• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

Your Story As A List Of Tropes

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
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.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
Oooh, ooh, I do this all the time!

A rough summary of Winter's Queen in tropes:

All Hallows' Eve
The Fair Folk
Abduction Equals Love (at least in the villain's eyes!)
Land of Faerie
And Now You Must Marry Me
Overprotective Dad / Bash Brothers
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!
Race Against the Clock
Altar the Speed
Sanity Slippage
Eye Scream
The Great Escape (complete with Sleeping Dummy and Dressing as the Enemy)
Laser-Guided Karma
Save the (Anti-)Villain
I Owe You My Life

I could go on and on with what tropes match each character, too. That would be a looong post. :D
 

Rkcapps

Sage
This sounds fun! Holy cow that's a long list! I could procrastinate for hours and have a ball! I'll be back! lol! Isn't that a trope phrase?!
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
Oooh, ooh, I do this all the time!

A rough summary of Winter's Queen in tropes:

[...]

I could go on and on with what tropes match each character, too. That would be a looong post. :D

That's a big list. I have a hunch on what Winter's Queen is about from your posts on the forums, and it's really cool to see that it quite matches the list of tropes you've put together. I may have to keep doing this for my other stories too. :)
 
Is anyone ready for this?!

Tropes List for most of my books:
Winged Humanoid [loads and loads and loads]
Cute Kitten/Cats are Magic
Kind-Hearted Cat Lover
Cloudcuckoolander
Power Crystal
Body To Jewel/Taken For Granite [well, crystal]
The Promise
Star Crossed Lovers
Reincarnation Romance/Past Life Memories
Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence
Disappears into Light
Amnesiac Hero [why do so many of my characters have memory issues?]
No Antagonist
Beyond Good and Evil/Blue and Orange Morality
Break the Cutie [that happens in every one of my books]
All Loving Heroine/Friend to All Living Things [almost all of my main characters are like that]
Incorruptible Pure Pureness [somewhat justified in that most of the heroes are divine beings on a mission]
Determinator
Actual Pacifist
Fantasy Planet
Wizards from Outer Space
Magic Music/All your Powers Combined
Reality Warper
The Lifestream/Sentient Cosmic Force
All Deaths Final/Any One Can Die/Everyone Dies/Reincarnation
Angelic Beauty
Bishonen/Bishojo
Ambiguous Gender/No Gender/Barbie Doll Anatomy
Exposed Extraterrestrials
Chastity Couple/Asexual
Girls Love
Boys Love
Brother-Sister Incest
Gender Bender
Bittersweet Ending/Earn Your Happy Ending
Synchronicity
Living Emotional Crutch/Devoted To You/I Own You My Life
Make A Wish
Mindlink Mates
The Power of Love
Rapunzel Hair
Tomato in the Mirror/The Ending Changes Everything/All Just A Dream [except the dreams are real]
Dying Dream
An Astral Projection, Not A Ghost
Sleep Mode Size/Dual Age Mode
Loads and Loads of Memory Gambits
Our Dragons Are Different
Our Souls/Spirits/Ghosts Are Different
Our Angels Are Different
Our Mages Are Different
Our Werebeasts Are Different

Tropes List for Hollowed:
Living Doll/Cute Ghost Girl
Creepy Dolls
Winged Humanoids [loads of them]
Angsy Surviving Twin [or so it seems]
Covered in Scars
Tangled Family Tree
Fusion Dance
 
Last edited:

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
Hello everyone!

I am sorry to say that you are not really showcasing any work of either narrative or poetry in this thread.

This is more like a game, so it does not belong in the Showcase Forum. I have decided to move this thread to Chit Chat instead, because people have played similar games there.

Have a great day!

S.W.
 
I did wonder if it needed to be moved over here.

Once I combine Hollowed with a certain Digimon fan fiction that only exists in my head, there's likely going to be loads more tropes.

I feel, though, that calling, labeling, and categorizing everything as 'tropes' kind of takes the fun out of life. Humans are over dependent on labels and names. A name is not a thing. A tree is not a tree; they are simply called that.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
That's a whole lot of tropes TCE. The main list is a bit long to get a full overview of, but I guess it's more than one story as well.

For Hollowed I'm getting a pretty good idea of the concept/setting/background, but I don't quite get a feel for the plot/events, or is that not included?

You've definitely got a point about labelling and categorising things. It's the kind of stuff that comes up now and then here on the forums in other threads.

I can see how it can be a little disheartening to reduce a story you've created to a short list of pre-defined objects, but at the same time, they're just names and labels. It's the jam that matters, not the label on the jar, but it's really helpful if the label is correct. :)
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
A rough summary of Winter's Queen in tropes:

All Hallows' Eve
The Fair Folk
The Evil Prince / Prince Charmless
Abduction Equals Love (at least in the villain's eyes!)
Land of Faerie
And Now You Must Marry Me
Overprotective Dad / Bash Brothers
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!
Race Against the Clock
Altar the Speed
Sanity Slippage
Eye Scream
The Great Escape (complete with Sleeping Dummy and Dressing as the Enemy)
Laser-Guided Karma
Save the (Anti-)Villain
I Owe You My Life

Edited to include the villain. How could I forget him? :D
 
Well, I'm a bit notorious in that in my books, barely anything happens from a summary perspective [in other words, they're more interesting than they look], but when things do happen [usually with a plot twist of some kind], the typical response is 'Wait, what?! How did I miss that?! *goes back and rereads everything* Oh, that makes sense now. What a crazy twist."

