Tropes In Your Stories

[RetroFan]

The 'TV Tropes' website is one of the most addictive on the internet, and every time I go there I end up spending more than three times as long as I meant to. When you look back at your Literotica stories, what tropes have you used when writing them? Are there any tropes you use frequently, or have employed specific tropes for certain stories?

Here are some of mine:

BLONDE, BRUNETTE, REDHEAD - I use this frequently, one good example is the young women in 'Leanne the Lusty Lifeguard' - Leanne (blonde), Jane & Andrea (brunettes) and Morgan (redhead).

FOUR TEMPERAMENTAL ENSEMBLE - A number of my stories use the four temperament ensemble, but it was a major part of 'My Best Friend's Crazy Fat Sister', where Sean is melancholic, Zoe sanguine, Adam phlegmatic and Emily choleric.

JERK PROTAGONIST - Dino from 'Sexy Savannah at Number 9' has a rotten lot in life, but is a self-pitying loser who you don't feel sorry for one bit.

LARGE HAM - Dino's authoritarian father Salvatore Stefani from 'Sexy Savannah'. HE SHOUTS ALMOST EVERY LINE OF DIALOGUE IN THE STORY.

ILL GIRL - Several examples. Julie in 'April Leads Julie Astray' has a crippled leg from polio, Holly from 'Jehovah's Witness Romance' is a sickly albino girl who struggles with asthma, and Samantha, a support character from 'Trailer Trash Teen Hates Rules' had childhood cancer.

SPOILED BRAT - Madison from 'Spoiled Princess Hates Camping', Justin, Annabel and Clarissa from 'Simon and the Senator's Wife' and Bridget from 'Bridget the Bossy Bridezilla'.

SPOILED SWEET - Charlotte from 'Hotel Hijinks With an Heiress'

RICH BITCH - Felicity from 'The Coal Miner & the Conservative'.

ALPHA BITCH - Allison from 'The PTA Queen Bee & the Teen Rebel'

CITY MOUSE, COUNTRY MOUSE - Madison (city girl) and her cousin Kate (country girl) in 'Spoiled Princess Hates Camping'.

POLITICALLY INCORRECT - Many of my characters, most notably the homophobic Uncle Merv from 'Leanne the Lusty Lifeguard' and Mr. McKinley from 'Pretty Paula's Poodle Skirts'.

INCESTUOUS SUBTEXT - Bridget and her father are way too close for comfort in 'Bridget the Bossy Bridezilla'.

REALLY GETS AROUND - Sandra from 'Switchboard Girls, Soldiers & Sirens' seems to be enjoying the Second World War a little too much.

GOOD GIRLS LIKE BAD GUYS - Penny and Michael from 'Penny & Michael's Forbidden Fun'.

BULLY - Todd from 'The PTA Queen Bee & the Teen Rebel'.

HYPOCRITE - Stacy from 'Shy Steve Meets Sexy Stacy' is extremely promiscuous, but won't allow her younger brother Paul and his girlfriend to go upstairs together.

DEAD ALL ALONG - Central theme of 'Learning to Love Louise'

AFFABLY EVIL - Sam from 'Marissa the Mob Boss's Daughter' is a New York Mafia boss feared by all, but is a nice enough guy.

DUMB BLONDE - Debbie from 'Debbie the Dumb Gold Digger'. Inverted in 'Jehovah's Witness Romance' where Andrea is a blonde Caucasian who is smart and cynical, while Samantha is African-American and dumb and naïve.

DIVA - Inverted in 'Cute Celebrity Chloe Comes to Stay'. Chloe is a popular 18-year-old soap opera actress, but very humble and down to Earth.

CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRLS RULE - Jenna from 'The PTA Queen Bee & the Teen Rebel' is banished to a Catholic girls' boarding school for her bad behavior, where she gets suspended for swearing at a nun.

AMBIGUOUSLY GAY - Jodie, one of Mandy's daughters from 'Mandy Makes a Man of Mark' and Chip, Brad and April's cousin from 'April Leads Julie Astray'.

DISASTER MOVIE - Jessie & Jake are caught in Cyclone Tracy in 'Take Cover From Tracy'.

LOSER BROTHER - Craig, Ben's younger brother in 'Bridget the Bossy Bridezilla'.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My tropes are not so much characters as repeated images or actions:

- his hands holding her belly
- slow, turning gazes
- cradling her face in his hands like a prayer (far too many times)
- cradling her face like holding the grail
- long hair, and letting it fall
- undoing endless buttons
- long thighs under a tight skirt
- her shadow falling on a table
- leaves falling
- counters in a coffee shop
- beautiful silk dresses
- going somewhere in a car
- train journeys
- water, endless rivers and beaches
- turning pages in books
- usually small breasts
- or, a blaze of freckles in a deep cleavage
- long, flushed throats
- writing different versions of me into my men

 

[oggbashan]

Sheep.

Sheep appear in some of my stories.

