Writing Dr. Cliche or how I learned to stop worrying and Love tropes

MadmanRB

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In modern story writing I am seeing this huge trend in younger writers who do everything they can to avoid tropes.
Trope avoidance is an issue that can drive one mad too and leave stories feeling static or unsatisfactory.
This is because for many tropes = clichés, and it's rather sad when it happens.
But for me, I try to embrace the tropes of my chosen genre and have fun with it as once upon a time I desperately tried hard to avoid what I thought at the time were clichés but are really staples of whatever genre I write for.
If it's a murder mystery I embrace the cyanide or the knife, if its science fiction I embrace the spaceships and aliens.
To me a trope only becomes a cliché when it's not executed properly, I mean we all have seen the retirony trope played out to death though I actually have a story in mind where the main plot is the aforementioned retirony making the death more meaningful as we get to see their life up until they are killed off five days from retirement :D

Point is yes tropes can easily become a cliché but if you put effort into it then said cliché becomes a more valuable trope and actually mean something in your story.
 

lnv

✪ Well-Known Hypocrite
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In modern story writing I am seeing this huge trend in younger writers who do everything they can to avoid tropes.
Trope avoidance is an issue that can drive one mad too and leave stories feeling static or unsatisfactory.
This is because for many tropes = clichés, and it's rather sad when it happens.
But for me, I try to embrace the tropes of my chosen genre and have fun with it as once upon a time I desperately tried hard to avoid what I thought at the time were clichés but are really staples of whatever genre I write for.
If it's a murder mystery I embrace the cyanide or the knife, if its science fiction I embrace the spaceships and aliens.
To me a trope only becomes a cliché when it's not executed properly, I mean we all have seen the retirony trope played out to death though I actually have a story in mind where the main plot is the aforementioned retirony making the death more meaningful as we get to see their life up until they are killed off five days from retirement :D

Point is yes tropes can easily become a cliché but if you put effort into it then said cliché becomes a more valuable trope and actually mean something in your story.

I said this before and I will say this again. The biggest issue with tropes isn't the tropes themselves but due to them being tropes, we subconsciously take shortcuts with them in our thought process.

Take a sandwich, if you had to make one yourself, you would make it knowing what is in it or how it was made. But if it is already made lying in the fridge, most people would just simply grab it without paying attention what makes up the sandwich. Even those that do would do a quick casual look and go with it. Even more if you happen to eat a similar looking sandwich just the other day.

Tropes act in similar way. Since a lot of the though process of tropes have already been done by others. It is not uncommon for even experienced authors to let their guard down and include the trope without thinking it fully through of how it fits fully into their story.

This is precisely why you get things like ancient tombs that open once every 10,000 years opening up every Tuesday.

The key isn't to avoid tropes, tropes aren't a bad thing. What is most important is to deconstruct the trope and think it carefully of how it fits into your story, whether it will open up plot holes. Whether some things that are a given actually make no sense or etc. Even a simple thing can trip you up without even realizing it.
 

ArcadiaBlade

I'm a Lazy Writer, So What?
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Troupes are basically like food. Non-troupes are those you made with whatever ingredients you have and the taste depends on whether you made it right or not. The actual Troupes are store-bought foods that are already made by someone else and even if the structures are different, they basically taste the same.

You don't want to eat your food repeatedly so you always try to change the menu so your taste won't get stale. Thats how troupes are made. While it is easy to build using the same copy method, people will always grow bored of it that some use the same formula but change the ingredients, some change the structure while some made basically from scratch yet with the same materials with their own flavor added to it.
 

PhillisCreziles

﹤Once a Potato﹥
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I said this before and I will say this again. The biggest issue with tropes isn't the tropes themselves but due to them being tropes, we subconsciously take shortcuts with them in our thought process.

Take a sandwich, if you had to make one yourself, you would make it knowing what is in it or how it was made. But if it is already made lying in the fridge, most people would just simply grab it without paying attention what makes up the sandwich. Even those that do would do a quick casual look and go with it. Even more if you happen to eat a similar looking sandwich just the other day.

Tropes act in similar way. Since a lot of the though process of tropes have already been done by others. It is not uncommon for even experienced authors to let their guard down and include the trope without thinking it fully through of how it fits fully into their story.

This is precisely why you get things like ancient tombs that open once every 10,000 years opening up every Tuesday.

The key isn't to avoid tropes, tropes aren't a bad thing. What is most important is to deconstruct the trope and think it carefully of how it fits into your story, whether it will open up plot holes. Whether some things that are a given actually make no sense or etc. Even a simple thing can trip you up without even realizing it.
Yes, agreed.

To be honest, a writer should not attempt to avoid tropes at all cost, but instead they should utilize them correctly with the mindset of creating something new with those tropes.

Think of tropes as tools. Like any tool, you cannot just use and modify them without the knowledge of how they work. Additionally, tools will also change overtime and create new tools due to people improving or modifying on them on purpose or on accident.

