Tropes to avoid

[Mad Swede]

So are you saying that you avoid writing about tropes by creating characters and stories that feel more true to life?

No. A trope is something like an idea, phrase, or image that is often used in a particular type of art or literature. They're often used by literary critics and literary analysts as tools to describe how an author writes. Some authors deliberately set out to use (invoke) or subvert literary tropes. I don't. I don't even think about what tropes I may be using in my work. I'm sure there are examples of many literary tropes in my stories - but I've never bothered to work out what they are or how I use them. I just write stories, and I focus on characters.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yeah, looking back on it in my books, I had a "prince" in a tower being rescued by a woman, but it wasn't an intentional inversion of the classic, it just happened that way.

 

[Finchbearer]

Yeah, looking back on it in my books, I had a "prince" in a tower being rescued by a woman, but it wasn't an intentional inversion of the classic, it just happened that way.

A dude in distress.

 

[pmmg]

Yeah, looking back on it in my books, I had a "prince" in a tower being rescued by a woman, but it wasn't an intentional inversion of the classic, it just happened that way.

Come to think of it, so did I. Though, I don't think it would read as a reversal of a trope.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

In that sort of setup, it's a reversal of gender roles, which is something many people focus on with such things. Again, not something I think about. It really came about because at one point when developing the cultures, I decided one was a drop your prisoner in a deep hole culture, while the other was a stick them at the top of a tower culture. From there, years later, it just sorta happened.

Come to think of it, so did I. Though, I don't think it would read as a reversal of a trope.

 

[pmmg]

In mine, its kind of inadvertent. The man is fighting bad guys, and is holed up in a ruined tower. The woman has surprise, cause the baddies dont know she's there. Its not really clear if the man would have prevailed or not, but she does shoot an arrow which kind of gives him the edge. Thus, man saved by woman in a tower.

 

[Renè Williams]

The actual bad man and actual good girl or vice versa forming a meaningful relationship, or related, letting abuse happen without repercussion because reasons, two things i still think make appearance across fantasy/romance with far to high a frequency

 

[Prince of Spires]

Using tropes isn't a bad thing as such. I know there are plenty of successful authors who became successful by sticking to specific tropes while writing their novels. A lot of Romance readers for instance like seeing specific tropes used in the stories they read. As a result, authors who cater to that and write good books can become successful. It works. Doesn't mean it's the only way. Or that you have to. Just that it's a way to write.

They can also be useful to newer writers when starting writing. Story structure can be hard, and there is nothing wrong with following a Hero's Journey structure if it helps you write your book. It might even end up being a better book than if you didn't.

 

[skip.knox]

Tropes don't really exist. Or, to be more precise, tropes exist so that journalists and blog writers have an easy article to write when they're out of ideas.

Why don't tropes exist? (I'm exaggerating and simplifying, but it's easier that laying out all the nuances)

At the core of the notion is that a trope is something that so many people have seen, they've grown tired of seeing it. Implied, and sometimes stated explicitly, is that because a particular thing has been written about so often, writing another is necessarily bad.

Now all that is fine fodder for critics and commentators and their flighty kindred, but the unfortunate part comes when the individual writers takes that stuff and applies it to their own writing. Should I not write this? What if I invert it, would that be ok? And so on und so weiter.

But consider, how do I as an author know what a particular reader has read? Because if you haven't read a farm boy of destiny story before, then it isn't a trope for you. All of us, as readers, have read the very first time for any trope in existence, and for that first novel, it was not a trope. If the book was good, then it was a good story; if bad, it was a bad story. Nothing to do with tropes.

If you are trying for traditional publishing, you probably do want to know what your agent has read and would dismiss as tired and overused. Presumably the agent will know the same about publishers. But both are pretty good about letting you know up front what they do and do not want to see by way of submissions, so again "trope" isn't really worth your attention.

