How far is taking liberties with your premise acceptable

TotallyHuman

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The title doesn't convey what I wanted to discuss well.
Here's a somewhat extreme example: you want to start a bg romantic comedy fantasy, and your title and your description and your tags are all indicative of this.
Halfway through the story though, you suddenly feel like your story is outgrowing your original intentions (and that's a large story, so your half-way is, say, 100.000 words, 4 months and 3000+ readers in) and you want to change the way its going to something very different. Something like, for example, a bl tragedy/drama and the fantasy is actually just very advanced technology that's been forgotten.
End of example.
Now, let's analyse the problem through this example. While it's ultimately your story and only you have the final say on where it's going, you also have amassed a considerably large following (in example's case it's 3000+ readers) and prior to your sudden decision there was no indication of you changing your original intention and from the initial chapters and the premise of the story that could be gleamed from your title and tags and description, there was also no indication of any following developments. The readers who follow your story do so while having strong expectations of what your story is going to be and they have already invested a considerable amount of time and emotions into what you wrote. Is it fair for you to just change what you wrote despite it?
I guess, dropping the extreme example, I wanted to discuss how far from the original expectationsset in your story you can deviate while not facing such a dillema.
Personally, there were too many times when a story I read ended up veering off into territories that were completely off of what was initially implicitly promised to me, after a large number of chapters. That did not feel nice even when I wasn't that invested in stories, so I decided to set up those expectations from the beginning and not move too much outside the range with my stories.
Of course, the absolutely ridiculous mythical people who probably aren't even real and who plan out their entire stories from the start don't have to face this problem but we mortals probably should consider this.
How do you feel about this question?
 

SailusGebel

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Yes, it is fair. You can do whatever you want with your story. BUT, don't expect that readers will agree with you. Also, if it's not an extreme change, you can always adjust the synopsis and tags. No rules are stating that you can't do this.
 
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Is it fair for you to just change what you wrote despite it?
No. It's extreemly selfish. Can you do it? Yes, but you'd have essentially catfished all your audience.
I'd say wrap up the current story, and then start the transition (preferably under a different or subsequent name)
 

LostLibrarian

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Your tags, synopsis, genres, title, etc are a promise to your reader. Changing a story midway will break that promise so you might get a lot of backlash depending on how you do it. Communicating or "easing in" should be used to minimize the backlash. But yeah, if you break your promise, 1stars and a big user-drop might follow. After all, readers invested their time based on the promise...

That said, it's your novel and it isn't unheard of. Even in the world of professionals. You can see that a lot with manga who often switch between action and comedy or mistery and action if they don't get the traction they want. There are also some stories, who intentionally break the promise for shock value or development. So it isn't anything new...


That said, as long as you can, I would try to stay close to your initial idea and work with that. Even if you switch up your ideas later, your new readers will read the tags and find a different story at the beginning, most likely even dropping it...

I would argue, that it's always good to at least now the rough ending of your story. Not the details or all the events, not even all the characters, but the rough theme you want to explore. With that, at least your genre should stay the same, even if the story and ending change big time...
 

Biggest-Kusa-Out-There

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Yes, write a wholesome romance of a socially inept man who finds the perfect woman. After overcoming his anxieties, add a futa stealing your mc's wife mid story. Your readers will love it. Have the wife get pregnant with the futa, who has a bigger tool than the mc your audience projects into. Then force the mc to raise the kids while the wife and the futa go on vacations and live happily while torturing your mc, and by extention the readers.
 

SailusGebel

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Yes, write a wholesome romance of a socially inept man who finds the perfect woman. After overcoming his anxieties, add a futa stealing your mc's wife mid story. Your readers will love it. Have the wife get pregnant with the futa, who has a bigger tool than the mc your audience projects into. Then force the mc to raise the kids while the wife and the futa go on vacations and live happily while torturing your mc, and by extention the readers.
Ah, I've read a hentai manga with futa stealing a girlfriend of mc. Actually, It wasn't that bad, but not as good as you describe futas.
 

