Trope vs. What Feels Right

[designatedvictim]

(Not a post about the tiredness of using tropes - they can be a useful shorthand to get things going in a story.)

TLDR

Do we write something because we like it and it turns out that it's a trope, or do we write to tropes because they're (usually) more widely recognized and/or liked and a useful shorthand tool? How to balance it.

@ @ @ @ @

I am (slowly) publishing what is admittedly the Most Awesome Story Evar! (Note use of capitals.)

I started it a while back for myself and somewhat recently (~four months ago) decided to start posting it here.

I hadn't been visiting the site for some time prior to joining and posting. Maybe popping in every five or six months, or so, read a few stories, troll the Top Lists. That sort of thing.

Since then, I've also begun reading other stories a bit more frequently and started to notice an awful lot of... not so much a similarity, but a familiarity between specific things done in those stories and in my own.

It then dawned on me that, despite not being a writer, I managed to hit upon a disturbing number of tropes on my own without being actually aware of them.

(Don't ask me which ones, I wasn't keeping score as I recognized them, and if you hold a gun to my head, I couldn't provide a specific example, but my overall feeling now is that I kinda-sorta wrote my story in cliches. Wow! That's pretty much how I approached that element in my story - sort of thing.)

I'll freely admit that I knew going in that the overall premise of the story is the basic, widely-used 'college-aged friends have known each other for years have a few days of uninterrupted alone-time on their hands and decide to get friendlier.' (It wouldn't surprise me to learn that 'sleeping with the landlord's daughter' is also a trope - I haven't checked.)

I liked it. I enjoyed writing it (well... except that I know I'm having trouble putting down a decent, but blessedly brief, scene where the girl recounts a girls' night in bed scenario - I need to add a few thousand more words to... ahem, flesh out the scene). It has mainly flowed naturally for me to write.

But even smaller bits within the story start feeling trope-ish as I read other stories here.

It's kinda awkward to admit it.

What about the reasons how we write something in a particular way?

I wrote my story that way because I just let it spill out (I won't go into the 'How Do You Stop Editing and Tweaking Your Story,' that's for a different post) and only encountered that sense of... almost deja vu, when reading other stories, after the fact.

When it came to looking for writing tips online, I kept it to the like of 'Is it A.M., AM, or am?' 'When should I write numbers in words or numerals?' That sort of thing.

How do you reconcile the Trope vs. What Feels Right balance to your writing?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Tropes are handy short cuts. The trick is to know your own, those themes that you repeat in your own stories.

If you do that right, I like to think readers will say, "Ah, that's typical EB, I feel right at home now." Usually, in my case, there's a café with a passing observation of the waitress (my MC always knows her); often there's a mention of a gentle breeze or a band of sunlight, then undivided attention to the woman.

If you're comfortable with the place that you're writing, then your readers will be comfortable too.

 

[bumpercars]

I think tropes occur because people are similar, and we often have ideas that run parallel to other people's ideas. You don't have to write a story composed 100% of ideas that are new to the human race. Some of your ideas will be truly new, but even when most are not, the way you put them together will be yours.

So, try not to let awareness of tropes steer you. If you're enjoying writing a story, don't worry if it walks a familiar path. And, conversely, if you get an idea that runs counter to most stories, be willing to follow it wherever it leads.

 

[MrPixel]

I sometimes deal with tropes by having the characters acknowledge that what they're doing or about to do is a trope. "Gawd, Jen, can't you at least be a little original? That's such a trope!" or something like that. Not quite breaking the fourth wall, but it's my acknowledgement of using a clichéd device in a scene.

 

[alohadave]

How do you reconcile the Trope vs. What Feels Right balance to your writing?

There's nothing wrong with using tropes. Tropes exist because they are things that readers come to expect from stories.

They go back to the earliest stories we know of. Gilgamesh is 3-4k years old and it's chock full of tropes we still use today.

