The Joy of Playing with Tropes

This month, I had a very short dragon story published in Contrary, one of my biggest literary bylines. I love dragon stories. I used to think they weren’t “serious literature,” and when I submitted for awards, I’d send pieces about death set in the “real world.” Meanwhile, I’d write secret stories about magical creatures and realms. I’ve since learned that this separation between “serious” writing and “fun” writing is artificial and counterproductive. Life is short! Write the things you love!

Just like we crave certain foods, readers can get cravings for specific types of books (and writers might crave writing them). Sometimes you just want to read about fake dating, an intrepid sleuth, or a magic sword. Cliches? Not necessarily! Storytelling thrives on tropes, and we all have favorites. Christopher contends that there are only seven basic story plots, with others citing three or six. Within variations of these stories, motifs repeat themselves. Popular motifs can become tropes.   

Bad storytelling and stereotypical use of tropes can give them a bad name. Think of how many Disney villains have been given queer coding, with certain mannerisms being shorthand for characterizing them as as evil. And books in the same genre can sometimes draw on tropes to the point of predictability. But while some uses of tropes are actively harmful or simply tedious, tropes themselves are valuable storytelling tools. 

It’s all in the execution. As a writer, you’re telling your story. You get to make the decisions about what tropes you use, how, and why. You can use favorite tropes as inspiration, the way Yoon Ha Lee did when writing Ninefox Gambit (“I’d been nosing about the TV Tropes website, specifically my favorite pages, Moral Event Horizon, Chessmaster, and Magnificent Bastard”). If you’ve run into writer’s block, you might try using tropes as prompts and mixing them up in unexpected ways, the way Jim Butcher did in the Codex Alera series, accepting a challenge to combine Pokemon and a lost Roman legion! If you really, really want to read a story about, say, found family and flying saucers, that might be a good reason to write one.   

Here’s another important context where authors engage with tropes: when there’s a type of story that they love, but they don’t see people like themselves in stories like that. Recently publishers have been making strides towards diversifying their catalogues, with increasing attention being paid to “own voices” stories. To give two recent YA examples, you can now read a Black Cinderella story (Cinderella is Dead by Kaylynn Bayron) or a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a contemporary Latinx context (Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera). Are there any tropes you feel compelled by but excluded from? Try writing yourself (or someone like you) in.

Tropes can comment on contemporary situations. I recently read Nevermoor, a popular middle-grade fantasy by Jessica Townsend, and found it rich in both tropes (the Gothic manor, the eccentric mentor) and uniqueness (the giant cat housekeeper, the umbrella-based public transit system). Most powerfully, the young main character, Morrigan, is brought from an unsafe country to a safe one, and pursued by police who call her “an illegal.” This pointed comment on immigration speaks to the fictional context while reflecting on real-life issues.   

Who gets to fall in love? What makes a person exceptional? What skills solve a mystery? What does horror look like? Who gets to travel to another world, and why?

That’s my challenge to you this month, writers: Play with some tropes that intrigue you! Don’t be afraid to get weird and hyper specific. And if you like, let me know what emerges.