Open Novella Journal 2024

The Genre - Which One to Pick?

So, I dropped a comment about this on the submission page as I remember certain individuals getting stuck on what they should submit their story as, but the genre are in alphabetical order: action/adventure, children's fiction, fanfiction, fantasy, general fiction, historical fiction, horror & paranormal, mystery/thriller, romance, science fiction, teen fiction/na/ya.

As for what category, it helps, I think, to understand that the categories are there not for us, but for the judges as the ambassadors are going to be given categories they're familiar with and thus know the basics of that genre. For example, someone judging historical fiction will know their history as well as how to check to see if an author isn't erring on historical elements or historical facts. Mystery needs to be judged on how well it works within the story.

 General Fiction is the category for anything that isn't being judged by any special criteria for ONC. There are for example, no historical fiction elements that need to be checked for historical accuracy. There are no mystery elements that need to be checked for whether the mystery ends up working or not. So if a story doesn't have to be judged by any of the above criteria, that is where it should go.

And there is one category that trumps all others, Fanfic (derivative of another person's work and modern RPF) trumps all others, we're not allowed to use any other category. And the next set is the Children's Fiction and Teen Fiction/NA/YA, which is often judged on age-appropriate.

Fanfiction (spin-offs of anothers work) - These stories are going to be judged on both whether or not they actually are spin-offs of another person's work and whether or not they can stand on their own. Even if you're working with a work in the public domain, submit your work here because this is the criteria your story needs to be judged by. Although to be clear, myths don't count as a spin-off of another person's work.

For example, a writer can't say write a Harry Potter fanfic where a child is identified as a squib before they get their Hogwarts letter, but even more specifically before the known age of a child manifesting their powers for the first time, or they can't take Dumbledore's special needs sister and make her no longer special needs for the story.

Fanfiction (modern RPF) - A major criterion for these stories is how the writer treats the real people within the narrative, but there is an expectation here that the writer doesn't say go and make an actual real-life celebrity into, say, a serial killer or rapist, or anything serious of that nature. Even stories where the real-life person is dealing with suicidal thoughts and tendencies are going to be highly scrutinized for what should be obvious reasons.

Children's Fiction - Is your story age appropriate? For example, a narrative that presents bullying another child as okay isn't going to fly. You should also be avoiding it. open discussion of things like drugs and suicide, although there are ways that are actually age-appropriate for addressing these things - they're just not easy and probably not the best fit for ONC as such works still need some form of parental/teacher guidance to them and wouldn't be something the ambassadors would feel comfortable putting on one of the lists as they wouldn't know how it might be handled later on.

Teen Fiction/NA/YA - You've got a lot more freedom here, but here is a reminder that the Mature rating is based on what is or isn't age-appropriate as well, so if you're tagging your Teen Fiction/YA as mature you are certainly going to get nixed without the ambassadors even looking at your story which is definitely something I saw last year and not something I covered in the data I collected based on the stories I read as I encountered those stories post first round elimination.

No, seriously - mark your story as Mature for Teen Fiction/YA and your out, no questions asked, no bothering to even look through the content of your story, because Mature is automatically considered age appropriate, whereas for NA - that's an older audience and can be Mature, but doesn't have to be.

Which, the whole Mature rating stemmed from the writer not understanding that Mature here on Wattpad specifically means 17 and up, no exceptions to this, or in other words works that can only ever be Adult Fiction, while the writer was thinking - well, for starters, they honestly thought certain books that the movies were rated PG-13 counted as Mature books because they were thinking target demographics when in reality it is about age appropriateness, which means the issue stems from the fact Teen Fiction/YA is often presented as having criteria based on what the industry thinks the target audience would like. 

Hence, the myth that protagonists in a YA need to be the age of the reader or within three years, the same myth prevailing in Children's Fiction, which gives this impression readers are only ever interested in characters that are the same age or within three years of them, preferably older leaning.

That's where the New Adult comes in, as it's meant to be a genre for a certain target audience based on age and so the characters are meant to be "college-aged". This isn't to say there is no merit to NA, as there does need to be a bridge between young adult and adult fiction, though this also - not all adult fiction is rated mature, so it is rather complicated. Sherlock Holmes for example is adult fiction, work that the target audience for all purposes is an adult target audience, but it's also a work that is age appropriate for a much younger audience, if that helps.

Thus there's also the element of whether something would interest the target audience comes in, same with Children's Fiction. The character being a certain age is actually a kind of rule of thumb that can be broken as kids actually aren't against say picking up a series featuring an adult superhero, if there are other elements there that will interest them. Basically anything that has a universal appeal when it comes to target audience that you want judged based on age appropriatness.

Which, was longer than what I wanted.

Historical Fiction - Judged based on historical accuracy.
Mystery/Thriller - Judged based on how well they incororate the mystery elements or if the writer fails.
Sci-Fi - Judged based on scientific accuracy, with things like time travel remaining based in one of the scientific theories for sci-fi and whether one remains consistent with ones rules.
Fantasy - Judged based on the fantasy elements and whether the rules that vary from reality remain consistent in your story.
Horror & Paranormal - Judged based on those elements, although one can have one without the other, such as psychological horror not having any paranormal and a paranormal story not having any horror, but for the latter your vampires should come across as vampires.
Romance - Judged based on the romance elements as well as whether or not the writer avoided glorifying toxic relationships in their stories.

Hope this helps.