Tropey McTropeface

[Kelliezgirl]

Most of our discussions on tropes here focus on the particular tropes of erotic fiction. 10 in cock, 38DD breasts, and on and on.

What about ones that are story driven rather than sex driven?
What's your least favorite trope? And have you ever seen it used well in a story?

Personally, I hate the amnesia trope. Character gets hit on the head and suddenly can't remember who they are. And even worse when a second bump on the head reverses it at just the right narrative moment.

That said, The Long Kiss Goodnight was a great story centered around amnesia, and Memento was a brilliant movie centered around memory loss.

Your thoughts?

 

[Bamagan]

It was all a dream! Or a hallucination, etc. I'll give those an uno and I'd scratch dirt on them like a cat burying a turd if I could.

 

[TheLobster]

It was all a dream!

Related one: skipping ahead in the slow-burn / tension-building phase by butting in with a sexy dream involving the main characters.

You can just tell that the author didn’t trust his ability to hold reader’s interest and had to throw in a demo version of the later sex scene. It’s especially annoying when the scene is actually plausible, and makes you wonder “Wait, did I miss something? Were they more into each other than I thought?” and then it is revealed that nope, it’s just a dream.

I get the anxiety over writing 10k with seemingly nothing sexy happening, but if one really wants an early bird “payoff” it’s better to be honest and write it as an explicit fantasy of the character. It has the added bonus of actual plot development then, since he or she has to admit harboring sexual interest in the other person.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Personally, I hate the amnesia trope. Character gets hit on the head and suddenly can't remember who they are. And even worse when a second bump on the head reverses it at just the right narrative moment

That one is my personal nemesis. Although I don't hate it when the story starts out with amnesia and the story itself is essentially the character's journey to find out who they are/what happened.

No where it really shines, or rather sucks, is when it happens at the midpoint or near the end of the story. And then you've got all this trauma and angst and character growth evaporation and it's just so, not my cup of tea.

Although even that isn't always bad. If it was more like they got attacked or into an accident and the amnesia is only about the time right before the traumatic brain injury so they can't help with identifying the suspect.

 

[Statius]

The villain who deserves sympathy, the villain who reforms. I kinda blame George Lucas with Darth Vader for making this so widespread in today's culture, not that he was the first to do it, not by a long shot, but the popularity of SW I think didn't help.

I want my villains to be villains dammit!

 

[norafares]

The miscommunication trope drives me insane.

 

[IWroteThis]

It was all a dream! Or a hallucination, etc. I'll give those an uno and I'd scratch dirt on them like a cat burying a turd if I could.

I'd add in all of the ones where it turns out the MC was a ghost who didn't know they were dead.

 

[THBGato]

Fake dating never really works for me, especially in queer romance. HelenL's effort being an honorable exception.

 

[Statius]

Most of our discussions on tropes here focus on the particular tropes of erotic fiction. 10 in cock, 38DD breasts, and on and on.

What about ones that are story driven rather than sex driven?
What's your least favorite trope? And have you ever seen it used well in a story?

Personally, I hate the amnesia trope. Character gets hit on the head and suddenly can't remember who they are. And even worse when a second bump on the head reverses it at just the right narrative moment.

That said, The Long Kiss Goodnight was a great story centered around amnesia, and Memento was a brilliant movie centered around memory loss.

Your thoughts?

Good thread, by the way.

Ok pardon my interruption, as you were

 

[crookedletter]

I'll come out in defense of tropes on principle. The problem with tropes isn't the tropes themselves, it's using them as a crutch for poor execution. Tropes can be fun. But when you use them I think you have to ask yourself why you're using them: if they actually add to the story, and are justified by the story; or if they're just handy shortcuts to not having to actually build tension or character.

Might be a fun story challenge, if it isn't one already: pick a trope, one you hate, see if you can make a compelling story out of it. I'd argue any and all of them can be plenty satisfying if developed and executed well.

 

[OddLove]

One of my all time favorite tropes is also one of my least favorite trope in BDSM/Kink erotica.

It's the D/s and Mentor tropes. And there's one very specific one that I see way too much and can't stand.

It's something like "Stupid/naive barely-legal entitled bratty girl surrenders to a big powerful daddy-dom and learns the hard way that she's actually a natural submissive who desperately needs her daddy-dom for validation, as well as physical abuse to help her behave and feel whole and valuable. And before meeting her new daddy, she had no idea she loved getting humiliated, degraded, fucked in the ass, throat fucked, choked, and beaten with a belt. Before the manly man put her in her place she just liked kissing and missionary sex."

It's always paired with monologue of her having an awaking/revelation/epiphany where she finally discovered her true purpose all along was to be reduced to a fuck doll or something.

The thing is, Femdom and Maledom D/s dynamics are still my favorite. Just specifically Not the one I mentioned above.

 

[Rob_Royale]

In general fiction? Time travel. Hate it. A ridiculous notion.

In erotica? I don't think I have one, aside from the aforementioned, as the tropiest trope can be wonderful, depending on how well it's done. Tropes are tropes for a reason and I've earned to embrace them, but put my own little RR spin on them.

 

[yowser]

Might be a fun story challenge, if it isn't one already: pick a trope, one you hate, see if you can make a compelling story out of it. I'd argue any and all of them can be plenty satisfying if developed and executed well.

That's brilliant. 'Tropes with a twist.' Poker night, pizza delivery, husband revenge: all of these warped and mirror-shopped, t'would be a lot of fun.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

In general fiction? Time travel. Hate it. A ridiculous notion.

In erotica? I don't think I have one, aside from the aforementioned, as the tropiest trope can be wonderful, depending on how well it's done. Tropes are tropes for a reason and I've earned to embrace them, but put my own little RR spin on them.

