Introduction to Tropes

There are four basic elements so natural to the medium of storytelling that they are present in virtually any form of media by default. They are not, strictly speaking, absolutely necessary, but leaving them out tends to create either a rather poor work or one that is particularly surreal.

To begin with, a story has some form of Conflict , whether it be Man Against Other Men (or Women), Man Against Nature, or Man Against Himself. Though there can be four more (God or Fate, Society, Machines, and Being Caught in the Middle), generally speaking "Man" is any defeatable entity and "Nature" can be defined as anything that must be survived or changed rather than defeated, thereby encompassing these others.

Next, the Plot is the story condensed to a single descriptive word or phrase, such as The Quest, Forbidden Love, or The Fish Out of Water. Depending upon the definition of terms and how literally they are taken, there can be as few as Seven Basic Plots, as many as Twenty Master Plots, or even a list of dozens.

The Motif is the theme of the story condensed to a single descriptive word or phrase, such as Cinderella, The Uriah Gambit, or The Animal Savior. Plots and Motifs often overlap, but they can also be mixed and matched to create a bewildering variety of storylines.

Some people would also include other elements such as setting and characters and genre to this list, but more often than not the nature of these elements are closely tied to both plot and motif, to the extent that they are usually dictated by the latter.

The fourth element, and the point of this series of posts, is the Trope . It is a storytelling convention that uses a recognizable pattern to send a specific message. Like the other three elements, tropes can be used to analyze a story, but generally haven't been until comparatively recently, because tropes were first formulated as criticisms. In fact, people still tend to think of tropes as cliches that are used as crutches by lazy creators who cannot or will not be more creative. In reality, however, tropes only become cliches when they become intrusive and disrupt the story. Even tropes normally associated with bad writing, such as Discredited Tropes or tropes that invoke Sturgeon's Law, can and have been used successfully in many acclaimed works.

Ultimately, Tropes Are Just Tools . Creators use them to control audience expectations. They allow creators to convey ideas quickly without having to describe them in detail; in other words, they act as a convenient shorthand. They can subvert "show don't tell" in the same way that metaphors do. In fact, the idea behind minimalist writing states that anything which does not advance the plot should be eliminated. So using a trope in place of a paragraph of description adheres to this ideal, especially if the trope can get the idea across more clearly.

The point is, Tropes Are Not Bad. This is because ultimately There Is Nothing New Under the Sun. Every story is influenced by what came before it; it's virtually unavoidable. The fact that there are only a few forms of conflict and plotting should make this abundantly clear, and while there are many more tropes, there are many, many, many more stories, so tropes will end up being reused regardless. What matters is how they are used, how many are used, and how often they are used.

It should also be pointed out that many tropes are very old, dating as far back as Sumerian mythology, while others were developed by the Greeks and Romans, Medieval writers and bards, Shakespeare, and the Victorians, to name a few. So tropes have been around for a long time, and have been used and reused countless times in works throughout history. Heck, even Homer used tropes!

As well, Almost Every Trope Has a Silver Lining; that is, it can create highly regarded and memorable moments in a story, even if it is normally reviled as cliche. Even if a trope cannot be used in this way, it can still be used honorably by way of subversion or parody.

At the very least, it is well to remember that Fiction Isn't Necessarily Supposed to be Realistic. Most people read fiction to temporarily escape from reality, not to be further immersed in it. "Unrealistic" tropes help to make that possible as long as they are not too outrageous or unexpected.

Besides, it's impossible to create a story without tropes. Even Finnegan's Wake , a story many people believe has no conflict, plot, or theme, nonetheless uses many tropes.

At the same time, it's important to keep in mind that Tropes Are Not Good. For one thing, All Tropes Can Be Used Badly and All Tropes Can Be Overused. Even those that everyone considers good.

For another, Just Because a Trope Is Realistic Doesn't Mean It's Good. The problem here is the audience is often so used to certain tropes that they expect to see them, and if something more realistic is substituted they tend to find that jarring because it defies their expectations. Such as the "fake" Scottish accent of a real Scottish actor, or the "unhistorical" Vikings that have no horns on their helmets. The point is that it is more important for a story to be believable than real, so Acceptable Breaks From Reality are permitted.

Finally, A Good Story Doesn't Need "Good" Tropes. It's not the presence of tropes that make a story good, so leaving them out doesn't make it bad. In other words, it may be impossible to create a story without using any tropes at all, but even basic tropes like The Hero or The Villain are not absolutely needed to make a good story.

The purpose of this series of posts is to list and discuss the tropes that appear in my stories. As such, by convention, any word or phrase that I present in bold is the name of a trope. Many tropes are Exactly What It Says On the Tin ; that is, the name states exactly what the trope is about. However, the names of many tropes are fairly obscure, so when necessary I will explain what the name means.

Many tropes are Unisex Tropes ; that is, they are either gender neutral or apply equally well to both sexes. However, some tropes are Always Male while others are Always Female . Even then, they can be Gender Inverted ; that is, force-applied to a member of the opposite sex. In that case, a woman that represents an Always Male trope is called a Distaff Counterpart , whereas a man that represents an Always Female trope is called a Spear Counterpart. Even so, some tropes cannot be Gender Flipped without creating ridiculous results. For example, there can be no Distaff Counterpart to the Carpet of Virility , or a Spear Counterpart to Boobs of Steel , unless Played For Laughs.

As a final point, it is worth mentioning that many tropes are Truth In Television . This is when a trope actually reflects something that happens in real life. Even so, such a trope can still be used in a manner that is totally unrealistic. If people nonetheless still accept it as real, it is either due to TV Never Lies or The Coconut Effect . The latter is based on the use of half coconut shells to simulate the sound of horse-hooves back in the days of radio. People have come to so thoroughly accept that sound as authentic that they will reject actual recordings of trotting horses as unrealistic.

Next week, I will describe how to Play With Tropes. No, not like that.