Hollowed is even more low-key than usual in that technically only four things happen:
1) The two main characters arrive at the village and settle in
2) The scarred wizard meets his mothers and something is revealed
3) The Doll Maker shows up and makes things even more complicated, and more things are revealed
4) The ending, with a twist

So to put the plot/setting into Tropes in order would be something like:
Opening Bait and Switch
Arcadia
Family Secret
Dark and Troubled Past
What is this thing you call 'Life'?
What is this thing you call 'Love'?
You're Not Alone
Love Triangle Deconstruction
Your Days Are Numbered/Secretly Dying
Act of True Love/Disappears into Light
 
Last edited:
Hmmmm...

Listing all the tropes in any book would probably take forever, but here we go with some major ones:

World of Action Girls (fits because the characters are almost all female and are almost all badasses; none of the male characters fight.)
Chaotic Neutral (my MC)
Dark and Troubled Past (my MC)
My MC is not quite a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but not exactly a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk either.
Deadpan Snarker (Leslie, my MC, probably a lot of other people)
The Plague (I have one)
Scavenger World (also Lost Technology)
Crapsack World (my setting)
Wretched Hive (my setting more specifically)
Big Brother is Watching
Cloudcuckoolander (MC's roommate who accidentally ends up her loyal sidekick)
Our Werebeasts are Different (^above character turns into an annoying dog)
Our Zombies are Different
My villain is somewhere in between the Stepford Smiler and The Wonka. Eccentric on the outside, psycho on the inside.
Above Good and Evil might be my villain, or she may just have Blue and Orange Morality.
Gemstone Assault/Crystal Weapon/Glass Weapon (magic manifests as crystalline/like diamond, and is occasionally used to kill people)

I'm tired, but those are some.
 
My curent projects ;

Yet unnamed sci fi ;
- Cool starship
- The Everyman ( Multiple characters)
- Starfish Aliens
- Eart is one country in the future (I'm not sure how Tv tropes call this)
- Negative Space Wedgie
- Laser beams
- The ace/ Master Swordsman / Lady of war
- eldritch abomination

Not finished high fantasy I'm planing to finish - Rat hole ;

- Playing with Fire
- Rat monsters
- Sexy (male ) pirates/pirates are sex gods ( I think this is a trope)
- Dude beaths things with a huge hammer
- Selkies and Wereseals
- Angels, Devils and Squid
- Eldritch abomination
- Our Werewolves Are Different
- Mystery Cult/ Religion of Evil / Virgin Sacrifice
- Saintly Church
- Church Militant - in generick, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, dwarfish flavours
- Mad Scientist
- Average dude with goddess girlfrend / plot twist
- Plague doctor - in good, evil , generick and very evil flavours
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
Nice going. Thanks for your contributions everyone. I find it's kind of fun to try and imagine the stories based on the hints from the tropes. Somehow it feels like it helps me grasp some of the concepts of storytelling I've been struggling with.

These are the plot tropes for the second short story in the series I'm outlining at the moment:

Last Fight in Tin-Jian
Nothing is the same anymore.
What were you thinking?
Fugitive Arc (this one will continue for the next several stories involving this character)
Captured on purpose
Balcony escape
Chase scene
Train escape

@TCE: I'm thinking Hollowed seems like it's set up to be built on a very dark foundation, but I get the impression it's going to come to a good end. It's probably not a happily ever after end, but an end with closure none the less.

EDIT: I hope you don't mind me trying to analyze your story. It'd be interesting to hear if it's close though. :)
 
Last edited:
^It's surprisingly not as dark as it sounds, although books don't usually open with the main character dying. Things only hit the lower end of the 'darkness scale' at the climax when various things are fully revealed.
I don't mind at all. I might eventually post it on this site once I get things together.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
One more down. Here's the trope list for part three:

Betrayal In The Jungle
Obstructive Bureaucrat
Burger Fool
Gang Bangers
Wild Wilderness
False Friend
Shape Shifting
Big Heroic Run
Fight Scene
A quiet moment
 
@Svrtnsse:

It seems yours aren't mere lists, but actually a more-or-less chronological outline for the stories. So...outlining via trope?
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
@Svrtnsse:

It seems yours aren't mere lists, but actually a more-or-less chronological outline for the stories. So...outlining via trope?

Well, sort of, except the other way around. I do the outline first, and then I figure out what tropes best fit the outline. They're listed in chronological order though, so they sort of serve as a simplified outline of the story.

I'm not sure what the exact benefit of doing it like this is, but I have a hunch it's good. I think it may help me get to grips better with the more abstract part of designing the story.
 
It strikes me that this could be very useful for maintaining focus when you are writing various parts of the story. First I must establish this trope, now I must establish this trope, now this trope. And although you could overlap these, what comes to the foreground and what recedes. Dunno, I'll have to give it a shot sometime.

Well, sort of, except the other way around. I do the outline first, and then I figure out what tropes best fit the outline. They're listed in chronological order though, so they sort of serve as a simplified outline of the story.

I'm not sure what the exact benefit of doing it like this is, but I have a hunch it's good. I think it may help me get to grips better with the more abstract part of designing the story.
 
Top