As for self-pub, now you're dealing with the General Population, which means there will always be thousands if not millions for whom your particular tale is new ground. And another set of thousands or millions for whom your book is hopelessly troped up and probably won't even buy it much less read it, no matter how many times you inverted the trope(s). Which is great! It means they'll judge your book by its cover and its contents.

A parting shot: saying "trope" is merely a more compact way of saying "I didn't like it."

 

[Renè Williams]

Tropes don't really exist. Or, to be more precise, tropes exist so that journalists and blog writers have an easy article to write when they're out of ideas.

Why don't tropes exist? (I'm exaggerating and simplifying, but it's easier that laying out all the nuances)

At the core of the notion is that a trope is something that so many people have seen, they've grown tired of seeing it. Implied, and sometimes stated explicitly, is that because a particular thing has been written about so often, writing another is necessarily bad.

Now all that is fine fodder for critics and commentators and their flighty kindred, but the unfortunate part comes when the individual writers takes that stuff and applies it to their own writing. Should I not write this? What if I invert it, would that be ok? And so on und so weiter.

But consider, how do I as an author know what a particular reader has read? Because if you haven't read a farm boy of destiny story before, then it isn't a trope for you. All of us, as readers, have read the very first time for any trope in existence, and for that first novel, it was not a trope. If the book was good, then it was a good story; if bad, it was a bad story. Nothing to do with tropes.

If you are trying for traditional publishing, you probably do want to know what your agent has read and would dismiss as tired and overused. Presumably the agent will know the same about publishers. But both are pretty good about letting you know up front what they do and do not want to see by way of submissions, so again "trope" isn't really worth your attention.

As for self-pub, now you're dealing with the General Population, which means there will always be thousands if not millions for whom your particular tale is new ground. And another set of thousands or millions for whom your book is hopelessly troped up and probably won't even buy it much less read it, no matter how many times you inverted the trope(s). Which is great! It means they'll judge your book by its cover and its contents.

A parting shot: saying "trope" is merely a more compact way of saying "I didn't like it."

I feel like if Trope was merely a way of saying "i didn't like it" then thousands of us wouldn't post on another community driven website with examples we love, from things we love. I just don't think that's fair, and neither is saying they just don't exist.

I can appreciate this whole view in context of the Consumer of the Entertainment, just because a young, new reader doesn't understand or know of the trope, doesn't mean the Writer/Creator didn't and therefore purposefully used that trope in their work. And i don't think that is fair, because it detracts from the work the Creator put into studying, watching, understanding tropes and using them, hopefully, to their advantage instead of detriment, regardless of if the reader knows or understands any of that.

To me, saying Tropes don't exist is like saying paint brush stroke techniques don't exist, because your average see-er of paintings will never know anything about them, and The Dutch Angle isn't a cinematography technique (also, it's sort of a trope in itself) because most moviegoers don't know it has a name, and music theory isn't real because for sure most people who here music don't understand it or know much of anything about it. I get alot of your points, and i don't disagree, from the perspective of say the reader, or watcher, or someone who hasn't seen or read much of any entertainment medium.

Maybe the problem is seeing cliches and tropes as the same thing? You did describe what a cliche is perfectly in your third line but that ignores what a trope is, and they aren't the same thing by their nature (Although, there are Dead Horse Tropes, which is a Tropers way of saying Cliche without sounding so pretentious as calling something a cliche).

I hope i don't come across as supernegative and I'm not saying your opinion here is wrong, just that I disagree with parts of it objectively, even if subjectively alot of it is correct in the context you present it. Some Tropes are hurtful to groups of people, some are beloved by others, so i think there's very valid reason to ask what ones to avoid without being told 'they don't exist so don't worry about it, it just means someone didn't like your work'. The Trope of the submissive housewife could be considered harmful, as an example, depending on how it's presented/used, whether any of us like that or not.

 

[Finchbearer]

I don’t think tropes are just an industry term created so that articles can be made. I think any good writer should know they matter to some extent. We are always learning and nothing is finite.

