June 9, 2026

Meeting Reader Expectations with Our Romance Story

Apple on books with text: Deepen Your Craft with Resident Writing Coach Jami Gold (at Writers Helping Writers)

It’s time for another one of my guest posts over at Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers site. As one of their Resident Writing Coaches, I’ve previously shared:

With this turn for another coaching article at WHW, we’re exploring the broad genre of romance stories. Specifically, we’re identifying how to describe and categorize our romance stories to appeal to the right readers who will love our story.

Writers Helping Writers: Resident Writing Coach Program

First, learn the different ways we can describe a romance story in my guest post at WHW:

Falling in Love: Types of Romance Stories

Come visit my guest post, where I’m sharing 3 ways to categorize our romance story and what they mean for reader expectations, including:

identifying our subgenre
- exploring what creates and defines our subgenre, with 11 examples
- how to decide between subgenre options when there’s overlap or uncertainty
identifying our tropes
- learning what a trope is, with 15 examples
- how tropes can strengthen our writing and our story
identifying our “vibes“
- understanding that “vibes” refers to elements that affect our writing
- how stories with the same subgenre and tropes can be very different
- how the details of our implementation make all the difference
- how vibes can affect our storytelling in 4 ways (with dozens of examples)
- how vibes can affect our characters in 3 ways (with dozens of examples)
- how vibes can affect our subgenre/worldbuilding (with dozens of examples)
- how vibes can affect the romance relationship in 4 ways (with dozens of examples)
how to learn about reader expectations for our type of romance story

Then, come back here to dig deeper into these elements and how they affect readers’ experience. We’re exploring how many romance elements include subtext that may work against our story if we’re not careful, and we’re learning how some romance elements include inherent weaknesses that we may need to work harder to overcome.

The Difficulty of Meeting Reader Expectations

Every genre makes promises to readers. The romance genre always promises a happy/emotionally satisfying ending (except in cases of cliffhanger-multibook series, when the last book would include the happily ever after). Beyond that basic genre-level promise, readers have other expectations as well.

However, there are many reasons why it can be difficult to “know” what readers will expect from our story and thus meet those expectations, including:

we’re not mind-readers
every reader is unique (with their own history and experience through which they interpret our story)
how we choose to describe our story (or how others describe our story when sharing)
our writing choices

Why is it so difficult to know and meet our readers' expectations? Share on X

In other words, there’s no end to the opportunities to unintentionally lead reader expectations astray. There’s not much I can do to help us with those first two bullet points, but my guest post this time tries to help with that third bullet point of describing our story.

Now, let’s look at that fourth bullet point and how our writing choices can accidentally send reader expectations down the wrong path. Each subgenre, trope, and vibe we identified from the guest post comes with not only reader expectations but also subtext and inherent weaknesses that we need to ensure work with our specific implementation choices.

Learn the Subtext of Our Writing Choices

As mentioned in the guest post, the best way to learn about reader expectations is to be a voracious reader of the genre (or subgenre). Reading widely in our subgenre will also help us see (at least subconsciously) some of the subtext of the subgenre, tropes, and other elements.

For example, Paranormal Romance and its common tropes include subtext and reader expectations of:

Readers often want to imagine that the story could happen in the real world, as the story world usually feels like our world, just with some bonus supernatural sprinkles.
One character (and thus the reader) is usually “in the know” about the paranormal world, while the other character often is in the dark, which can lead to conflict and power differentials for the characters and delicious dramatic irony for the reader.
The differences between characters (one paranormal and one not, different “tribes,” etc.) can create a seemingly insurmountable conflict for their romance, which is often why readers love the subgenre—to see how that major conflict is overcome to reach the happily ever after.
Many stories come down to power—who has it, who needs it, who’s willing to trust, to share, to cooperate, etc.—so many readers expect to see a reckoning that brings the couple to equality.
Most paranormal romance stories include a villain character, so the external conflict and plot is expected to be strong.

For a more specific example of a trope common in Paranormal Romance, let’s look at the Fated Mates trope. This “they’re destined to be together” trope carries subtext about relationship security and free will (and the lack of).

