Tropes—when you're talking about movies or novels—are common
themes, plot elements, or literary devices, so popular they've often become
cliché. Some people hate them. Some editors will throw your manuscript in
the trash the moment they see a trope they're tired of. Others will reject it because it doesn't follow a popular pattern. People like Terry Pratchett make an art of
purposely employing too many tropes, to hilarious effect. The thing is, clichés become clichés for a
reason: we, as a people, LOVE certain
story elements, and don't mind if we see them over and over again. Entire genres are built on well established
tropes that readers not only tolerate, but expect.
My opinion: be aware
of the tropes of your genre, then go ahead and use the ones you like, the ones
that serve your story, but play around with them. Make them your own. Mix them up.
It's true that, when you boil everything down, there aren't a whole lot
of truly unique stories. It's the way
you tell it that makes it unique.
I'll be featuring individual devices and plot elements here
in my Literature Tropes series, but if you want to get lost for an hour or two,
visit tvtropes.org,
where you'll discover tropes with creative names, like these, common in science
fiction and fantasy:
Dark
Lord on Life Support (A Bad Guy who's been wounded—often by the Hero—and
needs a machine or a host body to survive.
Think Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort, Stargate's
Goa'uld.)
E.T Gave Us
Wi-Fi (Where some or all of our technology actually came from aliens
somehow. Useful for explaining why a
human starship pilot, for example, can board an alien vessel and somehow figure
out in two minutes how to control the ship.)
Clap
Your Hands if You Believe (where the belief in something, such as magic, is
what actually makes things happen. Think
Tinkerbell, or go back even further, to the Bible, where Simon Peter can walk on
water until he starts to doubt.)
Conveniently
an Orphan. (Let's be honest: if
someone up and answers the Call of Adventure, while leaving behind all family
responsibility, he can come off as selfish, irresponsible, and unlikable. The solution:
make him an orphan, so he has no family to leave behind. Bilbo Baggins and many other heroes of fairy
tales and fantasy fit this bill.)
Token Heroic
Orc (Where a member of a scary enemy
species joins the—mostly human—good guys.
Think Worf and Seven of Nine on Star
Trek, Angel on Buffy.)
Tropes are lame. They make me choke when I am watching a movie or reading a book. I wonder what they call that one where one character is hanging off the edge of a cliff and the other character reaches out and says, "Give me your hand!"
ReplyDeleteI also get annoyed at the one where there always has to be some little token object that one character gives to another. Like for example the cookie necklace in Wreck-it Ralph. They don't do this so much in books, but in Movies and television it is all visual and so the writers are stuck in this rut.
- Dave Scott