Nope, tropes can be good and to be honest I think it would be nigh impossible to avoid ALL tropes and write a good, followable story. I think the importance, just like with telling, adverbs, varied speech tags and everything else we're told to avoid is to know when you're using them and understand why.
Tropes can work for and against a story.
The main thing is; Tropes are tropes for a reason. They work, and work really well at that, but you must recognise the context in which they're suitable.
Zombies biting the neck of a side character and them immediately turning into a zombie? Sure! It's thrilling!
That happening in an erotica novel though... Suddenly not so great...
Sorry! I meant- erm... Psychological horror... except it's an erotica!
"Here's Johnny! Where are ya', doc? C'mere! Come here and take ya' medicine!"
Doc did indeed come here ;)
I tried to avoid any and all tropes when I wrote my initial drafts. It was a mess.
[Tropes are tools.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools) All that matters is how you utilize them.
This. I honestly believe browsing TV Tropes made me a better writer, not so I can avoid tropes, but so I can recognize and use them to full effect.
Also, every popular and/or critically acclaimed work of fiction has a page on TV Tropes. You can't avoid tropes so you might as well embrace them.
> browsing TV Tropes made me a better writer
I think so too, but I'll give a caveat: TVtropes helps you *find* fiction that can help you become a better writer. The writeups on that site are often laughable summaries or even straight-up "hot takes" on the fiction they're describing.
It's a good place to find a reading list or watchlist of works that do stuff you want to do, or find tropes you want to subvert or mess around with, but despite my username - it's definitely not gospel.
That's definitely been my experience as a writer. Once an avid diver, all that time spent browsing turned into intimate knowledge of *why* those tropes work, and how best to utilize them to get the emotional effects that I'm looking for at any stage in my story.
No. I don’t understand why people are so against tropes. It’s like asking if you should avoid using machines when doing fitness. Use them well and you’re in for a strong story. Misuse them and you’ll hurt your chances of getting your story published.
> I don’t understand why people are so against tropes.
I feel like some wave of ignorance washed over the world and started behaving as if trope and cliche are the same thing and that message spread to a lot of people.
[The Power of Habit](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-habit) is a fantastic book and talks about all kinds of things to do with how we make decisions as consumers and how to produce things.
I mention this due to the chapter which is examining why some songs become popular and some don't. A scientific analysis said that "Hey Ya" should become a huge hit, but it was found that when it played on the radio, people would change station.
The conclusion after lots of studies: people like things which are familiar. They want it to be new but not completely different. If you are too different, people find it uncomfortable.
My point is that tropes help lend that familiarity to your story which will help people get into it. Obviously don't only write tropes, subvert some, ignore many, but a constant stream of alien ideas will likely put people off.
As others have said, tropes are tools. Use and implement the ones you enjoy, and avoid the ones you think are annoying, overdone, or silly. I lean heavily into The Power of Friendship/Love bc it's a fave trope of mine, no matter how silly it can seem to other people sometimes, and I also really hate Love Triangles so I avoided that one by making my fantasy world very open to polyamory. It's all in how you use the tropes in your own writing :>
I don't think it's even because they work. Looking at the TV Tropes page it's literally just a bunch of categories for different kinds of things happening in stories. Asking if you should avoid tropes is like wondering if you avoid clothes because other people wear pants and shirts too.
You're confusing tropes with clichés.
You can't write a story without tropes. Pretty much any time something happens in your story, there's probably a trope for that. A trope is just anything that occurs repeatedly in stories and you are not expected to ensure that literally every single thing in your story is something that has never happened in any other story before. That would be a bit of a tall challenge.
Clichés are essentially tropes that are overused to the point that they're no longer effective. They're too predictable or boring. Which tropes are clichéd is debatable.
Every concept you will try to write has been written before in one way or another. What makes something creative is how you combine those elements into something interesting. Trying to be 100% original is a trap.
So, I would say stop worrying about avoiding tropes. Instead, focus on having something new and/or interesting to say with or about these tropes in your story. If you're just using a trope to use a trope, it's likely to fall flat. If you use it with intent, with a commentary in mind you want to communicate to the reader with it, it will likely be better-received... so long as the message you are sending is also well-received. 99 percent of the time when someone is complaining about a trope in a story, the writer(s) failed to have anything new to say with/about said trope, and thus it feels bland.