 

[skip.knox]

Not "just" for that, but it's certainly been used that way. Note that this usage is very recent.

How TV Tropes Changed The Meaning Of "Trope" – A Critical Hit!

Thanks to TV Tropes, you've probably been using the word "trope" wrong all your life. But don't be alarmed! Language is always evolving.

www.acriticalhit.com

So how did people talk about this concept in earlier generations? I mean, we humans have been writing novels for a while now.

There isn't really an antecedent. Even a word like "stereotype" doesn't really cover the same ground. Maybe that's one reason why it took off, though I would not downplay the role of the global village (i.e., Internet). I do think it's possible to dismiss the whole literature about tropes and realize it was possible to write books *before* the term was misappropriated, so it ought to be possible to pretend like that's still the case and just go write a book.

Sometimes it feels like we're saying the novelist equivalent of "I can't possibly go to the party without knowing what everyone else is wearing!"

 

[pmmg]

When I was on forums many years ago the conversation was about being cliche and using stereotypes. Tropes kind of replaced those a few years back. So thats one way the conversation changed.

 

[Renè Williams]

I mean, I agree with the above, but whether they had a name or not, what we call Tropes today did exist and were used, over and over again, in writing and art, even if they didn't have a singular word that we still use or even associate with the phenomena today. Here's an article about the same thing, except instead of calling a website out for making us misunderstand something, they seem to recognize that it's the common use of a word, not the original latin definition, that matters in most discussion about literature, tv or film. Actually, the A Critical Hit take recognizes this through admitting that Terrific and Awful once had different meanings too, but it doesn't call us wrong for using them the way we use them today, but it does seem stuck on saying everyone is using the word trope wrong, which they are not, given the common accepted meaning of the word as slang. The same article also claims that no one uses the word ironic in a way that is not olde english correct, which is just blatantly false and to me, gatekeeping language, as though slang and multiple definitions don't exist for most words...

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-use-tropes-in-writing this makes the same point without making anyone feel wrong for using a word in the same way the majority of other people do. Not to mention every major dictionary lists the way we are using it as the second definition, at least that i've ever seen in past looking around.

That's not even mentioning how many trope names are literal tropes, IE, Mad Scientist, since they're hardly ever angry, or even Chosen One, since often in those stories there is no-one doing the choosing, making them all turns of phrases, making them tropes again. It's a pretty circular argument we could have all day, but no matter what we call them, they exist, have for decades or centuries, will continue too, and will continue to be used, sometimes overused to the point of cliche, sometimes harmfully as in stereotypes, sometimes in a transformative way. EDIT: In hindsight, alot of 'trope' names are an actual trope, by the formal latin definition, at least all the ones i can think of off the top of my head, even things such as DeadHorse Trope, since no deadhorse is involved and it's a metaphor, or Damsel in Distress, which is often neither a 'young' nor unmarried woman, which is just a fun thing to think about, i think.

 

[Miles Lacey]

Lists of tropes to avoid are the opinions of the people who compile them and should be treated accordingly. Those lists do tend to amuse me because most readers buy fantasy books that almost never deviate from the tropes that are criticised.

While we can laugh at them the lists do point to a problem within the fantasy genre. Too many fantasy writers look up to Tolkien and put his writings on a pedestal. It is by the standards that he set in his works by which all fantasy writing is judged. At least, that's how it seems to me at times.

The weird thing about fantasy is that it's one of the few genres that allows a huge diversity of storylines, characters and worldbuilding but most writers default to either feudal northeast Asia or Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Reformation for their settings. The gods are modelled on those found in Scandinavian or Ancient Greek legends. The heroes are overwhelmingly white heterosexual people and come from some sort of magical, noble or warrior background. Their destiny is either to save the world or the kingdom - or to take over the kingdom.