Time travel is just overdone.

That said, Orson Scott Card's Pathfinder series is a good example of it done in an interesting way.

 

[TheLobster]

The miscommunication trope drives me insane.

Miss Communication and Miss Understanding are the two most popular authors in the romance genre.

 

[AlexBailey]

The whole cis/het boy meets cis/het girl thing is way too over used.

 

[PapaRomantic]

The Martian slut ray in LW.

 

[countdowntolov3]

Doms who can like magically sense someone's submissive tendencies.

It annoys me because I am always so very interested to know what it was that tipped them off. But so often it's just:
He gave me a long appraising look. It felt he could see right through me. "Interesting," he muttered.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

I'll echo what @crookedletter said. Tropes can work well if the story is driving them, rather than the other way around. A couple of my WIPs feature @TheLobster's hated trope where the main characters having sexy dreams about the targets of their affections (usually a sibling... sorry, I write a lot of T/I), but the difference is that this generally happens AFTER realizing they're into them, and the tension and overthinking and analyzing and "do I really"s all spur the character to have the dream... after all, the more you focus on something, the more likely it shows up in a dream.

Warning: Several T/I examples incoming.

One other thing I really enjoy doing is subverting some of the less believable tropes. My published story called "Sibling Therapy" sounds, from its title, like a cheap "pervy therapist teaches the siblings to fuck away their disagreements," but actually the therapist is quite professional, even if not entirely effective, and the real "therapy" happens as a result of the characters' own realizations.

I have a WIP which subverts the "hotel mix-up causes siblings end up in bed together" trope. There's some early discussion over booking rooms with one bed for the parents and two beds for the siblings, but, in fact, the siblings do end up with a room that has two beds, exactly as advertised. No problem. They end up in bed together anyway, of course, for completely unrelated reasons.

I also have a different WIP, tentatively titled "The Morning After" where, much like @crookedletter suggested, I sort of reinvent the hotel mix-up trope. The two siblings wake up naked next to each other in a hotel room and have to figure out how they ended up there and what happened to the people who they thought they'd been having sex with. Obviously, they end up doing it again with each other by the end. It's still kind of a single-scene stroker, but whatever, not every story I write needs to go deep.

That said, there are some tropes I really do genuinely dislike, mostly stuff that feels like it's out of nowhere and doesn't provide enough build-up, or feels fake and forced. Stuff like:

• Sibling catches the other masturbating and immediately offers to help.
• Mom catches siblings fucking and suddenly gets turned on, feeling like she should rebuke them, but just can't help herself and she and her daughter suddenly turn bi to give the son a show when neither of them had ever thought about being with a woman before.
• "Would you rub lotion on my back? Wait, hang on, this stupid strap is in the way."
• Son lusting after Mom decides to make his move, corners her against the sink while washing dishes, and starts rubbing her, which somehow causes her to melt and give in to his advances rather than smash a plate over his head.
• Husband wants to watch wife fuck another man. Arranges to have another man there without her knowing, then tells her the plan while he's there, and she suddenly becomes excited by the idea "but also still nervous".

I think all of those things CAN be done well, but there needs to be a bit more processing and tension and all those good things to really be believable.

 

[TheLobster]

A couple of my WIPs feature @TheLobster's hated trope where the main characters having sexy dreams about the targets of their affections (usually a sibling... sorry, I write a lot of T/I), but the difference is that this generally happens AFTER realizing they're into them, and the tension and overthinking and analyzing and "do I really"s all spur the character to have the dream... after all, the more you focus on something, the more likely it shows up in a dream.

Most of my dislike for this trope tends to disappear with the caveats you've mentioned here; but especially if it's clearly said that what follows is a dream, and therefore likely to be a gratuitous scene that I can skip or skim through, if I don't feel like reading it, and lose nothing of the main plot. It's really about respecting your reader, and making him feel like everything in the story matters and isn't just a cheap trick.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The whole cis/het boy meets cis/het girl thing is way too over used.

Right up there with, "the only way to get over a bad breakup with your BF is to sleep with your female friend who has been secretly lusting after you all these years".

 

[Kelliezgirl]

One of my all time favorite tropes is also one of my least favorite trope in BDSM/Kink erotica.

It's the D/s and Mentor tropes. And there's one very specific one that I see way too much and can't stand.

It's something like "Stupid/naive barely-legal entitled bratty girl surrenders to a big powerful daddy-dom and learns the hard way that she's actually a natural submissive who desperately needs her daddy-dom for validation, as well as physical abuse to help her behave and feel whole and valuable. And before meeting her new daddy, she had no idea she loved getting humiliated, degraded, fucked in the ass, throat fucked, choked, and beaten with a belt. Before the manly man put her in her place she just liked kissing and missionary sex."

It's always paired with monologue of her having an awaking/revelation/epiphany where she finally discovered her true purpose all along was to be reduced to a fuck doll or something.

The thing is, Femdom and Maledom D/s dynamics are still my favorite. Just specifically Not the one I mentioned above.

Yeah... really anytime there is this huge personality shift that happens more or less instantly.
First time she gets a small spanking... 30 seconds later it's total submissive time...

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The miscommunication trope drives me insane.

Especially when anyone with a room temperature IQ would understand what's being said but a bunch of supposedly smart characters can't.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

Especially when anyone with a room temperature IQ would understand what's being said but a bunch of supposedly smart characters can't.

I think the way you make this work is to have everyone in that room be autistic. They can be smart, and it totally makes sense for the thing to go over their head.

 

[anthrodisiac]

The "aliens that are humans, but blue!' trope.

Make your damn aliens alien. I don't even care if they're bipedal or anthropomorphic (clearly), but stop making them humans, just blue, or just pointy ears. Put some creativity into it, for Zlorp's sake!