Ddraig

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The title doesn't convey what I wanted to discuss well.
Here's a somewhat extreme example: you want to start a bg romantic comedy fantasy, and your title and your description and your tags are all indicative of this.
Halfway through the story though, you suddenly feel like your story is outgrowing your original intentions (and that's a large story, so your half-way is, say, 100.000 words, 4 months and 3000+ readers in) and you want to change the way its going to something very different. Something like, for example, a bl tragedy/drama and the fantasy is actually just very advanced technology that's been forgotten.
End of example.
Now, let's analyse the problem through this example. While it's ultimately your story and only you have the final say on where it's going, you also have amassed a considerably large following (in example's case it's 3000+ readers) and prior to your sudden decision there was no indication of you changing your original intention and from the initial chapters and the premise of the story that could be gleamed from your title and tags and description, there was also no indication of any following developments. The readers who follow your story do so while having strong expectations of what your story is going to be and they have already invested a considerable amount of time and emotions into what you wrote. Is it fair for you to just change what you wrote despite it?
I guess, dropping the extreme example, I wanted to discuss how far from the original expectationsset in your story you can deviate while not facing such a dillema.
Personally, there were too many times when a story I read ended up veering off into territories that were completely off of what was initially implicitly promised to me, after a large number of chapters. That did not feel nice even when I wasn't that invested in stories, so I decided to set up those expectations from the beginning and not move too much outside the range with my stories.
Of course, the absolutely ridiculous mythical people who probably aren't even real and who plan out their entire stories from the start don't have to face this problem but we mortals probably should consider this.
How do you feel about this question?
As a reader I am okay with a story transitioning to a new set of tags assuming the progression towards that is natural, obvious and doesnt involve genres/tags I probably dont want to read at all if it was tagged as so (NTR for example; or even a tragedy doing a full 180 into comedy). A lot of other readers would not want to read BL or GL or even tragedy at all. Here is the thing though, even assuming none of your changes break the current tags that hard, it is unlikely for it to not feel jarring if it wasnt something planned for in advance.

Usually the ones I have seen do well, atleast amongst the tl'd novels have a genuinely good plot going for them. They dont completely change the tags (only a minor shift) and it feels natural as it occurs due to the overall story plot advancing into some real juicy stuff.

Then there are works like Railgun which go through ebb and flow of SOL and Action so yeah that's a thing too.

Also, if your story is anywhere near the end, just dont do this. Stick the landing and just like dont fuck it up. Shitty endings are the ones that leave a long term impression with the fans and it will be the first thing everyone will bring up when discussing that work.

So uh, based on your question, it is unlikely you have planned for it, so well, I would say conclude the current work and write a sequel / spinoff / shared universe to it if the change is pretty drastic. If it just expanding the scope of your series, eh idk, try not to fuck it up and spread that bombshell across a volume or two I guess?
 

FallingLeaf

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Yes, write a wholesome romance of a socially inept man who finds the perfect woman. After overcoming his anxieties, add a futa stealing your mc's wife mid story. Your readers will love it. Have the wife get pregnant with the futa, who has a bigger tool than the mc your audience projects into. Then force the mc to raise the kids while the wife and the futa go on vacations and live happily while torturing your mc, and by extention the readers.
Have we read the same stories? Aside from the futa part, the sudden dramatic shift from light hearted comedy to emotional and physical torture porn of the main character seems like a close match for some of the crap I had the misfortune of reading before dropping it.

That aside, it seems there are some stories that have one thing in mind before suddenly dramatically shifting gears, like the first poster’s mention of shutting down the fantasy and forcing everything to be a tragedy. Extra demerit points if it involves killing one or more major characters, including the main character, whether literally killing them or just deleting their personality and replacing it with one that’s the polar opposite of who they were, like a kind humanitarian suddenly getting permanently brainwashed and is now a sadistic genocidal maniac
 

