Well, imagine how you might handle the matter when telling stories: would you follow a cuddly love story with a gory serial-killer tale? (If so, then why? The answer to that might give you reasons for which your characters might do it.)
If not, then one possibility is to order the stories so that their tones flow from one to the next. For example, instead of skipping straight from cuddles to killings, you might start with a romance; move on to an emotional, personal tale; follow that with a ghost story heard from a relative; and only then move on to a serial killer.
As I suggested in the first paragraph, however, there may be situations in which mood whiplash is called for.
And finally, I think that, to some degree, there will be members of the audience who simply won't like the presence of multiple genres, or of certain genres. That said, this might also be ameliorated by the (presumed) relative brevity of each story: it's usually easier to get through a short story in a disliked genre than a long one, I daresay.
My Games & Writing
Use a Framing Device. Integrate the individual stories into an overarching narrative.
There's rarely ever a story that can be classified as an example of a singular genre. The best stories are those containing their own share of different genres and different experiences - horror, comedy and drama. Granted, they are, more often than not, a fusion of different genres, stitched together seamlessly and not as broken down as the story you've described, but there are some good examples of stories-within-a-story such as yours - The Sandman contains a chapter in which people from different universes meet up in an inn and tell each other stories of their travels. Look it up, for reference.
Edited by Millership on Sep 12th 2018 at 4:49:35 PM
Spiral out, keep going.
So the story I\'m working on has a group of people who are between teenage and college age who get snowed in at their cabin. They decide to spend their time telling stories. These stories will include personal stories, urban legends (the first story will be about a murder that occurred near the cabin), and at least one person will tell a story about their grandfather\'s time in the military. I\'m worried that people might get turned off by a story mixes multiple genres. I can easily see people getting Mood Whiplash if the story goes from a high school romance, to talking about a serial killer, which is followed by a war story. How should I go about mixing genres without alienating the audience.