A literary trope is the use of figurative language – via word, phrase, or even
an image – for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. The word trope has also come to be used for
describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés
in creative words. – Thank
you Wikipedia
Most
everyone already knows what a trope is even if they’ve never heard that word
associated with the definition. These people just classify everything under the
word cliché. There are things that were consistent in different stories that
you could just see coming. Female protagonist has hot, straight best friend and
there’s a cute new boy in town: love triangle much? It’s easy to confuse tropes
as mere clichés seeing as how clichés fall under the definition of a trope.
Hopefully this post will clear up some confusion.
First
off, I was exactly the kind of person that made this confusion before I went to
college. I knew I wanted to be a writer because it was the only thing I enjoyed
besides reading really (and there’s no good reading majors in college). College
was kind of necessary for me. I know a lot of people are naturally brilliant at
writing (coughlindsaycough), but college taught me a lot of things that would
have taken me a lot longer to pick up on my own. Tropes are one of those
things.
I
knew what tropes were of course, I just hadn’t heard the word used before. I
mean come on, I was a major TV addict before going to college and losing every
second of time I ever had. But tropes are just clichés, right? Why would they
be important other than to learn to avoid them? Well they’re way more than
that. Readers expect certain things from a forbidden romance trope story that
they wouldn’t expect from a twins trope story (aside from the romance bit which
is a given). While it’s great to break from tropes and write original works,
there are just some things that will always stick with a trope. It’s why it is
a trope and not just a cliché.
Clichés
are things that are never really going to change. They’re a singular moment in
the story where the reader or viewer is like, “yawn! Been there, done that!”
Tropes are more overarching though. Like the twins trope. When one says they’re
writing a book about twins, it’s easy to come up with all the ways in which
they could write about that topic. These are clichés, and they’ve obviously
been done a lot. But the story isn’t about that one storyline where the twins
switch places which is a little cliché; it’s about everything it could be.
Tropes kind of encompass that. They’re all the ways in which you can adapt the
twins into the story. There are many ways to do it. Not just one way, a.k.a. a cliché
way.
I
had a teacher a couple of years ago (the amazing Dr. Jennifer Lynn Barnes), who
actually keeps a list of all the tropes she loves, and I think that’s amazing.
Tropes tell you what you love to read, and thus what you inherently love to
write. Tropes are so important because they will help you write your book if
you know what trope you’re going for. It will guide you toward your major plot
points. “Guide” is the operative word. Write original pieces of work by all
means, but tropes will make the first draft process that much easier because
they show you what is needed for that trope and where exactly you can deviate
to wow readers and make your book that much more original.
Being
that I’m an avid reader and writer, I’ve decided to follow in the footsteps of
one of my most beloved teachers and writers, and create my own list of favorite
tropes during all of my reading and reviewing for this blog. I’m pretty excited
to start this little side project and I can’t wait to figure out all the tropes
I adore that I never really knew about! You can check out my tropes list above
in my navigation bar, or here’s the LINK if you’re a little lazy like me.
XOXO Tia
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