Ilikewaterkusa

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The title doesn't convey what I wanted to discuss well.
Here's a somewhat extreme example: you want to start a bg romantic comedy fantasy, and your title and your description and your tags are all indicative of this.
Halfway through the story though, you suddenly feel like your story is outgrowing your original intentions (and that's a large story, so your half-way is, say, 100.000 words, 4 months and 3000+ readers in) and you want to change the way its going to something very different. Something like, for example, a bl tragedy/drama and the fantasy is actually just very advanced technology that's been forgotten.
End of example.
Now, let's analyse the problem through this example. While it's ultimately your story and only you have the final say on where it's going, you also have amassed a considerably large following (in example's case it's 3000+ readers) and prior to your sudden decision there was no indication of you changing your original intention and from the initial chapters and the premise of the story that could be gleamed from your title and tags and description, there was also no indication of any following developments. The readers who follow your story do so while having strong expectations of what your story is going to be and they have already invested a considerable amount of time and emotions into what you wrote. Is it fair for you to just change what you wrote despite it?
I guess, dropping the extreme example, I wanted to discuss how far from the original expectationsset in your story you can deviate while not facing such a dillema.
Personally, there were too many times when a story I read ended up veering off into territories that were completely off of what was initially implicitly promised to me, after a large number of chapters. That did not feel nice even when I wasn't that invested in stories, so I decided to set up those expectations from the beginning and not move too much outside the range with my stories.
Of course, the absolutely ridiculous mythical people who probably aren't even real and who plan out their entire stories from the start don't have to face this problem but we mortals probably should consider this.
How do you feel about this question?
Just end the season, and have the unfaithful elements in the next season
 

Mr.Grey-Cat

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it happens, and honestly, as long as it's not a very unnatural and sudden change, it should be acceptable, but of course, there should be a limit to what changes, for example, the mc, the plot, the final objective, and stuff like that. don't just suddenly change the mc, or the end goal to a very weird angle leaving all the audience screaming Whaaat ? or anything like that. but just try to deviate slowly without changing the fundamental of the story.

like yeah, setting and place can always be changed, characters and personality too, but when done too fast it just become unnatural, so be carful og that.

Oh, and try looking into such examples where big change happens, I am sure it will give you a good idea about how far you should or shouldn't go.

examples:

Darlifra: In this anime, they just had to wait till the final episodes before making a What The Fuck sudden change.

Sword Art Online:
where do I even start about the sudden shifts in this novel.

Kumo Desu Ga Nani KA: they just had to fuck the genre. a big example of What The Fuck I am Reading Moment. heck, even the author had the same question.
 

K5Rakitan

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Do what you want. If people love your characters enough, they won't care if the story goes in a different direction. They just want to see what happens to the characters.
 

Cipiteca396

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I guess, dropping the extreme example, I wanted to discuss how far from the original expectationsset in your story you can deviate while not facing such a dillema.
The thing is, you're most likely releasing a story before it's complete. If you decide you don't like something you wrote, nobody can compel you to write the story they want. It's your story. You can do whatever you want, and if people don't like it, they can write their own. You didn't promise anything, that's a false expectation on the readers part. Unless you did, in which case that's a problem outside the story, lol.

Genres and tags are a cliché, general ideas we use to help people understand our story, so they won't be a perfect "promise" of what the story actually contains. Everyone who reads your story will be disappointed. So if you need to add or remove tags to more clearly convey your intent, that's fine.

It is possible to write a dumb story. But it's also possible to write an amazing story that defied it's readers expectations. The first thing I thought of reading your example was Madoka Magica. At this point, that example is more of a meme than a perfect representation of what you're saying, though.
Kumo Desu Ga Nani KA: they just had to fuck the genre. a big example of What The Fuck I am Reading Moment. heck, even the author had the same question.
Could you clarify? I haven't watched the anime, but everything in the Web Novel version seemed to roughly follow through on itself.
 

Mr.Grey-Cat

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Could you clarify? I haven't watched the anime, but everything in the Web Novel version seemed to roughly follow through on itself.
Well yeah, All the events in the novel seemed natural and logical, it's just that some sudden appearances were just that Shocking, especially in the LN. On the other hand, the anime did a failure in portraying all that mystery and surprise.

Making a big contrast between the good pace of the novel, and the weird anime pacing. Though overall, they were both good.
 

SakeVision

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humans are complex creatures. a lot of them have developed their cranium enough to enjoy works of various genres, as long as plot and characters are good. I wouldn't worry about changing genre losing you a lot of valuable followers, it might however antagonise some half hearted fans who didn't really care about your story until that point.
Yes, write a wholesome romance of a socially inept man who finds the perfect woman. After overcoming his anxieties, add a futa stealing your mc's wife mid story. Your readers will love it. Have the wife get pregnant with the futa, who has a bigger tool than the mc your audience projects into. Then force the mc to raise the kids while the wife and the futa go on vacations and live happily while torturing your mc, and by extention the readers.

I can already imagine all the people who self insert into a socially inept man get mad, and all the people who self insert into the futa form a cult following

smh my head, all socially inept men should just become futas, that way they won't have to worry about a futa stealing their girl
 
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