The Vampire Novel I'll Never Write (And Why That's Okay)

Every fiction writing coach has heard some version of this confession: "I set out to write one thing, and it became something entirely different." For writers navigating genre fiction writing, this transformation can feel like failure. You wanted to write a romance. You ended up with grief. You aimed for vampire thrills and landed somewhere between literary meditation and mystery. But what if genre drift isn't a bug in your creative writing process, it's a feature?

The Siren Call of Genre Fiction

There's something timeless about romance novels. The form feels repeatable in the best way. Romance has all those touchpoints you can get really creative within—the meet cute, the first kiss, all those different moments where you can stretch and play. 

Working with these familiar beats taps into something valuable: constraints. Romance novel structure gives you a framework, and applying constraints to yourself and then being creative within those constraints unlocks a more surprising form of creativity than going into something saying there's no rules and doing whatever you want.

That's why attempting a vampire felt right. The appeal was in the framework itself. But about a hundred pages in, something shifted. The manuscript started turning into a grief novel, then morphed into a mystery novel. Sticking to the romance form for the length of a novel proved impossible.

Here's the thing: being so austere with genre conventions is difficult, whether it's romance, vampire novels, or any genre fiction that comes with built-in expectations. This is the paradox of writing with constraints—they can unlock creativity, but they can also reveal when your story wants to break free. When you understand the touchpoints (the moments readers expect and crave) you can play within and against them. But your story might have other ideas.

When Your Genre Goes Rogue

Consider this confession: being a failed vampire novelist without ever trying to write one or even reading them. Yet somehow, the wish for one lives there anyway. It's that same pull toward popular fiction that never quite lands where intended.

So what happens when genre conventions become less like guardrails and more like suggestions? The best romance novels and vampire novels are probably the ones that do something interesting with genre conventions. Take Beach Read by Emily Henry—an incredible romance novel that plays with the conventions of romance itself. One romance writer living across the street from a brooding literary male. There's a romance going on between the woman who writes romance and the brooding literary male, and in a way, between the genres themselves.

This is why fiction exists in the world. Those two people would never meet and be cute in real life. Never. But on the page, within the constraints and against them simultaneously, magic happens.

This tension between honoring genre and breaking its rules is where novel writing guidance becomes valuable. Not because someone dictates which genre box to check, but because they help you recognize what your story is actually trying to become.

The Twenty-Five Thousand Word Threshold

Sometimes you're working on something that's still figuring itself out. There are about 25,000 words of a novel draft sitting there—enough to know it's real, not enough to know what it is yet.

The possibilities are endless. It could end up being a vampire novel. Who knows. There's a difference between working on something new and revising something existing. Both matter, but the energy of creation versus refinement lives in completely different parts of the brain. And right now, manifesting open-endedness (maybe even manifesting that vampire novel) feels like the right approach.

When Projects Find Their Way

Here's some encouragement: working on long projects can pay off. Brad Listi, before he published his most recent novel, talked about writing the novel for maybe ten years on his podcast. Every guest would come on and they'd be chatting, and at some point the guest would be like, so how's your novel going? And he'd be like, oh Christ. He'd have to talk about his project, which was in project purgatory for a very long time.

The book is titled Be Brief and Tell Them Everything. It came out and it was really sweet and brief and beautiful, nothing like the ten years of its creation might lead you to expect. So yes, working on long projects for a long time can pay off.

Making Peace with Genre

Here's what any experienced fiction writing coach will tell you: the stories that stay with readers are often the ones that understand genre conventions deeply enough to both honor and transcend them. The vampire novel you'll never write? Maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is learning to trust when your story wants to drift, and having the craft to let it drift well.

Whether your manuscript keeps shape-shifting between genres or you're wrestling with how to honor reader expectations while staying true to your vision, remember this: some of the most compelling fiction lives in the spaces between categories. Your romance-turned-grief-novel isn't broken. It might just be telling you what it needs to become.

At Hewes House, we work with writers at every stage of this journey—from the first 25,000 words that could become anything, to the revision that finally finds the form. Because your story matters, wherever it ends up living on the shelf.