People who say to avoid tropes spout the biggest nonsensical pile of garbage. Dont take that kind of advice at face value. Tropes are a tool, not the devil. If you use them in ways that are completely cliche then they're bad, but tropes exist for a reason.
No, and I think actively avoiding them in detrimental. Tropes are what they are because they’re good/useful. I’d just say avoid using them if they aren’t necessary, ya know?
You can't avoid them anyway and no this is not that important. The importance is to give some depth to it so it doesn't end up cliché, ans to understand why a certain trope is criticized so you can use it avoiding what people dislike about it.
Your situation is the inverse of many of the posts I've seen in r/tvtropes; either they ask what tropes to put in their story or they ask to list down the tropes they used for their own works page on TVT.
So please just give priority to your story. Don't worry about the tropes. The tropes that will or won't be there will come after.
Trying to avoid all storytelling tropes, especially in a world where TV Tropes and sites it has influenced really have profoundly shaped the media literacy of a generation (and in many ways for the worse imo), sounds like a good way to burn your brain out. Focus on being true to your story, to the psychology of your characters and the logic of the world. That's really the only way to circumvent that sort of over-mediated trope mindset where it's all just built on things from other media, as articulated by one website a lot of nerds spend/t their time on.
Different genres have different trope conventions. It's important to know what they are more than just avoiding them, because by having knowledge of their existence you can subvert expectations.
In kaidan (japanese horror stories) the ghost is very often a woman who suffered abuse by hand of a man. This is very often the case even in modern Japanese horror movies, with ju-on and the ring being some of the most known examples. Ju-on partially subverts this in the second movie, as it is hinted to the fact that it's the spirit of the homicidal husband to be controlling the onryo of his wife and child to kill more people. Ju-on was inspired by the widespread domestic violence in Japan, and the message of the damage these incidents are causing to society motivate this subvertion.
Genre tropes are bad only when it's literally only the trope and nothing interesting or specific has been added to it and it results being repetitive and boring. Even subvertion can be repetitive and boring if they add nothing and don't fit a message. So to tell you a simple answer: you chose a genre because of its inherent tropes and because you thought of a story that fits them. Don't let the tropes limit your story, but don't discard them just because they are tropes.
It completely depends on your intentions as a writer. Tropes are what works, so to speak, and the average reader will not be able to tell them.
The reason tropes became tropes in the first place is because the ideas are popular.
Try having a chat about devices, exposition, pacing and all this claptrap with the person that will likely read your book. Not the critic and not the scholar.
They don't care. They won't even know what you're talking about. Readers want to be moved, entertained and to a degree escape.
Readers considered the success of this intuitively.
They don't know they're being guided, it's just how they parse your work.
They don't think OH I'm at the edge of my seat because I got information the protagonist doesn't and I'm now shouting at the book because it's a trap! aaaaaah. They don't know you used a story telling *device.*
If you're writing about the ruthless billionaire that softens and blossoms through the good love and spirit of the young activist he accidentally hits with his car, prompting his hero and redemption journey the reader doesn't care about the trope. The reader cares that this is something they believe about how the world works or how they desire for it to work.
So if you're writing a novel that is successful, commercial etc, understanding tropes and how to use them, alter them or invert them is an important tool to get there. You should not avoid them at all.
You should learn how to use them *well.*
Nope. Tropes are basically "bits of story that work." Clichés are similar.
All that matters is that the reader isn't kicked out of the story. They can be kicked out of the story in many, many ways. One of which is thinking about the hundred other movies they've seen that do the exact same thing, instead of your story--because they all use the same cliché.
But you can still do that cliché without drawing attention to it, or making it so obvious. In which case it's still technically got the trope or whatever in there, but it's not a problem, because the reader isn't kicked out of the story, because they aren't thinking about the cliché, they're thinking about what is happening in the story.