As you found as a reader, you began to recognize and expect tropes for a type of story. It's how you know that the story fits into a category. It's how readers know how to respond to your story.

If you want to see how many tropes are used, head over to TVTropes.com and browse through some of them.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's pretty much inevitable that you're going to touch on a bunch of tropes in a story, but being aware of them can be useful in understanding how your audience are going to react to a story. When they see a familiar trope appearing, they're going to think they know where this is going, and then you can choose whether to give them what they're expecting or to subvert that and surprise them. (Both have their place, depending on what kind of story you want to tell.)

 

[SimonDoom]

My view is you should write what you want and don't worry about whether it's a trope or not.

There are ways to take unoriginal material and make worthwhile original art from it. Shakespeare built his career on that.

 

[designatedvictim]

If you want to see how many tropes are used, head over to TVTropes.com and browse through some of them.

Oh, please... that site is such a rabbit hole! I'd be lost there for days!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

It then dawned on me that, despite not being a writer, I managed to hit upon a disturbing number of tropes on my own without being actually aware of them.

Pretty much anything is a trope. You can't avoid them. All that you can do is write something as well as you can. When you write well either of two things will happen: 1 ~ it will read naturally enough that the trope is not noticeable or at least not very noticeable as a trope, or 2 ~ the trope is played up enough that it kicks ass.

Go to the site tvtropes and search your fave movie, tv show, book, video game, etc, and see the list of dozens of tropes found in it. It is absolutely insane. You just can't avoid them.

 

[LiterallyLiterate]

If you go by Booker, there are only 7 plots to choose from, but it’s how you go about them that makes the story yours.

Enough has been said about tropes in general, but I saw your comment about fleshing out a certain scene.
I try to have a mix of quite descriptive scenes with attention to detail, but I also mix in hints to what has or maybe will happen. When I write, I have a mental image I’m trying to get down on paper, but it can get too clinical, so I have to break it up a little and let the reader use their imagination.

As for tropes I try to avoid, for my own part, is describing my characters with numbers or designated sizes, like 17cm cock or D-cup breasts, and so on. I prefer things like ‘a bit above average’, or maybe ‘full, but not huge’ and so on.

 

[AchtungNight]

I always write based on what feels right to me. Not my fault if tropes creep in.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Tropes are the Lego blocks of any story. You can't avoid them. 'Subverting a trope' is also a trope, so they've got you coming and going. Your story has to end, but 'happy ending' and 'sad ending' are tropes - as are 'ambigious ending, 'non-sequitor ending', 'cut-off ending' and 'Scooby-Doo ending' Creating a plot is more a case of knowing which tropes to use in combination to create something which is unique -as a whole-. Instead of being worried about tropes, you should learn to make them work for you.

One thing I often do is once I've identified a particular kink or topic of interest that I might be interested in writing a story about is to try and work through it 'exhaustively' - listing every varation and obvious trope and direction for that story to see if I can find inspiration for what a story about that topic could actually be.

I was thinking about this thread and having a go at this earlier during lunch - coming off a dry spell where I've done a bit of work on existing projects but not really come up with any terribly exciting new story ideas for a while.

The topic I chose to think about was Trad Wives. These ladies have been in the news a fair bit recently and as a man with a taste for 1950s style, the appeal is obvious.

The first tast is to define what exactly we're talking about. Articles about TW make it clear that it's not the same thing as just a stay at home mum (SAHM). There's an extra layer of needing absolute perfection (in home decoration, baking and especially looks). There's also the idea of posting everything on social media for validation. Obviously, my heroine, whoever she is, will likely be able to define for herself where on this spectrum she sits and may end up closer to a SAHM or may be the world's biggest YouTube star.

Next, it's worth thinking about if the heroine is a TW because they truely value the lifestyle, because it's a way of becoming famous or because they want to land a top 1% man by being the pefect wife (or something else, maybe this list isn't exhaustive but we can come back to it).

