Discovery and Story Categorization FAQs
This Guide is intended for Authors
What is genre?
A category of story (or art or music) characterized by similarities in theme, tone, style, and structure.
Wolves, foxes, dogs, and jackals are all canines. They’re all the same general body shape, with the same general head shape, movement, and instincts. Similarly, genre has certain conventions in plot, theme, tone, or setting that make it a genre. Science fiction contains science or technology of some kind that changes what we currently know about our world. Mysteries involve, well, a mystery. Romance stories are about a love story between main characters and include a happily ever after or a happily for now. Fantasy stories are about living in a world that includes magic, whether that’s the world we know or another world.
Genre is species for stories.
What is subgenre?
This is when a story’s main framework is one genre but it includes conventions from another genre. It is also when a main genre is extremely broad, so subcategories are used to further narrow down what exactly you’ve written or a reader is looking for. To go back to the species metaphor, a wolf is a subspecies of canine. And then there are multiple species of wolf. Fantasy is a very broad genre. But within that, you can have historical fantasy, and under that, gaslamp fantasy, set in the time period just before the Industrial Revolution and named for the gas lamps that lit streets and buildings.
Why are stories classified by genre and subgenre for discovery?
Because it’s easy identification for authors, readers, and marketers. If a reader picks up a contemporary fantasy novel, loves it, and decides they want to read more stories like it, they can browse a library, bookstore, or bookselling site by that genre.
If an author wants to write detective novels, they can look for stories and articles specifically teaching that. If a marketer (whether a publisher or not) is trying to tell people about a new horror novel, they can look at where horror fans gather and what horror fans like and tailor their outreach to crafting a story about this horror story.
Why does genre matter for authors?
Because it helps you find YOUR reader, the one who wants to read YOUR book. Instead of shouting through the noise of every single book being published, you can put your horror novel onto the horror shelf and readers who know they want horror will be able to see it.
Why is genre important for Discovery?
An important aspect of discovery is Browsing. How often did you find a new favorite author by browsing shelves at a bookstore? Or library? You enable browsing by putting your book on a virtual shelf, so to speak, so readers who want to sniff around the horror section can find you. They can click on your book and read the tagline and blurb and look at the cover (and the tags) and decide if they want to read it or not.
What’s the difference between Browsing and Search?
Search is for readers who know exactly what they do and don’t want. If they want a southern gothic horror with vampires and no romance, they can look for exactly that. But Search, book blurbs, and tags won’t help if readers don’t really know what kind of horror they want yet. That’s where browsing comes in.
Genre fuels Browsing. Tags feed Search. Browsing will fuel search. And Search will cycle more readers through Browsing.
It’s the circle of reader life.
But what about tags? And romance pairings? And cultures? And tropes? Even if they aren’t “genres,” we need those!
We agree!
That’s why we have categories for authors to select romance pairing (such as MM), diversity (such as BIPOC), and what audience their book is intended for (such as Young Adult).
We will also have a help section for genre definitions, and eventually, definitions of tropes and tags as well.
What is a trope?
“A trope is a storytelling device or convention, a shortcut for describing situations the storyteller can reasonably assume the audience will recognize. Tropes are the means by which a story is told by anyone who has a story to tell. … Tropes are tools that a creator uses to express their ideas to the audience. It’s pretty much impossible to create a story without tropes.” ~ TV Tropes
Tropes are patterns of storytelling. Let’s take Chosen One. It’s a story pattern: someone is chosen by a deity or fate or destiny to do a great thing, whether it’s restore magic, banish evil, or save a land. They are usually surprised to find out they are the chosen one, and then they (often reluctantly) begin the journey to accomplish the great thing, and in the end, they do achieve it.
Or how about the popular and often misunderstood Enemies to Lovers.
What this means is that you have main characters who start out enemies, legitimate enemies trying to unalive each other and defeat each other by any means possible, and then they go through an arc that varies in specifics but always involves some sort of change where they begin to see each other differently and then other changes that make them continue seeing each other differently, and they end as lovers.