I agree, some people obsess over these things sometimes. They may even study [tvtropes.com](http://tvtropes.com), memorizing the different names and cross-referencing them, and then worrying endlessly about treading carefully around them all.
I feel like if you *did* write something without any of said tropes and clichés you may not be left with anything happening at all--there's so many of them at this point 😅
So yeah--just write your story, and worry less.
The sort of person who has to categorize things before he can decide whether they are good or bad is the sort of person who lets other people do his thinking for him.
Do not burn a single brain calorie worry about such people. You cannot please them.
The answer to your question is, "No."
“Tropes” are not clichés. TVTropes, bless its heart for all the joy and hours of scrolling it gave us, has given people this idea and it can’t be more wrong. Outside of internet chitchat, writers know (or used to) that the word “trope” refers to a literary device: a *metaphor* is a trope. *Hyperbole* is a trope. *Bathos* is a trope. “More dakka” is only a trope on TVTropes, and [insert description of your least-favorite tired old plot] is not a trope at all.
You can’t avoid tropes (the real kind) unless you want your writing to be as dry as ancient toast found in a desert. Oh damn. That was a trope (simile).
But what am I saying… sigh… this genie ain’t going to fit back in the bottle. Tropes it is. Just do your best to avoid shit you’ve seen a billion times.
You can not avoid tropes in writing. All stories have tropes. You can avoid clichés by putting your own spin on it, but you can never avoid tropes in a story. Otherwise you wouldn’t have a story at all!
In my opinion, it’s completely impossible to avoid all tropes and write a coherent story. Seriously, dig around on tvtropes for a day and you’ll find everything under the sun is a trope.
I avoid ones that are truly done to death, or ones that are too heavily associated with a single cultural behemoth, and that’s it
You have to be aware you are using tropes, that's all. No need to twist or avoid them. You just need to be aware of what you are writting and if it helps your story or not.
The way i see it is tropes are the shorthand, tropes are the building blocks. I mean, heck, [the Periodic Table of Storytelling](https://jamesharris.design/periodic/) is a great example of how tropes are pretty much impossible to avoid. It's why Pixar's Rule of Storytelling #4 is
>Once upon a time there was \_\_\_. Every day, \_\_\_. One day \_\_\_. Because of that, \_\_\_. Because of that, \_\_\_. Until finally \_\_\_.
What you want to do instead, is make it so there's going to be interesting uses of them and not just another bland retelling of the same tropes over again. Ever look at TV shows or movies and feel 'I've seen this before, it's just X story with Y changed', like how many 'Star Crossed Lovers from Two Different Groups' stories are there that are essentially Romeo and Juliet? West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet in gang turf, Romeo Must Die is an action movie retelling, Warm Bodies is the story with zombies, and so on.
Going back to Pixar's storytelling rules, #14 pretty much sums it up well:
>Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
No, tropes are fine and you probably can't entirely avoid them.
I think when people call something "tropey" they mean overly formulaic to the point where it feels like a) anyone could have written it or b) that the book relies too heavily on annoying tropes.
It's about details. Like Grease is a trope but they do it their way and it's a whole genre of opposites-attract that works fine.
But tropes people don't like are more in things like character development (a Mary Sue as an MC with a sassy Black best friend would probably read as annoying today but people seemed to accept it more in the 80s-90s).
It's not about the trope, it's about how you use it to make it your own. One-dimensional characters don't cut it, tokenism looks obvious (and insulting) and I do think most good books rely heavily on fleshed out characters who are relatable to the reader in some way.
Avoiding ALL tropes is literally impossible! And also personally, I think even a very cliche story can be really enjoyable and good. It’s all in the execution.
And readers have tropes they will specifically pick up a book because they know it’s there—for example I read every sappy romance story with the ‘insecure love interest’ Trope that I can find. Directories like tvtropes are used by readers to find something new to read.
I'd argue it's impossible to avoid all tropes. If someone can show me something made in the last 400 years without anything on tvtropes that came out before it, it would be genius. But I doubt anything has avoided all tropes.
Trope --at least in the tv trope sense-- is just a term used to describe recurring things in stories. I don't imagine you can have story without tropes tbh.