Then, I thought about how having a TW character is going to intersect with the BDSM scale of Sub or Dom. Nominally, a trad-wife would appear to need to be submissive to her husband. On the other hand, there are enough sitcoms where the SAHM rules the family with an iron fist while the poor man works himself to death as a provider (I'm thinking Margo and Jerry from the Good Life as a typical if British example). So it could go either way.

If the TW represents a return to the 1950s does it also signal a return to old-day traditional missionary sex? Or does the idea of a perfect wife imply a wife who willing to do anything in the bedroom to please (or maybe keep, as she sees it) her husband? One trope that could be used is of a woman starts by saying she will do anything in bed to keep her husband from straying only to have his demands escalate in perversion to the point where it is intolerable (whatever that perversion may be). "I'll do anything for love, but I won't do that."

A Trad Wife is a wife and on Lit that opens up a whole bunch of standard tropes - swinger, hotwife and cuckquean. Starting with cuckquean - again, if its a return to the 1950s, is the wife likely to regard her husband having an affair with his secretary as just business as usual? Or given the extent to which she's invested in wifing is she likely to think "I've worked myself to death becoming perfect for you and you still cheated?" Swinging suggests a network of similar TW engaged in the same kind of thing. Hotwifing seems to kick against the prevailing point of a perfect wife, but perhaps could indicate a release from the pressure of that or a deeper unhappiness with her situation.

It's when I return to the idea of having a social media audience, that insipration comes. Assuming she is a big SM star with a demanding fans, then she must be engaged in a constant battle to stay beautiful and relevant. I first picture her sitting in front of the mirror every morning (or before every shoot), the words "Mirror, mirror on the wall," float across my brain and I suddenly find myself thinking 'what if she has a step-daughter?'

I've now got what I call a 'spark' - the TW star who finds the audience increasingly talking about her (18yo for Lit purposes) step-daughter instead of her. I may or may not write this particular story, but rather than a clinical list of tropes, I've got an actual idea. Someone else may have already have written something similar. I don't know. And unless it was particularly popular or particularly recent, it probably doesn't matter if they have. (I'll go and have a look later) Even if there are a million different directions it can still go in, this is now 'one story' I can only really write one version of my 'Trad Wife Snow White' story whatever I decide. It'll probably end up completely different from anyone elses combination of these two ideas. At the very least it can go down on my list of possible story ideas (about 100 items long at the moment).

What I haven't done in any way is avoid tropes - 'Modern version of a classic fairytale' is a pretty popular trope in recent years. But that's not a problem. It could just mean that there's more of a market for it.

I have though answered some of my earlier questions. The TW has moved from heroine to villian and the story now pretty much demands she be a social media star and a dom (or at least a manipulative topping-from-the-bottom 'sub' - I like writing those).

If I were to write this, the next stage would be to start to answer questions about the plot. I probably wouldn't say or hint directly at the Snow White connection, at least not until the end, or else with a few subtle jokes (step-mum can call the guy SW likes 'a dwarf' - actually that suggests Prince Charming is the manufactured, pefect guy that step-mum want's SW to marry...interesting...and, again, a trope inverted is still a trope.)

 

[lovecraft68]

Tropes exist-and in every genre-for a reason. They have all long been the most common, and popular, fantasies (sticking with erotica) people have had and will continue to have.

The naughty babysitter as an example, how many stories are there like this? But people will continue to read them because it's a hot topic, and you generally can't go wrong with them providing your writing is decent and give the people what they want.

As for overuse, or being tired of them, that, like everything else, is subjective. We all have personal tropes we love, and those that make our eyes roll. Doesn't mean that as a whole there's anything wrong with any of them.

Because these topics have been so popular for so long, we're exposed to them all the time in porn and erotic stories. Most of us have watched porn and read other stories before trying our own hand at it, and often in the beginning we write something somewhat familiar to make it easier. and it tends to be something we've already ingested that we think is hot. That and there are only so many ideas to begin with. So, like others have said, using tropes is okay, but the trick is to try to put your personal stamp on it.

