As you might be able to tell, I have given quite a lot of thought to a possible solution for the future of the novel genre. Here is my suggestion.

1. Remove the novel genre from the Omnium badge.

2. Make the novel genre an optional opt-out genre (like fantasy currently is) and readers warned that novels could contain any of the 54 story genres, including fantasy .

3. Authors writing novels have to put every chapter in the novel genre and use the tags to define the contents of each chapter.

4. Normal LushStories rules of a maximum of 10,000 words per chapter.

5. Once the novel is finished, and providing the author has written more than (say) 50,000 words, they receive a novel badge. The author writes a second novel and a 2 goes by the side of it.  

Could the above work and be a solution?

Quote by NishasWorld

Even if you write a novel-length story, it will be submitted in 8-12 parts of 10,000 words or less, each one with fewer likes than the last. Ditch it. X

With the greatest of respect, Nisha, I have to ask: is that statement true?

A quick flick of the novel genre will give you the answer. However, I can tell you that though the number of likes might be small, 3 of my novels picked up likes along the way and ended up with more for the last chapter than the first.

Not including the poetry, flash or micro-fiction genres, the novel genre is still the 22nd (out of the 54) most popular genres here on LushStories.

If the novel genre is ditched, what do we replace it with? I for one would like to see a real solution, I don't want to have to move my 65 chapters into Love Stories or Wifelovers, or similar, but that is what is being muted.

I have been experimenting by publishing my fifth novel "The Three Of Us" - Chapter 1:- “Moving In” under different genres. However, I did come up with an issue with chapter four, as there is absolutely no sex in it. So no obvious genre to publish under. In the end, I left it under novels.

This leads me to another point. Having now written seventeen chapters, I find myself as I write trying to fit them into a certain genre rather than staying true to the original story. So extra sex scenes, more story detours, and ultimately, a longer story.

Quote by KimmiBeGood

Whew! I submitted my story. Probably broke Grammarly. It’s over 8K words. My characters ran all over me. I love parts of it. I hope it makes sense. I hope the gaping holes aren’t plot holes. I’ll be in Rumps Bar drinking and eating donuts…

I look forward to reading it. 🙂

Quote by KimmiBeGood

And LordCephius is first outta the gate! Great way to kick things off!

I am impressed that LordCephius has already got his entry in. 😊

Now I am going to be saying to myself, I mustn't read it until I have my entry in, which is several weeks away! 🙄

Quote by KimmiBeGood

Damn it! I’ve lost all control over my story! It’s the Noir comp all over again with characters pushing the boundaries I set. A stripper, in particular, is on her knees begging for a meatier part. Sigh.

Btw, this is my frustrated writer’s face, not to be confused with my orgasm face.

I thought that was your face looking for a man's meatier part! 😉🤣

My guess is there are quite a few authors currently wrestling with their story entries for this competition. I do not expect to see any published entries until next week.

The only thing I would worry about eating in that pot is the brussel sprouts! 😕😨

As for my potential competition entry, the title is done, the cover page is done... as for everything else; a clean sheet of paper. 🙄

Quote by sprite

i have a title. i like the title. i am usually not good with titles. i don't have a story though. and honestly, I really haven't been all that great at getting it together for comps in the past few years, so we'll see...

I still remember your Anti-Valentine competition-winning entry, Rachel. It was one of the cleverest stories I have ever read here.

Quote by Jen

This will be the one and only time Lush will encourage the use of bad grammar.

Hi Jen,

While the rest is clear to me, I do think this sentence needs more clarification. Are you saying, you want authors to deliberately write bad grammar, like not using capital letters, deliberately poor sentence structures... etc etc and does it go as far as poor spelling?

Or are you saying the moderators will let poor grammar go? Things like commas, colons, and my favourite, ellipses. To encourage new woodbee whodunnit authors to enter?

