Genre Conventions
& Why to Use Them
Why genre conventions matter, how they define your contract with readers, and how using them makes your story more powerful, not predictable.
Writing
#03
Hi friends.
Writers often worry that following “the rules” will make their book feel predictable. But commercial readers don’t shy away from structure—they actively choose a genre because they want a particular emotional experience. When that experience never arrives, they don’t assume you’re experimenting with form or making an ambitious artistic choice. They just feel misled, no matter how gorgeous the prose is.
You can separate those expectations into two layers:
Genre conventions (macro) – the big-picture promises
Compositional conventions (micro) – the sentence-level texture and voice
When you understand both, you can be wildly original without ever leaving your readers confused or unsatisfied.
Genre Conventions (Macro): The Structural Promise
These are the elements that let a reader instantly categorize a book and know what emotional experience they’ve signed up for.
Typical macro conventions include:
Core tropes and obligatory scenes
Expected character archetypes
Central moral dilemma for the protagonist
Thematic through-lines
Story beats and pacing landmarks
The “payoff contract” (HEA in romance, restoration of order in mystery, cathartic victory or tragic fall in epic fantasy, etc.)
These patterns aren’t formulas; they’re the reason the genre exists in the marketplace.
Examples
Romance:
Meet-cute → rising tension → black moment → proof of love → HEA/HFN
Epic fantasy:
Ordinary world → call to adventure → mentorship/foil → darkest hour → climax
Cozy mystery:
Crime in safe community → amateur sleuth → gathering of suspects → parlour reveal
If you remove the expected payoff—no reveal in a mystery, no emotional intimacy in a romance—you haven’t subverted anything. You’ve just broken the contract.
Compositional Conventions (Micro): The Felt Experience
These are the linguistic and stylistic patterns that emerge when thousands of authors and readers reinforce what “feels right” in a category.
They show up in:
Average sentence length and rhythm
Ratio of dialogue to narration
Level of interiority
Sensory hierarchy (romance = touch; epic fantasy = sight + smell; horror = sound)
Diction choices and taboo-word tolerance
Use of fragments, em-dashes, italics, profanity, modern slang
Readers notice these within the first page. Long, formal sentences in a steamy romantasy feel like someone swapped your dragon-riding enemies-to-lovers novel with a Victorian ethics essay. Breathless present-tense fragments in a political thriller feel equally off.
Compositional scan results from current top romantasy
(e.g., Silver Elite by Dani Francis, A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen, Broken Souls and Bones by LJ Andrews, The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig)
Average sentence length: 12–16 words (punchy for tension, longer for worldbuilding)
20–30% fragments (for emotional snaps like "Gods, no." or "Not him. Not now.")
Em-dashes in 70–80% of paragraphs (heavy for asides and banter: "I hate you—wait, no, I...")
Moderate-to-high profanity (1–3 per 300 words, modern swears like "fuck" for rawness)
Heavy interiority (40–50% of text) and banter-heavy dialogue
Opening lines from recent bestsellers:
Epic Fantasy
"When the blood-gorged rock in the sky began to burn—evening bled into the afternoon, the sun a wound across heaven's hide." (From The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss.)
→ Long, rolling sentences; mythic diction; immediate moral weight (the "wound" evokes cosmic peril and impending sacrifice).
Romantasy
“I shouldn’t want him. Not like this. Not when his touch brands my skin like a curse I can’t break.” (Silver Elite by Dani Francis)
→ First-person, short-to-medium sentences, heavy interiority, contemporary heat, em-dash asides.
Psychological Thriller
“The doorbell rang at midnight. She knew better than to answer.” (The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas)
→ Short paragraphs, clipped rhythm, understated menace, instant moral ambiguity.
Why Conventions Aren’t Copying
Conventions are the trellis. Your voice, themes, and world are the vine. A trellis doesn’t dictate what plant grows; it simply gives it something to climb so readers can reach the fruit.
Every breakthrough book in commercial fiction still delivers the core conventions while innovating elsewhere:
The Fifth Season hits almost every “chosen one” and “cataclysm” beat—while dismantling who the chosen one actually serves.
Emily Henry writes classic romance structure—with sharp banter, mental-health interiority, and a lot of heat.
Silver Elite nails enemies-to-lovers stakes—but flips the "magical bond" into a dystopian surveillance curse that forces moral reckonings on trust vs. survival.
Subverting vs. Breaking
Subvert = acknowledge the expectation and give readers an even better version of the payoff.
Break = ignore the expectation and leave the promised payoff undelivered.
Subversion example: Fated mates who spend the whole book trying to dissolve the bond because they hate each other, but end up together. (still ends in HEA → readers pleased).
Breaking example: Same setup, but the book ends with one mate dead and the survivor spiralling (readers throw the Kindle).
Where Breaking Convention Hurts
A fantasy with no sense of wonder or discovery
A romance where the central couple never develops emotional intimacy
A mystery that refuses to reveal whodunit or makes the solution feel arbitrary
A thriller with no escalating stakes
These aren’t artistic failures—they’re category failures.
Understanding conventions isn’t about restricting your creativity—it’s about giving your reader the emotional experience they came for so your originality has room to land. When you honour the macro contract and match the micro texture, your story feels inevitable in the best possible way: familiar enough to trust, fresh enough to not put down.
If you think you might need help striking that balance, I look at both levels of convention in my editorial work. A developmental edit addresses the macro promises your story is making, while a line edit shapes the micro—your sentences, rhythm, and voice. Together, they ensure your book delivers what readers crave without losing what makes it uniquely yours.
Happy writing!
