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Tropes: an abundance of ideas
Aug. 1st, 2010 01:53 pmOne of the buzzwords you'll hear used in discussions of literature is trope. As the Wikipedia article notes, the word has many meanings, including the increasingly pejorative usage to mean a tired old cliché.
When used appropriately, a trope is something far more interesting: it's a kind of symbol that writers use to provide readers with an instant image of what you're trying to say. The trope can be literal, as in the case of a hero who stands in for someone you want the reader to emulate; it can also be more metaphorical, as in the case when the trope stands for something else entirely, including the literal opposite of what the words themselves represent. For example, you can call the villain of your story its hero, making it clear that you're implicitly questioning (criticizing) the concept of heroism and its inherent subjectivity. (Witness the famous saying that villains are usually the heroes of their own narratives.)
What's important is that the trope speaks directly to the reader in a manner that's more efficient than a long and intrusive infodump about what you want readers to understand about your story. To make the trope into something more than a cliché, you then need to use it effectively.
There are undoubtedly a great many Internet resources concerning tropes. (Feel free to comment on this post by providing your own list of resources.) One fun and interesting resource (thanks to Brent for sharing!) is the TV Tropes site. Here, you can find a treasure trove of tropes, categorized into various useful groups. For example:
"Character" includes obvious categories such as heroes and villains, and more interesting categories such as "always female" and "otherness".
"Plots", ranging from the familiar ("But I can't be pregnant") to the more interesting ("the Cyrano").
Genres, media, and other (including the amusingly named "British Telly"). Needless to say, I like the genre section for "speculative fiction", with topics ranging from "Absent Aliens" to "Zeroth law rebellion".
All of these are great ways to jumpstart a writer's-blocked imagination, or to ponder the pitfalls of using a particular trope before you start using it in your writing.
Of course, no list of tropes would be complete without the world-devouring, universe conquering evil overlord. And there's no better resource for idiot-proofing your plot to take over the world than the Evil Overlord, Inc. site. My favorite new year's resolutions for villains: hiring a 5-year-old as part of your command staff, and immediately rejecting any plan for which they can spot the flaws; setting all doomsday devices to go off with the timer at 20 seconds, while the hero thinks they still have 20 seconds left to decide how to disarm it; and shooting the hero before you tell him that you, no, you won't tell them all about your secret master plan.
When used appropriately, a trope is something far more interesting: it's a kind of symbol that writers use to provide readers with an instant image of what you're trying to say. The trope can be literal, as in the case of a hero who stands in for someone you want the reader to emulate; it can also be more metaphorical, as in the case when the trope stands for something else entirely, including the literal opposite of what the words themselves represent. For example, you can call the villain of your story its hero, making it clear that you're implicitly questioning (criticizing) the concept of heroism and its inherent subjectivity. (Witness the famous saying that villains are usually the heroes of their own narratives.)
What's important is that the trope speaks directly to the reader in a manner that's more efficient than a long and intrusive infodump about what you want readers to understand about your story. To make the trope into something more than a cliché, you then need to use it effectively.
There are undoubtedly a great many Internet resources concerning tropes. (Feel free to comment on this post by providing your own list of resources.) One fun and interesting resource (thanks to Brent for sharing!) is the TV Tropes site. Here, you can find a treasure trove of tropes, categorized into various useful groups. For example:
All of these are great ways to jumpstart a writer's-blocked imagination, or to ponder the pitfalls of using a particular trope before you start using it in your writing.
Of course, no list of tropes would be complete without the world-devouring, universe conquering evil overlord. And there's no better resource for idiot-proofing your plot to take over the world than the Evil Overlord, Inc. site. My favorite new year's resolutions for villains: hiring a 5-year-old as part of your command staff, and immediately rejecting any plan for which they can spot the flaws; setting all doomsday devices to go off with the timer at 20 seconds, while the hero thinks they still have 20 seconds left to decide how to disarm it; and shooting the hero before you tell him that you, no, you won't tell them all about your secret master plan.