Many writers – this one included – feel constrained by advice on percentage-based story structure, genre expectations, and tropes. However, sometimes these constraints can be used to our advantage – or at least not to our disadvantage. In a guest post on Writers Helping Writers, Jami Gold offers advice on using tropes to strengthen your story.
What do we mean by tropes? These are common themes or story devices, and particularly certain elements that are common or expected in genre fiction. The “chosen one” is a common fantasy trope. A thriller will almost always use the “countdown to disaster” trope and may rely on “spouse/child in danger” to generate tension. When used badly or too often, these elements become predicable or even silly.
The good news is that you can probably avoid many of them. Your fantasy novel does not require a “chosen one” and your spy doesn’t need to rescue their child. Other tropes – such as the “double cross” or “coming of age moment” – can be customized to your characters and settings and therefore still feel fresh.
Avoiding clichés and predictability means you have to do your homework. You must develop your characters and settings, establish story stakes and motivation, and create authentic emotional connection and tension. You cannot rely on the tropes to carry the story.
But can tropes actually strengthen your story? “Tropes and their patterns tap into universal experiences and emotions,” Gold says. “Readers recognize and are familiar with the patterns of those experiences and emotions from other stories they’ve been exposed to, even if they’ve never come across them in real life. With that common background, tropes can help readers instantly grasp complex relationships, emotional flips, and storytelling turns.”
Gold recommends using a trope as a shortcut to introduce a character, such as the “precocious child.” The reader has seen this type of character before and therefore brings a set of expectations to the page. Gold then suggests leaning into and expanding the trope to deepen the characterization and making the character more relatable. For example, the child may be an outsider or struggling with a secret. Finally, subvert the trope and the reader’s expectations. In the case of the precocious child, perhaps the child isn’t as smart as he believes or can still be manipulated by adults.
Gold also suggests altering the context of the trope, revering roles, and layering tropes to create something unique. “Strengthening our story with — or despite — tropes is less about the specifics of subverting them and more about how we can take something potentially cliché and use it to add depth and development to our story,” she writes.
