I enjoyed reading the thread that contains the questionnaire regarding Fantasy tropes. That got me thinking. It might be fun to read about tropes in other genres. Here's a totally not exhaustive list of connections that reveal tropes. And Happy New Year to you all! http://www.mindyklasky.com/index.php/for-writers/romance-tropes/ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanceNovelTropes (historical romance tropes) https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-characteristic-tropes-and-plot-templates-used-in-detective-fiction https://hunterswritings.com/2012/10/12/elements-of-the-psychological-thriller-mystery-suspense-andor-crime-fiction-genres/ https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/493284965414048064/ (YA fiction tropes) http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HistoricalFiction (useful links within the article) http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAWarStory https://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-134092.html (genre Westerns)
It's interesting to me the way tropes are viewed in different circles. The original article in the Fantasy tropes thread pretty clearly considers tropes as things to be avoided or at least subverted, and some of the links above seem to take a similar approach. But others, like the first one from a Romance novelist who actually lists her titles next to the included tropes, makes them seem more like a feature rather than a flaw. You want to read a certain trope? Here you go! And I know of at least one Romance publisher (Entangled) that is quite explicit about wanting tropes in its books. They clearly think readers are looking for these themes and want to provide them. For me, as a reader? I think it depends on the tropes. There are some I hate, some I really enjoy (at least when they're done well).
Tropes? For my specific genre I don't think of them as tropes but just as thoughts to be aware of. That's food for a lot of thought, so thank you for posting this!
Yes, absolutely. A trope is not a cliché. Tropes are what readers expect when they pick up a book in their preferred genre. I found some of these tropes quite intriguing. I immediately started combining some of them in my head. I don't write genre stories, but these tropes can be inspirational.
Totally agree with you here, and from a personal standpoint. I used to be one of those who said trope the way one says any dirty word, but lately I've been reexamining my prejudices. In the attempt to explain to someone my WIP#2, I came across the listing for The Lost Colony trope, which so perfectly encapsulates the backdrop of my story. Reading through it and reading other examples of said trope was illuminating insomuch as the expected smaller dynamics of the trope, the ways it's been refashioned and refreshed, and frankly, it allowed me to let go of my concern and apprehension over the tropiness of the trope.
As somebody who's made a TVTropes page for one of my own stories Tropes are simply descriptions of what you did in the story. The only way not to use tropes would be to not have any characters, not have any setting, not have any plot, not have any dialogue... If you can write a summary of the book, then you can make a list of tropes that you used in your book. As a matter of fact, you did I also love TVTropes.org specifically because it's more effective at finding you new reading/viewing material than any online store's "Customers who bought _ also bought ..." If you like one of the concepts of a story, then you can look it up and see what other stories did the same thing. If you're just WikiWalking for fun, you can fall in love with story concepts that you've never even seen before, but which are described in such a way that you now want to find stories that use them. Maybe the first time you come across a story on a trope page, the quick blurb doesn't make it more compelling than the rest of the stories listed under the same trope (often a very long list), but then you start seeing the same work show up as using numerous tropes that you like from other works.