This is an extract from an incomplete story:

On the day that Annie was to be removed from her cottage she got out of her bed for the first time in several weeks, dressed herself, and sat on a bench outside the front door. As the landlord approached with his bailiffs she stood up and shook her fist.

“Sheep is all you want,” She yelled, “Sheep you shall have. Sheep will bring you pelf. You and your heirs will answer for what you have done to the people of this land. The sheep of doom will come. That fate you cannot evade.”

Annie swayed on her feet.

“The sheep of doom will come…” She said before falling dead across the threshold of her cottage.

 

[AuntyNym]

I think it's silly to believe we can write anything that has never been done before in all of human history. Even trying to put twists on tropes just makes them different tropes. All stories are a collection of tropes arranged in a hopefully unique order.

 

[MelissaBaby]

People eat a lot in my stories. They cry a lot, too. Seems like it rains a hell of a lot.

 

[Zodia195]

Oh how fun! Yeah I have used my own tropes and while I have gotten better about using them, it's hard to break habit lol.

1. Majority of my main heroines are blondes. Being a blonde myself, it was just natural for my female leads to be blondes because I use to pretend it was me lol.

2. My male leads tend to be the Alpha Male type. I have a weakness for them so I love using that type a lot. Over the years I have tried changing that.

3. Plot twists, I use them a lot. The idea of turning a plot on it's head fascinates me.

4. 99% of my stories are fantasy romances. I great up on fairy tales so I am a sucker for romance and I love creating my own worlds so I can create my own rules.

5. World Cultures- This is a more recent trope I've developed. In order to create versatile worlds, I look at other cultures for inspiration.

6. Humor- My stories get pretty dark so humor places a crucial role balance it out. I especially love using slapstick.

7. Unicorns- I am a unicorn fanatic (ya'll should see my room), so a good number of my stories involve them. Wouldn't surprise me if I include unicorns in my Stones of Incienda story lol. Believe it or not Dragons of Fraidel was originally created so I could do something BESIDES unicorns haha.

 

[The_Comte_dAmour]

5. World Cultures- This is a more recent trope I've developed. In order to create versatile worlds, I look at other cultures for inspiration.

Ooo, I love good fantasy world building... I'll have to check your stuff out.

 

[JasonClearwater]

My tropes are not so much characters as repeated images or actions:

- his hands holding her belly
- slow, turning gazes
- cradling her face in his hands like a prayer (far too many times)
- cradling her face like holding the grail
- long hair, and letting it fall
- undoing endless buttons
- long thighs under a tight skirt
- her shadow falling on a table
- leaves falling
- Boys, for some reason playing with their hair like girls
- counters in a coffee shop
- beautiful silk dresses
- going somewhere in a car
- Leaving goth boys in bathrooms
- train journeys
- water, endless rivers and beaches
- turning pages in books
- usually small breasts
- Being turned by particularly pretty goth boys
- or, a blaze of freckles in a deep cleavage
- long, flushed throats
- writing different versions of me into my men

True. So true.

 

[ElectricBlue]

True. So true.

I forgot one.

Resisting my beta reader's suggestion that my female lead would be much better written as a man. I mean, I even gave the bastard a guest spot with half a chapter of his own (with a stable hand, up against a horse ) but oh no, still not good enough, still wants rewrites.

 

[SamScribble]

OK, so I was doing several things at once - or at least I was trying to do several things at once - and I read the caption as 'Ropes in Your Stories'. And I don't tend to write bondage stories.

 

[Hypoxia]

flexible morality
triad (or longer) daisychains
bisexual women and incestuous sisters
bi-curious men, easily led astray
O.Henry-type ending twists
geographical and historical accuracy
translated blurts in varied languages
inverting or extrapolating clichés
cleanliness

 

[JasonClearwater]

OK, so I was doing several things at once - or at least I was trying to do several things at once - and I read the caption as 'Ropes in Your Stories'. And I don't tend to write bondage stories.

- Bless, lol.

 

[RetroFan]

My tropes are not so much characters as repeated images or actions:

- his hands holding her belly
- slow, turning gazes
- cradling her face in his hands like a prayer (far too many times)
- cradling her face like holding the grail
- long hair, and letting it fall
- undoing endless buttons
- long thighs under a tight skirt
- her shadow falling on a table
- leaves falling
- counters in a coffee shop
- beautiful silk dresses
- going somewhere in a car
- train journeys
- water, endless rivers and beaches
- turning pages in books
- usually small breasts
- or, a blaze of freckles in a deep cleavage
- long, flushed throats
- writing different versions of me into my men

I often write about rain and thunderstorms, frequently during the sex scenes.

A lot of my stories are 'kafka komedy', comedies where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. For example in my story 'Leanne the Lusty Lifeguard' the main male character is Greg, a well-intentioned but bumbling young man who cannot say or do anything right around the attractive female characters in the story, pretty brunette tomboy Jane, his stunning blonde supervisor Leanne and of course his attractive red-haired co-worker Morgan, on whom he has a crush.