Another way I've come to look at it is the expression "Comfort food" or that movie you've seen many times, but for some reason keep watching it whenever you're not sure what you want to watch or just want to turn your mind off for a while and go with familiarity. That's what tropes are in my mind.

I'm currently writing a action femme fatale style story that features a very commonly used trope, but its one I've enjoyed so much over the years, I just feel like I need to take my shot at it.

 

[designatedvictim]

What I'm seeing as pretty much the concensus is that I'm overthinking things and making a mountain out of a molehill.

Tropes happen.

I'm relieved. I just hoped I wasn't coming across as too formulaic.

I'm stepping on these landmines because they're all littered too thickly about to miss them.

I always write based on what feels right to me. Not my fault if tropes creep in.

That's how I usually write it.

I wrote the first half and most of the second half, already, (I've been debating on fleshing out the later days - chapters - with some aspects I seeded in the earlier bits, but wasn't sure I'd expand upon, so the later days aren't so much shorter than the second and third days - my characters do get a bit wordy at times) but I still have bare spots of... not so much Terra Incognita, but bits of primarily connecting material that need to be done to link the existing... vignettes.

I'm glad Tropism isn't really an issue. (Or, not the issue I was building it up to be.)

I published the third chapter as smaller, fairly manageable pieces to try to avoid having 9 or more Lit-pages-worth of text in a great big dump. Posting it in smaller pieces really seems to have backfired on me, though. I'm probably just going to bite the bullet and drop the follow-on days as big-assed chapters.

"Gawd, Jen, can't you at least be a little original? That's such a trope!"

Lampshading is always an option. I suppose my issue is that I wasn't thinking in terms of tropes when I wrote the first half so wasn't consciously aware that I was doing so.

They go back to the earliest stories we know of. Gilgamesh is 3-4k years old and it's chock full of tropes we still use today.

I suppose I never thought of it in terms of 'they've been a thing since the dawn of writing.'

Pretty much anything is a trope. You can't avoid them. All that you can do is write something as well as you can. When you write well either of two things will happen: 1 ~ it will read naturally enough that the trope is not noticeable or at least not very noticeable as a trope, or 2 ~ the trope is played up enough that it kicks ass.

I don't think what I've done as 'kicking ass,' so I'll settle for hoping that the tropes aren't too noticeable.

Tropes are the Lego blocks of any story. You can't avoid them. 'Subverting a trope' is also a trope, so they've got you coming and going. Your story has to end, but 'happy ending' and 'sad ending' are tropes - as are 'ambigious ending, 'non-sequitor ending', 'cut-off ending' and 'Scooby-Doo ending'

Endings... as TVTropes would have me add 'Dropped a Bridge on Him.'

Tropes exist-and in every genre-for a reason. They have all long been the most common, and popular, fantasies (sticking with erotica) people have had and will continue to have.

Thanks, everyone, for your input.

I'm feeling much less like an unintentional cookie-cutter writer now.

 

[designatedvictim]

Enough has been said about tropes in general, but I saw your comment about fleshing out a certain scene.
I try to have a mix of quite descriptive scenes with attention to detail, but I also mix in hints to what has or maybe will happen. When I write, I have a mental image I’m trying to get down on paper, but it can get too clinical, so I have to break it up a little and let the reader use their imagination.

The annoying part - parts - is that I know what I want the scene to be. The issue isn't detail, or lack thereof, but transitioning events and viewpoints.

I wound up having two problems with it.

One:
Structurally, I wrote the story as first-person - the guy's viewpoint - throughout. The two characters are relaxing and sharing stories. Writing his story was a snap to write, if long-winded. Her story became an issue because her story worked better with dialog between her and her friends and writing second-hand dialog struck me as ridiculously clunky.

"'We really want you to stay the night,' Anne said," Lisa said now.

Doing that sort of nested dialog for a whole scene, even this short one, would sound awful, to me.