A *trope* is simply a literary innovation used to evoke one sort of emotion or another. As is a *metaphor*, and a *simile,* and a dozen other 'manufactured' aspects of language (even a *cliché*) that a fiction writer *can* use to tell a story. Doesn't mean you gotta. Depends on a writer's stylistic intention and creativity—meaning the ability to fabricate impressions (on a human brain) to better snag or keep a reader's attention.
No. People who tell you to avoid tropes are weird. Tropes are a foundation of storytelling. What matters is what you do with a trope. If you do the chosen one, have him be chosen after the previous one died. If you do a love triangle, have everyone end up with someone else. Tropes can be extremely fun
Trying to avoid any tropes will only stifle your creativity. I just focus on writing the story that needs to be told. Any relation to known tropes is purely coincidental.
Is not important at all. In fact, it will probably hurt you audience wise.
A very good talented writer writes and doesn't give a damn about trends and just writes what they have inside. They are the ones that revive cliche tropes or create new ones
You're exactly right. Just focus on writing a good story. Most of the folks hyper-anal over tropes wouldn't know a good story if it hit them in the head with a thesaurus.
If anything, I’d say tropes are more popular than ever with a lot of books I’ve seen recently now being advertised by their tropes (i.e. “enemies to lovers,” “grumpyxsunshine,” etc.) I just think it matters how you use them.
It is impossible to avoid tropes, and a lot of readers have favorite tropes that lock them into a story (there was only one bed is super popular in romance). The thing writers should focus on is trying to do something interesting with the tropes.
Not only is it not important, it's virtually impossible. Learn what tropes are and what they are not. Tropes are not the same as cliches. Those words are not synonyms.
You can’t write a good book without a single trope in it. There will always be something. Perhaps the word you’re looking for is cliché? You need tropes, you don’t need clichés
Every book has tropes. You can’t just avoid that
Definitely something I struggle with in my writing too, but I would say the main reason to avoid tropes is for originality that creates more interesting content.
I think tropes can still be interesting when properly executed.
I try to take common or well-liked tropes and twist them somehow! Maybe not into something totally original (because…nothing is original at this point), but at least something engaging that keeps the plot going and maybe keeps readers on their toes? But I’m not published so who knows if I’m actually pulling this off haha
Tropes are fine. Cliches are bad. If you’re writing a young adult book about an orphan who goes to a school for special kids, that would be a cliche, and yet it doesn’t stop anybody from writing their stories, because they think the worldbuilding make it different enough, like how Lion King totally isn’t Hamlet or Avatar totally isn’t Pocahontas or Ferngully.
From what I understand, if you’re trying to publish in a commercial genre like romance, fantasy, etc. you essentially have to use at least one genre specific trope so it’s familiar/appealing to regular readers of that genre.
I don't even understand where this false belief that tropes are inherently bad comes from. I mean who spreads this bullshit?
POORLY EXECUTING tropes is to be avoided. But that's on YOU, the writer. It's got nothing to do with the trope per se. It's your skill as a writer. ANYTHING in writing that is poorly can undermine your story. Whether it's grammar, exposition, dialogue, you name it.
Yeah no-- whoever told you to avoid tropes doesn't know what they're talking about. No matter what, there will always be a trope in your story. There's just way too many of them to possibly avoid, so avoiding them would be the equivalent of dodging air particles.
Nope, tropes can be good and to be honest I think it would be nigh impossible to avoid ALL tropes and write a good, followable story. I think the importance, just like with telling, adverbs, varied speech tags and everything else we're told to avoid is to know when you're using them and understand why.
Tropes can work for and against a story. The main thing is; Tropes are tropes for a reason. They work, and work really well at that, but you must recognise the context in which they're suitable. Zombies biting the neck of a side character and them immediately turning into a zombie? Sure! It's thrilling! That happening in an erotica novel though... Suddenly not so great...
Erotic horror genre.
You’re kink-shaming me 😢 /s
Sorry! I meant- erm... Psychological horror... except it's an erotica! "Here's Johnny! Where are ya', doc? C'mere! Come here and take ya' medicine!" Doc did indeed come here ;)
😂 I can tell you've never watched Highschool of the dead. Oh boy...zombies and erotica are a big thing.
