Surly that devaluing that badge as atm I only have stores in twenty-one genres.

I don't see how. You've already written thousands of words so how is the badge devalued? Since they're technically spread across multiple categories and you've written about the topics anyway, surely you should be rewarded for such endeavours rather than penalised because we ask that long works are put in "miscellaneous"?

Quote by wxt55uk
Has any decision been made on this?

No.

Quote by wxt55uk
These chapters do not readily fit into any of the genres, as they are more about character and story building... Not a lot of sex (if any) happens.

We have a "no sex" tag for such occasions. And if you felt it didn't fit in Love Stories, you could always put it in the genre that most closely fits the series overall. It's not ideal, but if your chapter is exposition and setup for later activity in a particular genre, I don't think it's doing readers a disservice to signpost that via the category name, and just tag it with "no sex" to alert them.

The bottom line with this proposal, btw, is that we're trying to align readers' (and search engine's) expectations about what they might find in a story. Since the category is tied to the URL it carries fairly high search weight with content spidering algorithms too.

We would like authors to have their work discovered more, and when you're starting out, if you want to write long, multi-chapter series, people aren't often going to find what they're looking for tucked away in the miscellaneous Novels area.

Yes, partly, this is because the site search is appalling. It always has been. I'd dearly love for browsable and filterable content by multiple tags to hone in on specific stories containing one or more elements a reader wants. Some people argue tags should be abolished and the natural search improved. If that happens, the only signal left to notify readers of content is the category.

I love tags if they're administered and curated well. They offer far more nuanced discoverability. Take the concept of an "indecent proposal" as an example. Unless someone in the story mentions that term specifically, no search engine on earth would be able to deduce that a story is about that topic, based on the prose itself. So the story would remain hidden to search engines for that term, and also hidden to readers who might want to read about such a story, unless they stumbled across it and started reading.

This is especially true if it's a multi-chapter piece (regardless of which category it's in). Tags bridge that gap, allowing authors the expressive freedom to indicate what concepts are in their story, which might otherwise be undiscoverable through searching the words or category alone.

I don't want to derail this thread with talk about tags, btw. It just serves as adjunct to the 'connect readers with stories they're interested in' discussion, which is what this proposal is fundamentally about.

Thank you for coming back so quickly, WW. It is appreciated. I have tried the "no sex" tag before, but I am not convinced the readers took any notice of it.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

We would like authors to have their work discovered more, and when you're starting out, if you want to write long, multi-chapter series, people aren't often going to find what they're looking for tucked away in the miscellaneous Novels area.

I can vouch that this is true. I think I must be the only author here whose first Lush story was a book! 🙄 It has taken me a relatively long time to get people to follow me. I realise now I should have started writing stories in the more popular genres before looking to my passion, writing long novels (books).

Whatever is decided, I guess the million-dollar question is: will I be given the power to alter 65 story genres without going through moderation again?

It is around 390,000 words (less a few chapters, which I have already moved out of the novel genre). I will also probably want to add cover photos to my early chapters, and maybe also tidy them up a little, as I will need to re-read them to get the nearest genre. You know what it feels like when you read an old story you have written, there is always a bit of tinkering to do.

Quote by wxt55uk
will I be given the power to alter 65 story genres without going through moderation again?

As far as I'm aware, changing the story category doesn't trigger a trip to the moderation queue. But adding covers and changing content does. No sane way round that, sorry.

Unless you're feeling up to it, there's no need to take action right now. This is still only a proposal and when we get more eyes on it (I'll cross-post this to Ask the Readers and Ask the Authors at some point) we'll be able to make a more informed decision if it's worth the hassle to inconvenience authors who have already posted novels vs the long-term benefits of better content signposting.

If the decision is taken to gradually close the category and migrate content, we're more than willing to offer anyone assistance.

Quote by wxt55uk
I have tried the "no sex" tag before, but I am not convinced the readers took any notice of it.

Yeah. Tags are tucked away at the bottom of the story, which is both a blessing (no spoilers) and a curse (no idea if it contains stuff you're interested in if you land directly on the page without going via a landing (story list) page first).

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

As far as I'm aware, changing the story category doesn't trigger a trip to the moderation queue. But adding covers and changing content does. No sane way round that, sorry.

Unless you're feeling up to it, there's no need to take action right now. This is still only a proposal and when we get more eyes on it (I'll cross-post this to Ask the Readers and Ask the Authors at some point) we'll be able to make a more informed decision if it's worth the hassle to inconvenience authors who have already posted novels vs the long-term benefits of better content signposting.

If the decision is taken to gradually close the category and migrate content, we're more than willing to offer anyone assistance.

Thank you, WW. One thing this site is very good at is offering assistance to people who ask, and I guess I asked more than most, so thank you, moderators.

One thing not to be forgotten is that moderators will need to be involved in migrating novel genre stores, to whatever the new chapter genre is, even if we authors are somehow given the power to change story genres by ourselves (we don't have that power at the moment, btw). This is because we will need to add a novel tag to each chapter, and you need a moderator to do that.