I got around the issue by biting the bullet and doing it as a flashback scene where she was the viewpoint character, removing one layer of abstraction. Something that won't need to happen anywhere else.

"Set the Wayback Machine to two years ago, Sherman," Lisa said, as she started telling me her story.

Followed by the scene where she was briefly the viewpoint character, greatly simplifying handling the dialog.

Her follow-on story, next day, doesn't have the dialog issue and was written as a straight recounting of events for her.

Two:
The flashback scene is pretty much worked out for what I want to include in it, but I'm stupidly tripping over how to write the transition from where now-viewpoint character Lisa changes from passive viewer of two girlfriends, uh, let's just say embracing, to a passive, but direct participant as the ham in a GGG sandwich without making it seem too... tropish.

I also don't intend to get too into the details of the event, ending it 'early' without becoming too graphic and having the girl discus some more of it to my viewpoint character after the 'flashback scene' ends and the narrative returns to their 'present.'

Once the need for direct dialog in her story is eliminated, I return to the primary viewpoint fairly quickly.

 

[AG31]

As I published my 11 stories over the last couple of years I assumed I was depending on tropes. I thought I was reproducing what was familiar to me when I "discovered" erotica about 50 or 55 years ago. Sadly, it was not to be. I haven't been able to find many at all that are like mine in the ways that are essential to me.

Moral for this thread: Tropes come and go.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

One of the beauties of a good trope is that once you've embraced the trope, you get to take shortcuts. You still have to be careful about which shortcuts, but you can take them.
One of my favorite tags to read is 'cuckquean,' which is a super trope heavy tag. A lot of these stories shortcut certain psychological developments: how the wife got there, why she's there, what she gets from it, etc... There are enough stories that have dealt with the why's that an author can shortcut dealing with that just to deal with what is. Taking that shortcut does mean that you have to be careful about what the wife will and won't do, because you never dealt with why. If you want to change tracks with her, now you have to talk about why.
Mother/Son is another very trope heavy category. Looking at it shows you lots of places where people have taken the shortcut but never thought about why. They just want to write a good spank story. Fine, but very unfulfilling.

Don't be afraid of a trope, but do think about why you're using it, or more importantly, why your characters are falling into it. If you understand why your characters would fall into the trope, you can use all of the tools associated with it to move them where you want them.

 

[vanmyers86]

I write what I want, and if a trope appears, I try to handle it in an interesting way. Plus, these things exist for a reason - they work! I mean, look at "The Princess Bride" - on the surface, it's nothing but stereotypes and tropes - a beautiful princess! A handsome hero! Evil villains! Duels! Vengeance! True love! - but the story is handled with fresh twists and a wink to the audience so everyone is in on the joke and has a wonderful time as the story progresses.

TBH, I don't worry too much about this kind of thing. "Boy meets girl" (or "person meets person," if you prefer) is the oldest story around, but we're still telling it because it has endless possibilities, and there's always an audience that either hasn't heard it yet or wants the comfort/enjoyment/adventure of hearing it again.

 

[alohadave]

I mean, look at "The Princess Bride" - on the surface, it's nothing but stereotypes and tropes - a beautiful princess! A handsome hero! Evil villains! Duels! Vengeance! True love! - but the story is handled with fresh twists and a wink to the audience so everyone is in on the joke and has a wonderful time as the story progresses.

If you haven't already, read the book. William Goldman wrote both, and the book is even more meta than the movie it.

It's a great read.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I just don't think about this question. I just write my stories. People seem to like it, so why worry about it.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Trying to avoid tropes is like trying to avoid using "said", and yet, probably harder.

 

[Cagivagurl]

What is life but a trope...
Mistakes repeated....
Games won...
Hearts conquered...
Why?
Because that's what humans do... History is our guide, we learn from it.
If it worked before, it'll work again...
I've heard it said, there are only 7 possible plots, yet there are thousands of fabulous stories...

It is what the writer does with the plot, the theme.
Some of the greatest stories of all time, are tropes...