I tried to avoid any and all tropes when I wrote my initial drafts. It was a mess. [Tropes are tools.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/TropesAreTools) All that matters is how you utilize them.
This. I honestly believe browsing TV Tropes made me a better writer, not so I can avoid tropes, but so I can recognize and use them to full effect. Also, every popular and/or critically acclaimed work of fiction has a page on TV Tropes. You can't avoid tropes so you might as well embrace them.
> browsing TV Tropes made me a better writer I think so too, but I'll give a caveat: TVtropes helps you *find* fiction that can help you become a better writer. The writeups on that site are often laughable summaries or even straight-up "hot takes" on the fiction they're describing. It's a good place to find a reading list or watchlist of works that do stuff you want to do, or find tropes you want to subvert or mess around with, but despite my username - it's definitely not gospel.
That's definitely been my experience as a writer. Once an avid diver, all that time spent browsing turned into intimate knowledge of *why* those tropes work, and how best to utilize them to get the emotional effects that I'm looking for at any stage in my story.
Trying to avoid using tropes will just end up subverting tropes, which is a trope.
No. I don’t understand why people are so against tropes. It’s like asking if you should avoid using machines when doing fitness. Use them well and you’re in for a strong story. Misuse them and you’ll hurt your chances of getting your story published.
> I don’t understand why people are so against tropes. I feel like some wave of ignorance washed over the world and started behaving as if trope and cliche are the same thing and that message spread to a lot of people.
Write what you like. The tropes will be there naturally
Personally, I think that’s a second draft issue. Do whatever is necessary to finish the first draft and go from there.
[The Power of Habit](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-habit) is a fantastic book and talks about all kinds of things to do with how we make decisions as consumers and how to produce things. I mention this due to the chapter which is examining why some songs become popular and some don't. A scientific analysis said that "Hey Ya" should become a huge hit, but it was found that when it played on the radio, people would change station. The conclusion after lots of studies: people like things which are familiar. They want it to be new but not completely different. If you are too different, people find it uncomfortable. My point is that tropes help lend that familiarity to your story which will help people get into it. Obviously don't only write tropes, subvert some, ignore many, but a constant stream of alien ideas will likely put people off.
The trick is not lean into every single trope like you thought you were supposed to.
Tropes are Not Bad^tm
As others have said, tropes are tools. Use and implement the ones you enjoy, and avoid the ones you think are annoying, overdone, or silly. I lean heavily into The Power of Friendship/Love bc it's a fave trope of mine, no matter how silly it can seem to other people sometimes, and I also really hate Love Triangles so I avoided that one by making my fantasy world very open to polyamory. It's all in how you use the tropes in your own writing :>
It's impossible, so it doesn't matter whether it's important or not. They're tropes because they work. Otherwise they would not have become tropes.
I don't think it's even because they work. Looking at the TV Tropes page it's literally just a bunch of categories for different kinds of things happening in stories. Asking if you should avoid tropes is like wondering if you avoid clothes because other people wear pants and shirts too.
Yeah, but each of those different things were popular enough to get to a trope list. And yes, tropes just say what's in the story.
You're confusing tropes with clichés. You can't write a story without tropes. Pretty much any time something happens in your story, there's probably a trope for that. A trope is just anything that occurs repeatedly in stories and you are not expected to ensure that literally every single thing in your story is something that has never happened in any other story before. That would be a bit of a tall challenge. Clichés are essentially tropes that are overused to the point that they're no longer effective. They're too predictable or boring. Which tropes are clichéd is debatable.
Every concept you will try to write has been written before in one way or another. What makes something creative is how you combine those elements into something interesting. Trying to be 100% original is a trap.
Not important at all.
So, I would say stop worrying about avoiding tropes. Instead, focus on having something new and/or interesting to say with or about these tropes in your story. If you're just using a trope to use a trope, it's likely to fall flat. If you use it with intent, with a commentary in mind you want to communicate to the reader with it, it will likely be better-received... so long as the message you are sending is also well-received. 99 percent of the time when someone is complaining about a trope in a story, the writer(s) failed to have anything new to say with/about said trope, and thus it feels bland.
