On Tropes
Clichés, Inversions, and Hamburgers
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We talked about the "Storytelling Store" yesterday, where all the storytellers walk the genre aisles and pick ideas to put in their shopping carts. Within the language of creative writing, the ideas on the shelves are called "tropes". They are any storytelling element or convention that can be identified, and stories are made out of them. Things as big as "this story has a slow beginning, an upsetting middle, and a happy ending" and as small as "a character tries to punch someone, but their target has longer arms and just holds their forehead while they swing wildly without being able to reach" are all tropes.
Another related word is that of a "cliché", which is a trope that is some common and oblivious that it has become stale. All clichés are tropes, but not every trope is a cliché. It is absolutely okay to use the same basic ideas as other people have many times before. You wouldn't look at a hamburger and complain, "ugh, this one is probably made out of beef and a bun like all the other ones I've ever had, and let me guess, there's probably going to be some ketchup, mustard, and relish on it!", would you? (I mean, you might be a vegetarian or not like mustard, but you get my point.)
Humans like feeling that a story is just predictable enough, and will have the things that they like seeing if they open them up. If a writer told me that they were going to serve me a burger, I'm already imagining what it's going to taste like. If I take a bite and it's got a slice of tangy cheese I wasn't expecting, that's a nice surprise, but if it's just a pile of ground cinnamon and horse radish inside the bun, that's going too far. You want your story to be at least what was expected, and maybe a little unexpectedly different, but not wildly so.
So how do you use tropes? Well, in a way, you already know how to if you've ever read a story before. You can just take the different building blocks of any story you like apart, then build your own thing with them.
You can also invert tropes. When you introduce an idea, and the reader feels like they know where this is going to go, and then it goes somewhere else instead, the feeling of surprise can spice up your stale cliché into a fresh new taste. To use the example above when the taller character puts their hand on the smaller character's forehead to hold them at arm's length, the shorter character can stop swinging and just reach up and grab the taller character by the wrist. This makes your story less cliché and is a great way to show that the smaller character may be small but should still be taken seriously (and showing things about your character is always more satisfying than just saying that they are). But be careful not to make your inversions too spicy, or you run the risk of serving your readers the aforementioned ground cinnamon and horse radish hamburger!