: Re: Changing Genres in the Middle of a Story Let's say the story was introduced as a romance, then somewhere in the middle it becomes a horror/thriller, would you immediately think it's bad? Would
I don't think that I would be "angry", but I might well be annoyed. If I'm in the mood to read, say, an action/adventure story, and I pick up this book thinking it's going to be a lot of violence and action, and then after the first chapter it turns into a sweet and pleasant romance ... well, that's not what I wanted to read. Even if I like romance novels, maybe that just isn't what I wanted to read today. It would be like if I decided I wanted an ice cream cone, went to an ice cream parlor and ordered an ice cream cone, and it turned out to really be mashed potatoes. I like mashed potatoes, but that's not what I wanted right now.
I could especially see this being an issue in your case: shifting from a pleasant story of love and romance to a graphic horror story. That is almost surely not what the reader was looking for. She wants romantic escapist fare, and suddenly there is blood and gore and hacked up body parts? Even if you're not contemplating being that graphic, this is a problem.
It would also be difficult to make the transition while keeping the story coherent. Not impossible, of course, but tricky. You spend the first few chapters building up the heroine as beautiful and desirable and the hero as rich and handsome or whatever ... and then suddenly all of that is irrelevant and what matters is their ability to fight off a chain-saw wielding maniac.
Now I haven't read your story. Maybe if I read it I'd say, "Wow, that's cool the way he smoothly shifted from a romance to a horror story. It all flowed so naturally and made so much sense that I'm not even sure where the transition really happened."
But really ... probably not.
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