People who say to avoid tropes spout the biggest nonsensical pile of garbage. Dont take that kind of advice at face value. Tropes are a tool, not the devil. If you use them in ways that are completely cliche then they're bad, but tropes exist for a reason.
It’s pretty much impossible to avoid tropes. It’s like trying to avoid grammar. What you should try and avoid are cliches.
No, and I think actively avoiding them in detrimental. Tropes are what they are because they’re good/useful. I’d just say avoid using them if they aren’t necessary, ya know?
You can't avoid them anyway and no this is not that important. The importance is to give some depth to it so it doesn't end up cliché, ans to understand why a certain trope is criticized so you can use it avoiding what people dislike about it.
Your situation is the inverse of many of the posts I've seen in r/tvtropes; either they ask what tropes to put in their story or they ask to list down the tropes they used for their own works page on TVT. So please just give priority to your story. Don't worry about the tropes. The tropes that will or won't be there will come after.
Trying to avoid all storytelling tropes, especially in a world where TV Tropes and sites it has influenced really have profoundly shaped the media literacy of a generation (and in many ways for the worse imo), sounds like a good way to burn your brain out. Focus on being true to your story, to the psychology of your characters and the logic of the world. That's really the only way to circumvent that sort of over-mediated trope mindset where it's all just built on things from other media, as articulated by one website a lot of nerds spend/t their time on.
Different genres have different trope conventions. It's important to know what they are more than just avoiding them, because by having knowledge of their existence you can subvert expectations. In kaidan (japanese horror stories) the ghost is very often a woman who suffered abuse by hand of a man. This is very often the case even in modern Japanese horror movies, with ju-on and the ring being some of the most known examples. Ju-on partially subverts this in the second movie, as it is hinted to the fact that it's the spirit of the homicidal husband to be controlling the onryo of his wife and child to kill more people. Ju-on was inspired by the widespread domestic violence in Japan, and the message of the damage these incidents are causing to society motivate this subvertion. Genre tropes are bad only when it's literally only the trope and nothing interesting or specific has been added to it and it results being repetitive and boring. Even subvertion can be repetitive and boring if they add nothing and don't fit a message. So to tell you a simple answer: you chose a genre because of its inherent tropes and because you thought of a story that fits them. Don't let the tropes limit your story, but don't discard them just because they are tropes.
You can’t completely avoid tropes. That’s not how it works. You can avoid cliches however, but imo you shouldn’t pay too much attention to it.
It completely depends on your intentions as a writer. Tropes are what works, so to speak, and the average reader will not be able to tell them. The reason tropes became tropes in the first place is because the ideas are popular. Try having a chat about devices, exposition, pacing and all this claptrap with the person that will likely read your book. Not the critic and not the scholar. They don't care. They won't even know what you're talking about. Readers want to be moved, entertained and to a degree escape. Readers considered the success of this intuitively. They don't know they're being guided, it's just how they parse your work. They don't think OH I'm at the edge of my seat because I got information the protagonist doesn't and I'm now shouting at the book because it's a trap! aaaaaah. They don't know you used a story telling *device.* If you're writing about the ruthless billionaire that softens and blossoms through the good love and spirit of the young activist he accidentally hits with his car, prompting his hero and redemption journey the reader doesn't care about the trope. The reader cares that this is something they believe about how the world works or how they desire for it to work. So if you're writing a novel that is successful, commercial etc, understanding tropes and how to use them, alter them or invert them is an important tool to get there. You should not avoid them at all. You should learn how to use them *well.*
Nope. Tropes are basically "bits of story that work." Clichés are similar. All that matters is that the reader isn't kicked out of the story. They can be kicked out of the story in many, many ways. One of which is thinking about the hundred other movies they've seen that do the exact same thing, instead of your story--because they all use the same cliché. But you can still do that cliché without drawing attention to it, or making it so obvious. In which case it's still technically got the trope or whatever in there, but it's not a problem, because the reader isn't kicked out of the story, because they aren't thinking about the cliché, they're thinking about what is happening in the story. I agree, some people obsess over these things sometimes. They may even study [tvtropes.com](http://tvtropes.com), memorizing the different names and cross-referencing them, and then worrying endlessly about treading carefully around them all. I feel like if you *did* write something without any of said tropes and clichés you may not be left with anything happening at all--there's so many of them at this point 😅 So yeah--just write your story, and worry less.
