Girl's Love Confusion

[NyxNyghtingale]

Heya everyone, quick question about tags and the general culture of expectations here on SH.

I'm writing a story that features a slow burn lesbian romance, and so I tagged it as Girls Love. However, it's going to be a pretty lengthy series, and this particular subplot takes a backseat to the main story in early books. Recently, I've gotten an influx of people that will read the very first chapter, see that it doesn't have wlw, and then immediately leave comments and even very poor reviews accusing me of incorrectly tagging the story.

Personally, I can't imagine reading a story and being mad when it doesn't immediately feature every single thing it's tagged as. I've tried updating my tags and my description to make this a bit more clear, but I personally feel that SH has a pretty thin tagging system.

Do people just expect Girls Love to be nothing but wlw the entire time? Is there any way to avoid these kinds of trigger-happy readers? I'm honestly surprised at how hostile people are getting over this.

One even said the story was very well written and had an interesting premise he enjoyed, but reviewed it at 1 Star purely because of this issue.

Nyx

 

[Ai-chan]

Normally, you should be able to tell there would be a certain element within the first 1-2 chapters. Every published author would not drag out a promise. There is a common piece of advice, "Do not drag on your promise for too long." or "When the promise set up by the premise isn’t honored early on, readers are left disappointed".

Every published author follow this rule. You must deliver on the promise, even if it's just a hint. Imagine Detective Conan not showing a case within the first two pages or a horror novel not hinting at the horror from the first chapter.

The “premise line” develops the concept into the potential for conflict. In a single sentence it allows the audience to imagine the framework for a story. It includes stakes, but not the specifics of character or plot. The premise line answers the question, “What’s it about?”. "What's it about?" is the promise.

Let's look at, for example, Liar Liar. It is a movie based on the premise that "a lawyer cannot lie". This is the promise. Throughout the first act, we saw the protagonist being a habitual liar. This sets up for the switch. And within that very first act, we saw the promise being delivered, that being the protagonist's child wished that the protagonist would not lie anymore. The next act, the protagonist lost his ability to lie. This then builds up until its resolution.

Now imagine if, as you say, this movie is a slow burn. And the screenwriter drags this promise all the way to 30 minutes after the movie starts. Audience will get bored, they will ask "What is this story about?" Slow burn is no excuse for delaying to deliver the promise. You must deliver the promise as soon as it's capable of delivering the impact.

Unless you go the xianxia route, where everything gets dragged around for tens of chapters and stuff just gets added on a whim. Most people won't consider webnovel xianxia as the peak of literary work in the first place. So if you want to go that route, you can't blame the readers for not being patient. You'll just get the kind of readers that consume that kind of thing while everyone else will simply not like what you deliver.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

The tags are supposed to reference a focal point of the story, something it rotates around. Two of mine could have a GL tag, but it is a minor (well, except to the characters involved) element, not a major story point (I think I have one that could have a BL tag as well but, again, it is a background element usually just mentioned in passing).
My suggestion would be to make a mention of it in the synopsis of book one (more as a warning to those who would object to it, than as a lure to those looking for it) and only make it a tag in later books or if you do the later books separately from the first one.

 

[NyxNyghtingale]

Normally, you should be able to tell there would be a certain element within the first 1-2 chapters. Every published author would not drag out a promise. There is a common piece of advice, "Do not drag on your promise for too long." or "When the promise set up by the premise isn’t honored early on, readers are left disappointed".

Every published author follow this rule. You must deliver on the promise, even if it's just a hint. Imagine Detective Conan not showing a case within the first two pages or a horror novel not hinting at the horror from the first chapter.

The “premise line” develops the concept into the potential for conflict. In a single sentence it allows the audience to imagine the framework for a story. It includes stakes, but not the specifics of character or plot. The premise line answers the question, “What’s it about?”. "What's it about?" is the promise.

Let's look at, for example, Liar Liar. It is a movie based on the premise that "a lawyer cannot lie". This is the promise. Throughout the first act, we saw the protagonist being a habitual liar. This sets up for the switch. And within that very first act, we saw the promise being delivered, that being the protagonist's child wished that the protagonist would not lie anymore. The next act, the protagonist lost his ability to lie. This then builds up until its resolution.

Now imagine if, as you say, this movie is a slow burn. And the screenwriter drags this promise all the way to 30 minutes after the movie starts. Audience will get bored, they will ask "What is this story about?" Slow burn is no excuse for delaying to deliver the promise. You must deliver the promise as soon as it's capable of delivering the impact.

Unless you go the xianxia route, where everything gets dragged around for tens of chapters and stuff just gets added on a whim. Most people won't consider webnovel xianxia as the peak of literary work in the first place. So if you want to go that route, you can't blame the readers for not being patient. You'll just get the kind of readers that consume that kind of thing while everyone else will simply not like what you deliver.

When I think slow burn, I think of stories where both sides of the relationship are given plenty of time to breath and explore the world. Even if the romance doesn't kick in until later, the appeal in my eyes is seeing two different people navigate the broader world of the story and eventually coming to a shared conclusion. I appreciate you listing an example, and for taking the time to illustrate your thoughts.

Attempting to use an example for clarity's sake, I would point to Avatar: The Last Airbender (Since it's well-known enough that I can assume broad recognizition). Zuko is often held up as a phenomenally well-written character, and the main focus of his arc is the eventual decision to change sides. However, in a ~60 episode series, he only makes this decision in the last 10 episodes. To me, all the setup of the previous 50 episodes count as part of that story, even though the actual main thrust of the arc (the redemption) doesn't come into play until much later.

My hope was that posting this thread would help me understand how people view the genre tags on this site, and I do think I simply have a different interpretation of how genres should play out in a story. I think it would be in my best interest to remove Girls Love as a genre tag, and leave it simply as a Subplot tag.

 

[Arkus86]

There are the "Girl's Love Subplot", "Slow Romance" and "Late Romance" tags, perhaps use those instead? A combination of those three should be pretty clear.
Having Girl's Love among the genres implies it is a major theme of the story, and the lack of Late/Slow romance makes people expect it early on