How can we work with (and not against) the subtext of our story's tropes? Share on X

That means if our story leans into destiny and fate, that “lack of free will” subtext works. But if our story includes themes of free will and choices that matter, we’d need to include some deconstruction of the subtext to avoid having the trope conflict with our theme.

For example, we might treat the trope like a paranormal version of an arranged marriage, where the characters might know they’re supposed to end up with the other, but the storytelling gives them a choice. (And choices always make for more interesting stories.) They can choose to:

fight their fate (which can create unintended subtext about free will and being forced into physical intimacy),
accept their fate but not work at it (and end up in a miserable relationship), or
make the best of it and work at love and the relationship just like all of us non-paranormal beings.

Other common Paranormal Romance tropes might have one character significantly change (potentially even changing species) in order for the couple to be together. The subtext of this writing choice acts like the paranormal version of one member of the couple having to give up everything—job, house, family, etc.—to be with the other person, which can feel unfair unless the other person is giving up something too. (After all, there’s no real-world equivalent of turn-taking when changing species.)

Whereas the subtext of the couple making the relationship work, even through their (species) differences, can offer hope about humanity finding a happily ever after together despite all the racism, classism, ableism, sexism, and other -isms in the real world. Plus, compared to a physical change, there’s often more opportunities for depth in a character’s emotional change.

That said, there are always ways to tweak the subtext to fit with our story and theme. For example, if a character was going to be changing themselves to match the other (*cough* Twilight), we can ensure we have a running theme throughout the story about how the character never fit into the world as themselves anyway, which turns their change into a natural evolution of who they already are and avoids the “unfair” feeling of the default subtext.

In other words, every writing choice we make—subgenre, characters, plot, tropes, themes, etc.—all creates subtext. But if we make ourselves aware of the subtext we’ve created (at least during the revision process), we can ensure that the subtext strengthens our story, rather than undercuts our intentions.

Learn the Inherent Weaknesses of Our Writing Choices

Just because we’re writing a romance and the expectation is that the characters “belong” together doesn’t mean that we don’t have to show them work at creating a relationship. That’s the inherent weakness in the romance genre overall, and we won’t meet readers’ expectations if we skip over the relationship-building work.

So just like we learned for subtext, reading widely in our subgenre and genre will help us become familiar with the inherent weaknesses of the specific elements we choose for our story. As we read, we can pay attention to what works or doesn’t, what feels squicky to us or causes emotional conflicts in ourselves, or what common elements fall flat in our modern society, etc.

For example, the Fated Mate trope’s inherent weakness is that we could rely on the trope to carry the story of why the characters end up together. Overcoming that weakness requires us to do extra work to show why the characters are right for each other and not just rely on the trope to act as a “because I said so.”

Or given our real-world economic situation with income inequality, stories with billionaire characters can make readers think of all the people the character must have exploited to get that rich. So we may want to include some deconstruction or additional background information of how they got to that income point to address readers’ assumptions of the character’s values and morals.

How can we avoid the inherent weaknesses of our writing choices? Share on X

For a contemporary story, an arranged-marriage trope can feel unrealistic unless we put in extra work to explain how it fits and makes sense in the story. (I actually know someone entering an arranged marriage, as they simply became frustrated with the modern dating scene and asked their family to find someone for them—so it can be done realistically.)

An enemies-to-lovers trope (along with several other tropes like forbidden love, opposites attract, etc.) can suffer from the relationship feeling unrealistic unless we put extra effort to show the characters (and their situation) change in ways that make them a better long-term match. And so on…

Many reader expectations come down to whether—in the reader’s eye—we wrapped up or explained how the weaknesses have been overcome by the end of the story. We have to show all the reasons why these characters truly belong together. We may want to focus on how they bring out the best in each other. Or how they challenge each other. Or how they support each other. Etc., etc.

We can’t just rely on our “spicy” descriptions or trendy tropes to carry the work of the story. No matter our (sub-)subgenre, tropes, or other elements, we still have to show the relationship function and grow to make readers believe, and that’s how we’ll meet their expectations for our romance story. *smile*

Have you struggled with knowing how to meet reader expectations? Or even understanding what those expectations are? Do you have other advice to add? Do you have any other thoughts or questions about this topic? (My WHW posts are limited in word count, but I’m happy to go deeper here if anyone wants more info!)