First, a little bit of background:
I'm trying to get to grips with the basics of storytelling - how to tell a plain and simple story without all the fancy whistles and bells of quirky innovation or revolutionary originality. A big part of this is about understanding and satisfying reader expectations, and a big part of that is tropes.
When working on the outline for my current WIP I got the idea to look up what tropes I'm using in the story to see what they're based on - how they function and what expectations they bring. I'm not sure I learned all that much of what I hoped to, but I had a lot of fun, which is cool too.
What I did find is I could roughly describe the events of my story as a list of tropes. This really shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it did, and I can't help but find it a little bit fascinating.
As a bit of fun, I'm sharing the list of tropes that sum up the main plot of my the first short story of my current WIP, and I'd like to invite everyone else to do the same.
Trope-List - Last Fight Of A Fading Star:
(I got the trope names from tvtropes.org and for the most part they're self explanatory.)
- The Lost Lenore (the protagonists love-interest is dead).
- Throwing the Fight / Fixing the Game
- Honor Before Reason
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated
There are plenty more, and I could probably go on for days trying to determine all of them, but these are the main ones as I see it at the moment.
It'd be cool to see what tropes you guys are using, and to try and puzzle out what your stories are about.
I'm trying to get to grips with the basics of storytelling - how to tell a plain and simple story without all the fancy whistles and bells of quirky innovation or revolutionary originality. A big part of this is about understanding and satisfying reader expectations, and a big part of that is tropes.
When working on the outline for my current WIP I got the idea to look up what tropes I'm using in the story to see what they're based on - how they function and what expectations they bring. I'm not sure I learned all that much of what I hoped to, but I had a lot of fun, which is cool too.
What I did find is I could roughly describe the events of my story as a list of tropes. This really shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it did, and I can't help but find it a little bit fascinating.
As a bit of fun, I'm sharing the list of tropes that sum up the main plot of my the first short story of my current WIP, and I'd like to invite everyone else to do the same.
Trope-List - Last Fight Of A Fading Star:
(I got the trope names from tvtropes.org and for the most part they're self explanatory.)
- The Lost Lenore (the protagonists love-interest is dead).
- Throwing the Fight / Fixing the Game
- Honor Before Reason
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated
There are plenty more, and I could probably go on for days trying to determine all of them, but these are the main ones as I see it at the moment.
It'd be cool to see what tropes you guys are using, and to try and puzzle out what your stories are about.