What is a trope???
Life...

Cagivagurl

 

[howsoever]

Trying to avoid tropes is like trying to avoid using "said", and yet, probably harder.

Exactly. Trope anxiety comes from the same place as the repetition anxiety that results in "the blond woman parried" where "Gina said" would've bothered no one. The difference being that no one is out there cataloguing "elegant variations" for fun and clicks, while TVTropes has predictably become its own form of entertainment, exacerbating the anxiety. Not to mention that many of them would hardly have come to be considered tropes without the analytical effort of dedicated trope-finders.

At the end of the day it's about dealing with your own feeling that something's "been done", which is necessarily random, being limited to what you happen to know has been done. And the worst scenario is, of course, when you become aware of it in the middle of writing what you thought was relatively original.

And this is where I think attention to detail is a good thing to have, for your own psychological comfort before anything else. E.g. rather than to kind of madlib things like a character's job or college major, think of ways to make that a minor but very specific plot point somewhere down the line. Make tropes too enmeshed in the fabric of the story to stand out.

 

[TheLobster]

The difference being that no one is out there cataloguing "elegant variations" for fun and clicks, (…)

Ahem.

 

[Audiflex]

(Not a post about the tiredness of using tropes - they can be a useful shorthand to get things going in a story.)

TLDR

Do we write something because we like it and it turns out that it's a trope, or do we write to tropes because they're (usually) more widely recognized and/or liked and a useful shorthand tool? How to balance it.

@ @ @ @ @

I am (slowly) publishing what is admittedly the Most Awesome Story Evar! (Note use of capitals.)

I started it a while back for myself and somewhat recently (~four months ago) decided to start posting it here.

I hadn't been visiting the site for some time prior to joining and posting. Maybe popping in every five or six months, or so, read a few stories, troll the Top Lists. That sort of thing.

Since then, I've also begun reading other stories a bit more frequently and started to notice an awful lot of... not so much a similarity, but a familiarity between specific things done in those stories and in my own.

It then dawned on me that, despite not being a writer, I managed to hit upon a disturbing number of tropes on my own without being actually aware of them.

(Don't ask me which ones, I wasn't keeping score as I recognized them, and if you hold a gun to my head, I couldn't provide a specific example, but my overall feeling now is that I kinda-sorta wrote my story in cliches. Wow! That's pretty much how I approached that element in my story - sort of thing.)

I'll freely admit that I knew going in that the overall premise of the story is the basic, widely-used 'college-aged friends have known each other for years have a few days of uninterrupted alone-time on their hands and decide to get friendlier.' (It wouldn't surprise me to learn that 'sleeping with the landlord's daughter' is also a trope - I haven't checked.)

I liked it. I enjoyed writing it (well... except that I know I'm having trouble putting down a decent, but blessedly brief, scene where the girl recounts a girls' night in bed scenario - I need to add a few thousand more words to... ahem, flesh out the scene). It has mainly flowed naturally for me to write.

But even smaller bits within the story start feeling trope-ish as I read other stories here.

It's kinda awkward to admit it.

What about the reasons how we write something in a particular way?

I wrote my story that way because I just let it spill out (I won't go into the 'How Do You Stop Editing and Tweaking Your Story,' that's for a different post) and only encountered that sense of... almost deja vu, when reading other stories, after the fact.

When it came to looking for writing tips online, I kept it to the like of 'Is it A.M., AM, or am?' 'When should I write numbers in words or numerals?' That sort of thing.

How do you reconcile the Trope vs. What Feels Right balance to your writing?

Tropes are everywhere because they work, they’re familiar, relatable, and often fun. It sounds like you wrote what felt right to you, and it just happens to align with some tropes, which isn’t a bad thing. Tropes aren’t inherently cliché; it’s all about how you use them. If your story flows naturally and you’re enjoying the process, that’s what matters most. Balancing tropes with your unique voice and perspective is key, just keep writing what feels authentic to you, and the rest will fall into place.