3 Ways to Avoid Writing Stereotypes

Although Camp NaNoWriMo has wrapped up for the year, this doesn’t mean that you have to stop writing until November! Today, participant Bethany Meyer gives you some advice on how to avoid overused tropes, stereotypes, and clichés in your writing:

Let’s face it: some ideas are just overused. Ancient, bearded mentors; minions who are dumb as dirt; love triangles—some things have been used so many times that they’ve lost their oomph. They were cool to start out with, but because they were cool, everyone started using them. And now they’ve been used so many times that they just don’t have the same shine that they used to, and they’ve sunk to the status of stereotypes, tropes, and clichés.

The last thing that I ever want to hear people say about my novels is that they’re stereotypical. And not only that, but I don’t want to realize for myself that anything I write is stereotypical. To me, this is one of the worst possible crimes to commit when writing a novel.

So, in order to avoid either of these, let’s talk about a couple ways to knock the tropes out of your novels. I can think of three basic ways to do this:

1. Think about where your characters come from. 

Think about who you based your characters off of, what gave you the idea for the story, why you gave the villain that motivation, etc. Have you included any ideas that have been done a thousand times before, like the Chosen One, or the dark and brooding hero? Look carefully: some of the most common tropes sometimes go unnoticed (Hint: for some reason everyone sets their fantasy novel in medieval Europe). 

If you find any worn-out concepts, now’s the time to think about how you could put a new spin on them or show them in a different light. For example, perhaps the dark and brooding hero has an excellent sense of humor, or the ancient mentor is actually a teenager in disguise. Brand-new ideas like this always make me want to jump up and down in delight, possibly while squealing with joy.

2. You can always make changes.

Even if you’re still in the middle of the first draft, you can still make changes. If you want to change something while you’re in the middle of the draft, just stop everything, make a note of what’s changing (for example, the assassin is actually working for the butcher) and keep going as if it was like that from the beginning. That way when you come back through in edits, you only have to edit up to the place where you made the change. I’ve done this before and it worked well enough for me.

3. Use your edits to make things feel new.

Speaking of editing, that brings me to my third method of getting rid of stereotypes and tropes. Since we are now past July’s NaNoWriMo and your first draft is probably already done, you could make any necessary changes in editing. Come on, folks, the first draft is over! Now is prime time for editing! Give the first draft a few weeks or even a few months to stew around in your brain, then come back and make it even better. Change up any worn out character types, shake up the setting if necessary, anything you feel needs to be varied in order to make the novel unique.

But! Keep in mind that tropes and clichés aren’t always bad. In moderation, they can be fine. When portrayed in a completely new way, they can be extraordinary. And don’t forget that in the end, everything’s been done before. The only difference is, this time, it’s you who gets to do it.

In the words of Charles de Lint: “Don’t forget—no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”

Bethany Meyer is an aspiring novelist who believes that keeping a light tone is the key to writing likeable stories. She has been writing for most of her life and has only started to get into indie noveling recently She just started her blog, Scribbled Fiction, in January, and is currently in the throes of editing her NaNoWriMo project from two years ago. 

Top image  licensed under Creative Commons from derya on Flickr.