For me, risk taking is important for a genre. If writers aren't willing to take risks the genre runs the risk of becoming stale and boring. If nothing else, those lists of troupes do serve as a useful guide about what is being thrashed to death within fantasy, provided you don't just read lists compiled by American bloggers and podcasters. Check out what they're saying in other countries as well.

 

[Mad Swede]

I wrote earlier that a trope is something like an idea, phrase, or image that is often used in a particular type of art or literature. Put another way, in its modern meaning a trope is a convention used in some form of literature or art. That doesn't make them bad, but as Miles Lacey writes, too many writers just follow the usual conventions (whatever they might be) without thinking too much about the quality of what they produce. That is especially apparent when you read some of the stuff produced by those self-published writers who claim to make a living from their writing.

To me, tropes or conventions are not directly relevant when I'm writing. For me, the aim is to write a good story and that does mean taking some risks. Those risks might be about the sort of characters I create, they might be about the setting or they might concern the sort of story I want to write. I should perhaps add that in my experience story telling varies with culture - what we here in Sweden might regard as story conventions might not be seen as such in other countries. So my stories might not be seen as conventional by an American reader.

 

[Finchbearer]

When I came up with characters for my stories, I did not consider the idea of tropes. However, I have taken some inspiration from chivalric romance for some characters and I suppose I have used those tropes to create something more modern.

It would seem though that the idea of tropes seems to spark much debate among more experienced writers such as some of you.

 

[Azul-din]

I certainly get the feeling that some of those articles are pushing an agenda, usually citing books or characters that they don’t personally like, or picking the plot apart to find holes. All good plots have holes.

I'd agree- there's nothing wrong about using a character or situation from folklore as such, only when depth of character and motivation are lacking. Something I do a lot of in my writing is to pick an established ''trope'', like a witch, and ask myself: What would she be like if she were real? What would her childhood have been like? What is her relationship to her familiar and how does she seem from the familiar's point of view? What are her magical powers and where do they come from? If you can create a real, living and believable story it hardly matters, I think, where the original inspiration came from.

 

[skip.knox]

>too many writers just follow the usual conventions
Miles Lacey said much the same. In both cases it made me wonder what constitutes "too many". Is it possible for there to be exactly enough who follow the usual conventions? Or for there to be not enough? My feeling (a thing that falls well short of actual thought) is that "too many" means "I've seen it too often for my taste." More of an expression of annoyance than an actual criticism.

Somewhat related, if I consciously refer to or am inspired by something, what distinguishes between a trope and a model? Again being a bit cheeky here, maybe a trope is when you admire what I've done, while a trope is when you dislike it. Putting it yet another way, if I don't like what an author has done, I say they've copied a trope. If I like what they've done, then they've been inspired by a model.

*shrug* I'm confident all agree that above all and despite all, it comes down to good writing and poor writing.

 

[Renè Williams]

>too many writers just follow the usual conventions
Miles Lacey said much the same. In both cases it made me wonder what constitutes "too many". Is it possible for there to be exactly enough who follow the usual conventions? Or for there to be not enough? My feeling (a thing that falls well short of actual thought) is that "too many" means "I've seen it too often for my taste." More of an expression of annoyance than an actual criticism.

Somewhat related, if I consciously refer to or am inspired by something, what distinguishes between a trope and a model? Again being a bit cheeky here, maybe a trope is when you admire what I've done, while a trope is when you dislike it. Putting it yet another way, if I don't like what an author has done, I say they've copied a trope. If I like what they've done, then they've been inspired by a model.

*shrug* I'm confident all agree that above all and despite all, it comes down to good writing and poor writing.

And now I am in total understanding of your previous points and understand why you view tropes and such the way you do, there's a trope about this...A rose by any other name, right? I like these discussions because we get to see how and why other writers, who are also readers, see or do things the way they do. It also shows the fault in our languages and how things could get miscommunicated if this discussion were held elsewhere, or in a different way.