Gay Authors has General Primary Genres (such as General Fiction, Romance and Fantasy) and dozens of sub-genres. Authors can only assign sub-genres to their stories. The primary genres are listed based on sub-genres selected.
A list of all genres/sub-genres with their descriptions can be found here: https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/genre-tag/
To select a genre for your story:
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identify the most prominent part of your story.
- Example: If you are writing a Romance, where you are focused on the Romance, then go to the Romance Primary Genre and select an appropriate Sub-genre. If your romance occurs in the modern day select Contemporary Romance as your sub-genre
- Example 2: If you are writing a Romance that happens to be set in the Old West, you can select Romantic Western but if you happen to be writing a Western that as romantic elements you can select Western - Western Romance. The difference is about what is primary. Is it a Western that happens to have romantic elements or is a Romance that happens to be set in a Western?
- Example 3: If you are writing a Drama, Coming of Age, or Rich Boy type story that is very common in our corner of the internet, then the Primary Genre is "General Fiction" and there are sub-genres for each of the examples above.
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Select 1-4 Sub-genres. If you are going over that, then it is highly likely your story has one of the following issues:
- Not focused. Your story cannot be crossing a dozen genres and have much meaning in most of them.
- Experimental. If you are trying to make an epic Western Fantasy Sci-fi Romantic Thriller Drama, I'm happy for you and your editor. Good luck finding a reader that isn't turned off by one or more of that combination. If you really want to do that much, go to General Fiction and select "Experimental" as the sub-genre.
- Probably violating a sub-genre trope. A fairly large number of the sub-genres are actually defined by their tropes. And if you're not following the trope, you're not appropriately using the sub-genre.
- A larger number of sub-genres can be used on longer stories, especially those stories in speculative fiction (such as Fantasy, Science Fiction and Paranormal). Even then you should not be going above 6-7 sub-genres on an epic.
