Terrible Tropes

Hello, everyone! Today I want to talk about tropes. What is a trope? The dictionary says:

A word or expression used in a figurative sense
Merriam-Webster

Now, this doesn’t seem like anything too bad, right? This is going to be something we see in a lot of literature, virtually all of it, anywhere, from any genre. It’s neither bad nor good; it just exists. So let’s look at the Urban Dictionary’s definition of ‘trope’:

An overused, nearly meaningless word worn out by pretentious twits, much like paradigm. See hackneyed and vacuous.
Urban Dictionary

There we go! That’s the definition I was looking for. This is what I want to discuss today – what are some terrible tropes you’ve seen, and why? You can angle this as a reader, or as a writer. Next week, we’re going to follow up on this post and discuss when tropes can be good, and which ones we like.

Another definition of tropes that people are more familiar with, is called the cliche.

My terrible tropes list

Everyone’s idea of what makes a terrible trope is subjective. Some people say hey, don’t pick on tropes, not all of them are bad, right? Yes, that’s true! Some of the tropes we see in everyday films, books etc. are beloved, but – that’s for our next post on tropes.

Today, I’d like to share my list of tropes that really “get my goat”, that I get tired of seeing these days. Of course, this won’t be all, and there will be exceptions when I like the tropes; these are just ones I’ve noticed lately that have bothered me:

When a regular-but-pretty sortof girl falls in love with a mystical, “badass”, might-be-evil man or young man (see Twilight, which I think is responsible for this ongoing trope; and even A Court of Thorns and Roses, which I liked, has it).
The parents in a lot of fantasy stories are either absent, dead, or disappointing. Why? Can’t we get an adventure happening for someone with a family? You’d think it would up the stakes.
Toxic families with one good person in the family – usually said “bad boy” love interest, who looks evil at first but ends up being good, and is of course stunningly handsome
The Chosen One – let’s get real, this one has been realllly overly used, I’d like to see something different nowadays! (See: Harry Potter, Eye of the World, etc.)

Literally called the Chosen One, if not jokingly, later in the series

Tips to avoid writing tropes

Here are some excellent tips, which I’ll share the link for more, from Writer’s Digest (a great writing magazine):

Resist the lure of the sensational

I love this! I think this is such a great point! I see a lot of new writers do this, where they want to write something extremely dramatic, like someone getting killed, right in their first scene. But instead the writing ends up really cliche or wooden, and just makes the reader cringe. Writing about difficult topics that you don’t know takes a lot of research, talking to people who have experienced those traumas or events, and avoiding what has been written over and over about those topics.

Tell the story only you can tell

It might be really tempting to dive into writing about the Titanic, or some other topic that really interests you, but the fact remains that even if you’re super interested in a subject, that doesn’t mean you can write well about it. You still might bump into the obstacle of writing tropes. So what to do? They say ‘write what you know’ is cliche these days, is old-hat, and there’s some intriguing debate on the topic out there. But the point that this bullet point is trying to make, I think, is – write what makes you feel a lot, write so that the words leap off the page and ring with emotion, rather than being dull and overly used.

Perhaps another post on writing what you know is due, since there’s such a debate about it online! I think once I write about tropes I like in my next post, I’ll tackle that old adage of “write what you know” next. I also discuss is a little bit in this old post.

Here: article on cliches, from Writer’s Digest