Quote by wxt55uk
moderators will need to be involved in migrating novel genre stores, to whatever the new chapter genre is, even if we authors are somehow given the power to change story genres by ourselves (we don't have that power at the moment, btw). This is because we will need to add a novel tag to each chapter, and you need a moderator to do that.

Oh. I was under the impression that authors could change category and add tags without moderator reapproval. I'll find out.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

I was under the impression that authors could change category and add tags without moderator reapproval.

I have it on good authority that the only things that trigger remoderation are changes to:

• body

• title

• cover image

• one liner

So tags and category should be editable by authors of their own work at any time.

Note that if you do change category, the URL won't reflect the new name, but if we do go ahead with this proposal, we'll snapshot the situation as it is before we start migrating content and then redirect the category assignments by hand.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

I have it on good authority that the only things that trigger remoderation are changes to:

• body

• title

• cover image

• one liner

So tags and category should be editable by authors of their own work at any time.

Note that if you do change category, the URL won't reflect the new name, but if we do go ahead with this proposal, we'll snapshot the situation as it is before we start migrating content and then redirect the category assignments by hand.

You seemed to be correct. Using my phone, I changed “The Alpha Man In Me” - Chapter 00 - Prologue from Novels to Love Stories genre and added the novel tag. If you can also see my chapter with the new tag/genre using the link. Then it worked, there was no moderator involved.

I find that interesting, as in the past when I changed story genres, I had to get help from a moderator. I never tried to add extra story tags before.

Yes, that's changed category and tag. And intriguingly, it appears to have changed the URL too. Didn't expect that but it's a nice surprise.

While I wait for whatever is decided about the novel genre, I have considered what could replace it.

How about two badges?

A novel badge for anyone who writes a series that runs for more than say 60,000 words.

A saga badge for anyone who writes a series that runs for more than say 100,000 words.

It is just a thought and I hope this could be easy to implicate.

I wonder what other authors (like me), who like to write long multi-chapter stories and publish them here. My feeling is it would give authors an ultimate goal to aim for beyond the omnium badge. 😊

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

I have it on good authority that the only things that trigger remoderation are changes to:

• body

• title

• cover image

• one liner

So tags and category should be editable by authors of their own work at any time.

Note that if you do change category, the URL won't reflect the new name, but if we do go ahead with this proposal, we'll snapshot the situation as it is before we start migrating content and then redirect the category assignments by hand.

I believe there is an exception to that in that any change to a story last approved before the move to Lush 2.0 will trigger remoderation. I know this because I recently changed some tags and nothing else on an older story and it went zipping off to the queue. So that might need to be considered.

Quote by Jen
Not sure anyone is just looking for 'long'.

Maybe not "long" as such, but a suspect some (not many, but some) might be looking for stories containing sex but with a focus on the story/characters etc. regardless of what form that sex takes. Something that is explicitly not just a quick stroke story. If they're after that but don't want a sci-fi/fantasy/horror or other category that indicates the type of story rather than the type of sex therein, "Novels" seems a logical place. Maybe it needs to be renamed - I believe "porn-with-plot" is often used for the movie equivalent, so maybe something along those lines?

Some kind of tag or badge to indicate a series is a complete overarching story would be good though - series can be used for that but also to tie loosely related standalone stories together, and for chapters that do lead to each other but may not have set out to do that and often never resolve as without a plan at the start the writer loses interest and never gets around to finishing them. I know have all three...

Having read all this thread my first thought was to axe Novels, but giving it more thought I suggest something of a compromise: leave it for those few people that really want to write what would legitimately fall into a Novel. In other words a multi chapter story with a connecting arc of characters and plot that has a real beginning, middle, and conclusion, where no chapters can stand alone. To me the difference between a novel and a series is the novel is as I just stated and a series is a group of stories that can stand alone but do have characters that may move in and out and there is no over arching story line that connects them all with a clear beginning, middle, and ending as modern fiction novels do.

That is a nice idea, Kee, but how do we determine if a story meets the criteria of having beginning middle end and character arcs when it is developed piecemeal over a long time? Or if the author never finishes it? We're no better off than we are now and would potentially annoy readers who specifically came here for long-form.

Take an example: I'm working on a trilogy, possibly quadrilogy. When I started, it was going to be a one-off. Then I added a second chapter and liked where it was heading. On the surface, these two parts of the series are just sex. Nothing clever. Nothing special. Nothing characterish. But in the third chapter, the protagonist is beginning to develop an arc which explains her behaviour and (hopefully) brings it to some kind of fitting conclusion (although I would probably leave it—at least in some way—open-ended so readers can take the story forward in their heads, or I could add an 'origins' prequel if there was enough demand, or continue it in future).

So far, I've put each chapter in a different category and linked them as a series, because then people who camp in any of the particular categories can enjoy the individual chapters, which increases my exposure, but if readers want to know more, they can dive either side and read the rest. Or not.