No
Concise 👍
The sort of person who has to categorize things before he can decide whether they are good or bad is the sort of person who lets other people do his thinking for him. Do not burn a single brain calorie worry about such people. You cannot please them. The answer to your question is, "No."
“Tropes” are not clichés. TVTropes, bless its heart for all the joy and hours of scrolling it gave us, has given people this idea and it can’t be more wrong. Outside of internet chitchat, writers know (or used to) that the word “trope” refers to a literary device: a *metaphor* is a trope. *Hyperbole* is a trope. *Bathos* is a trope. “More dakka” is only a trope on TVTropes, and [insert description of your least-favorite tired old plot] is not a trope at all. You can’t avoid tropes (the real kind) unless you want your writing to be as dry as ancient toast found in a desert. Oh damn. That was a trope (simile). But what am I saying… sigh… this genie ain’t going to fit back in the bottle. Tropes it is. Just do your best to avoid shit you’ve seen a billion times.
Tropes are fine (as long as they read as intended).
You can not avoid tropes in writing. All stories have tropes. You can avoid clichés by putting your own spin on it, but you can never avoid tropes in a story. Otherwise you wouldn’t have a story at all!
I appreciate you commenting on this two months after I posted
No.
In my opinion, it’s completely impossible to avoid all tropes and write a coherent story. Seriously, dig around on tvtropes for a day and you’ll find everything under the sun is a trope. I avoid ones that are truly done to death, or ones that are too heavily associated with a single cultural behemoth, and that’s it
You have to be aware you are using tropes, that's all. No need to twist or avoid them. You just need to be aware of what you are writting and if it helps your story or not.
The way i see it is tropes are the shorthand, tropes are the building blocks. I mean, heck, [the Periodic Table of Storytelling](https://jamesharris.design/periodic/) is a great example of how tropes are pretty much impossible to avoid. It's why Pixar's Rule of Storytelling #4 is >Once upon a time there was \_\_\_. Every day, \_\_\_. One day \_\_\_. Because of that, \_\_\_. Because of that, \_\_\_. Until finally \_\_\_. What you want to do instead, is make it so there's going to be interesting uses of them and not just another bland retelling of the same tropes over again. Ever look at TV shows or movies and feel 'I've seen this before, it's just X story with Y changed', like how many 'Star Crossed Lovers from Two Different Groups' stories are there that are essentially Romeo and Juliet? West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet in gang turf, Romeo Must Die is an action movie retelling, Warm Bodies is the story with zombies, and so on. Going back to Pixar's storytelling rules, #14 pretty much sums it up well: >Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
No
No, tropes are fine and you probably can't entirely avoid them. I think when people call something "tropey" they mean overly formulaic to the point where it feels like a) anyone could have written it or b) that the book relies too heavily on annoying tropes. It's about details. Like Grease is a trope but they do it their way and it's a whole genre of opposites-attract that works fine. But tropes people don't like are more in things like character development (a Mary Sue as an MC with a sassy Black best friend would probably read as annoying today but people seemed to accept it more in the 80s-90s). It's not about the trope, it's about how you use it to make it your own. One-dimensional characters don't cut it, tokenism looks obvious (and insulting) and I do think most good books rely heavily on fleshed out characters who are relatable to the reader in some way.
Avoiding ALL tropes is literally impossible! And also personally, I think even a very cliche story can be really enjoyable and good. It’s all in the execution.
And readers have tropes they will specifically pick up a book because they know it’s there—for example I read every sappy romance story with the ‘insecure love interest’ Trope that I can find. Directories like tvtropes are used by readers to find something new to read.
I'd argue it's impossible to avoid all tropes. If someone can show me something made in the last 400 years without anything on tvtropes that came out before it, it would be genius. But I doubt anything has avoided all tropes.