But explaining that arc takes a few minutes, whereas just saying “enemies to lovers” takes a few seconds.
So what’s the difference between a trope and a subgenre?
A trope describes one specific convention or pattern of narrative. A genre describes a collection of conventions, and a subgenre a) is a smaller collection of conventions within the larger collection, and/or b) combines those conventions with a few conventions from another genre to create a differently flavored story that’s still within the main genre.
To go back to our trope example, Chosen One is not a genre or subgenre because it’s one character and narrative pattern. You can write a Chosen One story in almost any genre. Genres contain many conventions tied together with a common theme, setting, or tone. One trope is not enough to make a subgenre.
Other people classify romance pairings a genre category, but Ream isn’t?
No. Romance pairings are a category, but they are not enough to make a genre or subgenre on their own. Let’s take male-male romance. If you say, “I write MM romance,” the first question many readers will ask is “What genre?” or “What kind of MM romance?” That’s because you can write MM romance in any genre. You can have historical fantasy with an MM romance, you can have paranormal romance with an MM pairing, or you can have horror with an MM romance, you can have contemporary small-town MM romance. Romance pairings aren’t genres. That’s why Ream added a section specifically for listing the romance pairing your book contains, giving readers a chance to browse romance pairings as well as genres.
Why don’t you have culturally-based subgenres, like Asian Fantasy?
Certain character and plot patterns within a specific time period and culture can make a genre or subgenre, such as Western (as in Wild West Western), xianxia (cultivation fantasy), and wuxia (martial arts historical fantasy), but on its own, culture is usually too broad to be a subgenre on its own. Pakistani-inspired fantasy is very different from Taiwanese-inspired fantasy, for example, yet both could be classified Asian fantasy. Nigerian-inspired fantasy is very different from Moroccan-inspired fantasy, yet both could be classified African fantasy. We want authors to be able to tell readers exactly what culture they’ve written about or been inspired by, and we want readers to be able to find exactly the stories they want. That’s why we’ve given you the ability to use multiple tags on your story, so you can tell us that you’ve written a Korean-inspired urban fantasy with an MM romance subplot.
What about identity and representation?
In addition to romance pairings, we also have a diversity category for authors to include representation tags for stories with BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent characters, and beyond.
What about characteristics of stories that don’t fit any of those categories? Like “dragons”?
That’s why we have the tags section.
Why isn’t Mpreg on the list of genres?
Because it’s not really a genre (you can write it in almost any genre), and it’s not a conclusive pairing either. (Usually Mpreg is male/male, but it can also be role reversal female/male, futanari/male, and other/male.) Instead, you’ll be able to make it a strong tag on your story, which will highlight it for readers looking for Mpreg stories.
Why isn’t omegaverse a genre or pairing?
Like MM romance, you can write omegaverse in almost any genre. Historical fantasy, for example, or mystery, or horror. It can also contain multiple gender pairings, such as MM, FF, MF, and more. So it doesn’t work well as a genre or pairing in our system, but it makes a perfect tag for readers to search!
My readers are used to searching for specific tags or keywords and finding stories that way. How do I help them find other authors who write stories similar to mine?
They can still Search on Ream! But our classification system is also ripe with networking possibilities. What about making a list of the authors on Ream who write omegaverse and making a community post linking to them so your readers can explore their fiction? Or getting a bunch of mpreg authors together to write a short scene each that can be used as reader magnets and cross-promoted by the other authors? So many possibilities!
Why isn’t a genre I requested on the list?
One of two reasons.
a) we can’t do everything at once. This is only Discovery 1.0 and in order to get this rolled out, we were unable to add every single thing. Other genres and subgenres will be added later.
b) After long and careful research, the team determined it wasn’t a genre, therefore it won’t be added. Please add it to the tags on your story.
If you have any questions, please contact our Support Team at support@reamstories.com.