I love the idea of the theme behind this competition: Miss Scarlet kills Colonel Mustard in the library with the dagger. Being a natural at bad grammar, it is right up my street! 😊

There were a few PC games I used to play, but Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 was my all-time favourite. Later, versions just didn't cut it for me.

No, though I have met two members from this site in RL, one an author and one a story commentator.

Suggestion: Like there is for poetry, why not have two microfiction categories, one for "pure microfiction" and one for authors who want to have a go at writing 100 words?

Some thought would need to be made about how you split the two categories.

It's just an idea I throw out there. 😊

An intriguing question, Kimi. Simply put, my LS goals have evolved, perhaps more than most.

Background: For years I was a story reader. Then, I helped with ideas or read-throughs of other authors. Then COVID and my wife challenged me to write some stories. I wrote 5 books (way short of LS English standards). But I wanted people to read them, and I remembered the ebook button here. Then I discovered it doesn't work and you need to publish a chapter at a time. Re-wites, where I learned about punctuation and grammar, and with plenty of help, became a better writer.

Now: Four books down and with the fifth to appear shortly (chapter by chapter), I have turned to completing the Ominium badge and trying to improve my writing further. I also like taking part in the competitions too. As for writing, my stories are nearly all character-based, and a little humour often creeps into them. No issues writing in any of the genres, even WS.

As for the future, my goal is to have fun here and try to improve. 😊 Not expecting to win anything, but I do hope that there are new badges added to the existing ones to give authors new exciting challenges.

I agree with diviantsusie, the story covers do look great next to your story. It was a nice surprise to see this upgrade.

However, through trial and error, I have found my imported cover pictures have to be 850 x 1350 pixels to have no surrounding grey at the top and bottom of the photo. Does this sound right? I am not sure what others use.

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. 😊

Thank you for the pointers; I do appreciate the help and will read all the suggested stories. 😊

I do feel that getting arrogance across on the written page is fairly difficult to do well, and I hope to improve on what I have already written. BTW, it is unlikely the chapter with the arrogant man will appear here until next year.

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.

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.

Congratulations to the winners! 😊 And well done to all those who entered.

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.

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 Just_A_Guy_You_Know

My story Texas Toast had an arrogant male character. I wrote it from a female(ish.... just read the story) perspective, so she often commented on the male's arrogance and how much she disliked the guy. Apart from that, it came out (as most character traits do) in dialogue and action. One thing I'd keep in mind is that arrogant people rarely think of themselves as arrogant, but confident. There's usually some lack of self-awareness.

Thank you for your help, Just_A_Guy_You_Know. I will study your story.

With such a large pool of talented writers here, I wondered if any of you have written an arrogant character in one of your stories and have tips or suggestions for expressing their arrogance across the written page.

I ask because I have a male character whom I first wrote into a story in 2021 using online arrogance tips. Now I want to rewrite him and try, if possible, to get that arrogance across to the reader in a better way.

Quote by simplyjohn

Apparently your entry to "Festive Unexpected" placed 10th so you instead have a "Competition top 10" badge for that one.

It did! Thank you for looking into this, John. I didn't realise that if you place in a competition, your counter doesn't go up.

If you want to find out what a Bruce is, check out my latest story - "Shadows"

This is my take on the Monster Sex theme, and should certainly appeal to the Lush ladies. 😊

If you want to find out what a Bruce is, check out my latest story - "Shadows"

This is my take on the Monster Sex theme, and should certainly appeal to the Lush ladies. 😊

Not a biggy, but my competition number is stuck at 6 when it should be 7. The badges were updated with the Dirty Talk one added, but not the number. I seemed to remember this has been an issue in the past, but a search didn't bring the topic up. I just wondered: will the number eventually click up to seven?

Tonight, I finished reading all 94 entries to this competition, and I have to say there are some cracking entries. I am not just talking about the dialogue; I am also talking about the stories behind it. Some clever and rather unique ideas. I just wanted to say well done to all those who entered and good luck! 😊

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.