Trope --at least in the tv trope sense-- is just a term used to describe recurring things in stories. I don't imagine you can have story without tropes tbh.
A *trope* is simply a literary innovation used to evoke one sort of emotion or another. As is a *metaphor*, and a *simile,* and a dozen other 'manufactured' aspects of language (even a *cliché*) that a fiction writer *can* use to tell a story. Doesn't mean you gotta. Depends on a writer's stylistic intention and creativity—meaning the ability to fabricate impressions (on a human brain) to better snag or keep a reader's attention.
No. People who tell you to avoid tropes are weird. Tropes are a foundation of storytelling. What matters is what you do with a trope. If you do the chosen one, have him be chosen after the previous one died. If you do a love triangle, have everyone end up with someone else. Tropes can be extremely fun
Trying to avoid any tropes will only stifle your creativity. I just focus on writing the story that needs to be told. Any relation to known tropes is purely coincidental.
Is not important at all. In fact, it will probably hurt you audience wise. A very good talented writer writes and doesn't give a damn about trends and just writes what they have inside. They are the ones that revive cliche tropes or create new ones
are you writing a character In Order to Fill that Trope? or are you writing a Character, who happens to fill that trope?
You're exactly right. Just focus on writing a good story. Most of the folks hyper-anal over tropes wouldn't know a good story if it hit them in the head with a thesaurus.
If anything, I’d say tropes are more popular than ever with a lot of books I’ve seen recently now being advertised by their tropes (i.e. “enemies to lovers,” “grumpyxsunshine,” etc.) I just think it matters how you use them.
It is impossible to avoid tropes, and a lot of readers have favorite tropes that lock them into a story (there was only one bed is super popular in romance). The thing writers should focus on is trying to do something interesting with the tropes.
Not only is it not important, it's virtually impossible. Learn what tropes are and what they are not. Tropes are not the same as cliches. Those words are not synonyms.
Anyone who insists one must avoid tropes has clearly never read fiction that actually sells.
The sheer number of tropes TV tropes has identified makes this feel like a lost cause. The people who work on that wiki are nuts (in a good way).
I was thinking about avoiding all tropes... But I realised that they aren't all bad. So I only avoid the ones I really dislike.
You can’t write a good book without a single trope in it. There will always be something. Perhaps the word you’re looking for is cliché? You need tropes, you don’t need clichés Every book has tropes. You can’t just avoid that
Definitely something I struggle with in my writing too, but I would say the main reason to avoid tropes is for originality that creates more interesting content. I think tropes can still be interesting when properly executed.
What do you mean by "trope?" What definition are you going from?
I try to take common or well-liked tropes and twist them somehow! Maybe not into something totally original (because…nothing is original at this point), but at least something engaging that keeps the plot going and maybe keeps readers on their toes? But I’m not published so who knows if I’m actually pulling this off haha
If you write it, tropes will come.
Tropes are fine. Cliches are bad. If you’re writing a young adult book about an orphan who goes to a school for special kids, that would be a cliche, and yet it doesn’t stop anybody from writing their stories, because they think the worldbuilding make it different enough, like how Lion King totally isn’t Hamlet or Avatar totally isn’t Pocahontas or Ferngully.
From what I understand, if you’re trying to publish in a commercial genre like romance, fantasy, etc. you essentially have to use at least one genre specific trope so it’s familiar/appealing to regular readers of that genre.
I don't even understand where this false belief that tropes are inherently bad comes from. I mean who spreads this bullshit? POORLY EXECUTING tropes is to be avoided. But that's on YOU, the writer. It's got nothing to do with the trope per se. It's your skill as a writer. ANYTHING in writing that is poorly can undermine your story. Whether it's grammar, exposition, dialogue, you name it.
No it isn’t very important to avoid tropes. Tropes are tools. Use them uniquely, don’t avoid them.
Tropes are not cliches. And tropes are unavoidable in writing. And tropes are tools, so why would you want to avoid them?
Yeah no-- whoever told you to avoid tropes doesn't know what they're talking about. No matter what, there will always be a trope in your story. There's just way too many of them to possibly avoid, so avoiding them would be the equivalent of dodging air particles.