So You’re an Assassin too?
[image error]Tropes. This evil word used in writing circles describes all the types of stories that are old and overdone. I honestly think that we need to stop worrying about tropes for the most part. In the eighties, tons of stories started at an inn or tavern because, well, that is a logical meeting place for medieval strangers. Then you had the stack of stories in which a farm boy becomes a hero. We never did get tired of elves, dwarves, and orcs… until we did.
Recently, in sending short stories to fantasy magazines, I have seen a long list of tropes they don’t want: no zombies, no taverns, no werewolves, no mermaids, no cat stories, no vampires, cloning, and no “I was only dreaming” endings. OK. I have no problem with that because some magazines actually do want those.
Then I see those who make fun of dragon books, but no one takes that too seriously. After all, what is fantasy without magic, dragons, and such?
One trope, though, has started to make me roll my eyes to the point that I am sure my eyes will get stuck there eventually. Assassins. Check out any list of fantasy books published in the last five years, and I promise at least 80% have an assassin as one of the main characters: protagonist, villain, or supporting character. This must derive from the fact that being an assassin is necessary to being a real bad-ass, as though no other character qualifies. Forget the warrior, the thief, the trickster, the adventurer, the rogue, or the knight. We are done with pirates, spies, really good heroes, or clever survivors.
Nope. You only need to be an assassin because stabbing people in the back shows honor and real talent.
Did you see my eyes rolling again? Got to stop that.
And why does it take ten years full time to learn to stab someone? Why is it always orphans who become assassins? Is revenge really that great of a motivator for a career that you can never retire from?
I am honestly really tired of assassin stories. How about a really good guy would gets into trouble and then back out again? Then again, watch me find a really great assassin novel to read next week.
Rolled my eyes again. Blah!
Why am I ranting about assassins? They apparently sell books and that is precisely the point about getting rid of this war against tropes. I really would like to stop seeing people complain about genre books using genre tropes. Instead, we need to focus on good writing and storytelling. Part of the reason fantasy works is because there are tropes we are all looking for. We want magic, heroes, far away places, unusual creatures, and world-ending conflicts.
In fact, the majority of fantasy is built on one kind of story arc called the hero’s journey. It is kind of a there and back again sort of story arc. The hero learns of a problem, travels to solve it, returns a new person. There, now you know the plot of most fantasy books. Does this mean you’re going to stop reading them? Nope.
As both a writer and reader, what I long for is an origonal idea within the genre’s tropes. A write isn’t inventing new things, but combining old things in new ways. We scribe our real experiences with some magic and a little luck. Fantasy gives us great stories about things that we already love.
So if you want to be an assassin, so what? I’ll be a princess mermaid pirate, and we can just fly away on our dragons as happy as can be. Just don’t judge my trope.