When it's done, if it goes the way I'm thinking, it could well be a "novel" as per your definition. So I could move it and lose my category assignments which signpost what each one is about (and meaning I'd have to write other stories in those categories to work towards Omnium, but that's a side quest). But overall it'll be, what, 15K words? Maybe 20K? Is that a novel? A novella? A long short story? Does it qualify? Who decides? A story of that length could be split into two to comply with our 10K per submission limit. If I've put a 15k piece in Novels, what's to stop others doing the same? Can two parts of that length be a novel? Someone who comes here specifically to read longer works and who sits patiently waiting for authors to write in this category, might then be pissed off that it short-changed them compared to 100-chapter epics like Techgoddess is penning.

Although there are arguments for keeping it, and I'm still on the fence, no matter which way we slice this, the Novels category is an anomaly. It's difficult to justify its value when there are now better tools available (category, series link, plus "novel" tag at minimum) to connect readers with relevant content.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith
Although there are arguments for keeping it, and I'm still on the fence, no matter which way we slice this, the Novels category is an anomaly. It's difficult to justify its value when there are now better tools available (category, series link, plus "novel" tag at minimum) to connect readers with relevant content.

I basically agree, but it seems we have a few die-hard novel writers that really want to keep it. So, as another option, we could lock it as is with a notice that if you want to write in this category ask permission giving details of the proposed novel's storyline and a maybe the same group that ranks contest stories could vote on approving, or not, the proposed novel. It would require an outline of the story, characters and estimated length, at a minimum. Just a thought...

If you lock it and people have to jump through hoops to use it, you're essentially removing it.

...And opening yourself up to confused questioning/bitching from people who don't understand why certain people seem to have special privileges to use the category if anybody bothers.

Authors already posted there should be warned well in advance of such a change so they can make a decision about moving any work there as well. Putting a gate across the gravel road leading to what's already a backwater will turn it into even more of a void where words go to die.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith
better tools available (category, series link, plus "novel" tag at minimum) to connect readers with relevant content.

If you keep the Novel category, it should be clear in the description that its use is OPTIONAL and that writers who would rather use the series function plus a "novel" tag can do so.

If you do not keep it, I do not like the "lock" idea other than as a transitional measure to keep new stories from being added while stories already in the category are being moved out. Once the category is cleared out or the deadline to clear it out is reached, then it should be removed.

Clear communication of a set timeline is important, too. Maybe announce at the start of a month and give six months for authors to move to another category. Anything not moved at that point likely belongs to writers no longer active.

I voted to keep but but having heard the arguments I'm happy for it to be deleted.

It always struck me as an unnecessary category for the Omnium and a throwback to a gentler age before likes and coins became the obsession du jour.

I'll happily move my short novel to teen and perhaps reevaluate individual chapters later.

Keeping a lock reminds me of the vault.. an equally bizarre and now redundant idea.

Welcome to Fahrenheit 451.. novels? Right this way lol

Quote by deviantsusie
Keeping a lock reminds me of the vault.. an equally bizarre and now redundant idea.

I had forgotten about that. One feature of Lush Classic that I did not miss in the transition.

Is it really hurting anything to leave it available and make it optional for Omnium?

So what if authors who are going for the badge now don't have to write a novel? It doesn't bother me. I enjoyed doing so, but not everyone does. Cool, make it optional. But I just don't see the need to make those of us who have more than one novel here with many different chapters (that really can't stand alone) go through the process of rebranding things.

Nothing needs to be locked, nothing needs to be moved, just simply make it optional for those going to Omnium and let authors who like the category do their thing. Less hassle for everyone in my opinion.

I say dump it. Even short novels are broken into chapters that are better posted under each ones primary content. Novels is too large a tent to allow anyone to easily sort through for specific interests. To me, it really serves no purpose. And I've have several posted as my own or through collaboration and the only reason any chapter is under Novels was only to checkmark that off my Omnium chase.

Unless all the chapters can be posted as a group one would still have to search far and wide to find all the chapters anyway. There is literally no point in having it

My thought is ditch it. I posted one of the part 1s of a new series under that category, and it didn't seem to do as well. That could 100% do with the story, but I do wonder how many people even pay attention to the "novels" category. I decided to post another series I had originally put under "novels" in a different category and decided to put the other parts of that one series under different categories as well.

The one argument for it, perhaps, is that it would allow someone to signify that this story is a single story being posted in multiple parts and not a serialized series of stories in the same series (as I feel that those are, in fact, two different things) but maybe there is a better way of signifying that. I'm not sure.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

There's definitely an argument for streamlining the categories but there are also arguments for keeping many of them because people are often into specific variants of a subgenre.

There are cutoffs and diminishing returns either way. Too specific and very few write in them. Too broad and there's so much noise that people don't bother wading through it and go elsewhere.

As someone who sometimes has to deal with categorization in my job, this feels like a debate between higher-level categories and lower-level, more specific "tags" (and I realize Lush already has both). But maybe tags should be a bit more easily searchable or findable for specific sub-genres instead of trying to promote them to a full-fledged category.

(speaking of tags, I know trying to search for tags can be a pain because sometimes the list is so long it just stops listing options. Meanwhile, there are a lot of tags that are basically redundant because different people have created different tags for the same thing and I wonder well, should I use both tags? is one used more than the other? I don't know. I know that is opening a whole different can of worms, though lol)