Using tropes to make ideas for a story.

[Devora]

I'm a Troper. I go onto tvtropes.org quite often, and sometimes i find tropes where i think "i wanna write a story using that." To me, tropes aren't a terrible curse against writers. I find that you can use to make a good story, if utilized in a believeable way.

For Example:

Main/Dating Catwoman - Television Tropes & Idioms

I've thought about writing a story using this trope, both as a legit story and a challenge. I find it to bring good challenges to character development.

What do you think about the use of intentional use of tropes in a story?

 

[Svrtnsse]

You should definitely check out this thread: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/challenges/10016-jim-butcher-horrible-idea-challenge.html

It's not exactly the same thing, but it's along the same lines.

On that note, I'm all for using tropes of different kinds. I don't actively pursue it, but I'm sure that even without my knowledge there are several tropes that could be identified in my story. I don't see using tropes as a bad thing as such, with the amount of different tropes there are, you're probably hard pressed to write a story that doesn't contain any.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Like a lot of things in fiction, I often use tropes as targets. For instance, I have a bad habit of writing female characters who fit way too well into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, so I self-parodied in "In the Cosmic Waiting Room"--all Manic Pixie Dream Girls are actually the same girl, and she's getting sick of it. (I think whether tropes should be avoided or embraced depends on what sort of tropes they are--for instance, Magic and Powers is a good index for finding things to base a story around, and the Gender Dynamics index is good for finding stupid things you haven't even realized you've been doing and learning to stop doing them.)

 

[ChristopherFox]

Tropes are simply another form of archetypes, which we all use in stories. They're a great tool as long as you're being original in their use. We're never going to invent something outright, storytelling is too ancient an art form. So by all means use and tweak those tropes. Not all of them are right for every audience, but it's your job as a writer to determine which ones work for yours.

 

[Mythopoet]

Tropes are just common characteristics of a genre. They are one of the ways that readers can tell genres apart. They are good things.

 

[Guru Coyote]

Tropes as idea-seeds? Oh yes baby.
Sometimes, just trying to come up with an original way to write a story around a trope is the challenge you need.

Another very useful trick: Trope 180. What's that? Well, take a trope, and turn it around by 180°.
(I'm still pondering how to do "the cat saves you" in a meaningful way.)

But be careful.... trying to avoid tropes and be original got us sparkly vampires.

 

[Devora]

Another very useful trick: Trope 180. What's that? Well, take a trope, and turn it around by 180°.
(I'm still pondering how to do "the cat saves you" in a meaningful way)

Isn't that a Subverted Trope?

 

[Feo Takahari]

Isn't that a Subverted Trope?

Subverted, inverted, or averted. Or sometimes deconstructed. (And sometimes exaggerating a trope is enough to effectively invert it.)

That right there is why you can't write a story without tropes--if you somehow wrote one that didn't use all the things that are listed as tropes, people would just say you averted the tropes. (It's at least theoretically possible to write a story that doesn't take notice of tropes, but I do think authors tend to fall into patterns without realizing it--is it really plausible that almost every author, when writing about one dog and one cat, decided on his own "I'll make the dog male and the cat female"?)

 

[Guru Coyote]

I've just spent an evening on tvtropes.org researching "princess" and "dragon."
I can tell you, the tangents... more than a few ideas came to me, ones I wouldn't have thought of before.