A trope I like is 'The Bitch Has a Point'. For example, in 'My Best Friend's Crazy Fat Sister' the sister-in-law Emily is a short-tempered fitness fanatic and the other characters feel her wrath (especially when its that time of the month) but a lot of the things that anger her she has a right to be annoyed about.

I use meaningful names in some of my stories. In 'Jehovah's Witness Romance', the main male character hates economics, and his name is Adam Smith. In 'The PTA Queen Bee & the Teen Rebel', the parents of the large, dysfunctional O'Dea family are called Mike and Carol.

Another trope in the 'PTA Queen Bee & the Teen Rebel' I used is 'the seven deadly sins'. Each of the seven O'Dea kids represent one of the seven deadly sins; Jenna (lust), Todd (gluttony), Chris (pride), Libby (sloth), Polly (envy), Andy (wrath) and Justin (greed).

One trope I tried but readers didn't seem to respond to was intertwining storylines in 'Bridget the Bossy Bridezilla', where a final twist ties everything together.

 

[lovecraft68]

Red dresses.

'slinky tank tops'

Looking....my dumb ass characters are always looking at someone or something.

The used to always be reaching too, but they stopped that. Mostly...okay I catch it in editing.

The overwhelming desire to take what could be a simple fun sex scene and add drama or something unpleasant to it. Fucking up a wet dream syndrome.

 

[Zodia195]

Ooo, I love good fantasy world building... I'll have to check your stuff out.

Awwww thanks! One of my stories is finished and I am working on 2 others atm.

 

[FaeLissa]

autistic characters (I know it's kinda obvious I'd write about em - can't help it - I write what I know)
Hm - not sure I do anything else consistently. (no, isn't going into TMI about that!)
Maybe lesbian/bi women (is hard to tell which they is in a single story in a series they'd all be bi just cause trying to write about mens is HARD and I likes a challenge).

Fantasy worlds. Even a short sex story has to be in an interesting place, not just 'bright lights, big city' (Jimmy Reed tune ).
leads to
Forest. so much forest. Needs more forest. No, that's not enough!

 

[RetroFan]

autistic characters (I know it's kinda obvious I'd write about em - can't help it - I write what I know)

I've written about autistic characters too, but to drive plotlines and never in a sexual way.

For example in my story 'April Leads Julie Astray', Julie has a younger brother called Peter who:

1. Struggles with basic coordination, such as being late with tying shoes and unable to ride a bicycle.
2. Cannot make friends. Will either withdraw completely, talk incessantly about his own interests or try too hard to make friends, failing dismally in the process.
3. Has a narrow, obsessive interest, in Peter's case the Solar System.
4. Displays limited concept of inappropriate behavior. For example, he wakes Julie at two in the morning to tell her that the planet Venus is unusually bright in the sky, or tries to talk to Julie through the bathroom door about space exploration while she is trying to use the toilet, and obviously wants to be left in privacy.
5. Does not react the right way in certain situations. For example, Julie takes a tumble down the stairs one night and is injured. Peter emerges from his room and steps over Julie with a cheerful hello, not registering at all that his older sister is in pain and needs assistance.

Nowadays, Peter would quickly be diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, but because this story is set in 1963, what is wrong with Peter remains a mystery to Julie, their parents and other characters. Peter just gets classified as 'odd'.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've written about autistic characters too, but to drive plotlines and never in a sexual way.

My current story is about a relationship between two autistic women; I've written some previous stories with characters who could well be autistic, but I think this is the first time I've named it.

 

[FaeLissa]

My first story (turned into 3 stories) on Lit was about autistic sisters. Writing about normal peoples is hard since I don't know what it's like to be one

 

[JasonClearwater]

'slinky tank tops'

A lot of my boys wear those, too.

Looking....my dumb ass characters are always looking at someone or something.

Easy way to solve that problem.

https://forwearemany.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/blindfolded-man.jpg?w=585

 

[Kantarii]

I try to keep my stories on an emotional roller coaster. I was on the ride writing them, but there is no height and weight requirements for the reader to enjoy reading them. Buckle up. Here we go!
Kant

 

[Zodia195]

I try to keep my stories on an emotional roller coaster. I was on the ride writing them, but there is no height and weight requirements for the reader to enjoy reading them. Buckle up. Here we go!
Kant

You know I do something similar too. I always have happy endings, but I tend to put my main characters through the gauntlet to reach them lol.

 

[ElectricBlue]

True. So true.

I just registered your interpolated edits. Lol. You're having far too much fun.

 

[Hypoxia]

I try to avoid trite plots and devices... unless they're called for. I try to avoid old tropes and cartoony stereotypes... unless convenient. I try to piece-together a story like a fine puzzle... unless it's a stroker or a sudden inspiration. But I don't consult lists of tropes. Usually.