A boring example, a saw is usually used to cut down trees. Then, over time some person invented the chainsaw to cut down trees much easier. And so on and so forth. Hypothetically speaking, you obviously wouldn't want to use a saw or a chainsaw to cut down rocks for the sake of cutting rocks in half because that was not what saws or chainsaws were made to do. That is unless you modified your saw or chainsaw to cut down rocks.

In case you couldn't grasp that analogy, here is what I meant. You cannot just use tropes without knowing how they work. Additionally, tropes will change over time or create new ones due to people improving or modifying them on purpose or on accident.

For this example I will use the romantic tsundere character trope. The tsundere character is usually a character who seems to have issues conveying their emotions to their love interest. (From what I've seen in good stories)This trope is supposed to be used on characters who have problems with expressing themselves and their emotions, perhaps due to a weakness(fear of rejection and stuff) or a trauma(maybe that tsundere character had an accident with a stage performance in the past).
Now if the tsundere character was put into a story, and started acting all tsundere for the sake of being a tsundere and to make character interactions more interesting, it may ruin the reader's experience as it may just draw them out of that story.
 

Jemini

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I said this before and I will say this again. The biggest issue with tropes isn't the tropes themselves but due to them being tropes, we subconsciously take shortcuts with them in our thought process.

YES! This, this, this, and ALL OF the this!

I think the absolute biggest culprit of this flaw has got to be cultivation novels. They don't even bother to explain what cultivation or the ranks you have to go through to progress your cultivation are. Or at least, they weren't for a while. The ones that drop the archaic terminology like "nacent soul" and stuff like that and substitute in their own terminology tend to at least explain it out of the necessity of explaining their own system.

I would say some of the worst offenders are the Chinese from where it originated. I mostly see non-Chinese writers of cultivation doing a far better job with this.
 

Ace_Raven

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In modern story writing I am seeing this huge trend in younger writers who do everything they can to avoid tropes.
Trope avoidance is an issue that can drive one mad too and leave stories feeling static or unsatisfactory.
This is because for many tropes = clichés, and it's rather sad when it happens.
But for me, I try to embrace the tropes of my chosen genre and have fun with it as once upon a time I desperately tried hard to avoid what I thought at the time were clichés but are really staples of whatever genre I write for.
If it's a murder mystery I embrace the cyanide or the knife, if its science fiction I embrace the spaceships and aliens.
To me a trope only becomes a cliché when it's not executed properly, I mean we all have seen the retirony trope played out to death though I actually have a story in mind where the main plot is the aforementioned retirony making the death more meaningful as we get to see their life up until they are killed off five days from retirement :D

Point is yes tropes can easily become a cliché but if you put effort into it then said cliché becomes a more valuable trope and actually mean something in your story.
But i love cliche, nice move man. Just stop being worried about it.

It called tropes and cliche because it works.

After all the only important thing about story is only to be,

1. Successful on sending it's message.

2. Fun and or interesting to read.


Those 'I'm so unique and avoiding troupe' would only do self destructive writing.

Don't try to be unique. Try to be the best.


Something you remember because it's unique, won't be as memorable as something that you remember because it's good.


Just focus on writing good story. That would be interesting.
 

Sylvie

Those days are gone, now the memory's on the wall
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In modern story writing I am seeing this huge trend in younger writers who do everything they can to avoid tropes.
Trope avoidance is an issue that can drive one mad too and leave stories feeling static or unsatisfactory.
This is because for many tropes = clichés, and it's rather sad when it happens.
But for me, I try to embrace the tropes of my chosen genre and have fun with it as once upon a time I desperately tried hard to avoid what I thought at the time were clichés but are really staples of whatever genre I write for.
If it's a murder mystery I embrace the cyanide or the knife, if its science fiction I embrace the spaceships and aliens.
To me a trope only becomes a cliché when it's not executed properly, I mean we all have seen the retirony trope played out to death though I actually have a story in mind where the main plot is the aforementioned retirony making the death more meaningful as we get to see their life up until they are killed off five days from retirement :D

Point is yes tropes can easily become a cliché but if you put effort into it then said cliché becomes a more valuable trope and actually mean something in your story.

I agree! There's a reason why certain tropes are famous in every genre. Putting too much attention into avoiding tropes can make stories end up bland or way too out of the box. Of course I'm not saying that good stories cannot be written that way but the best way to use standard tropes and cliches is to put your own twist on them and make them unique. I feel it helps readers get comfortable reading the book too!
 

K5Rakitan

Level 34 👪 💍 Pronouns: she/whore ♀
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I'm here to inspire new tropes. After reading about too many suicidal whores with pimps and drug problems who desperately wanted to get a so-called real job, I decided to write from my heart instead.
 

EternalSunset0

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i think its hard nowadays to find interesting new stories without clishe like good girl meet bad guy
It definitely is. I am of the belief that there is nothing completely original these days, but it's not a bad thing.

There are still many ways of subverting or playing into tropes. Something like good girl meets bad guy can be subverted, or you could base a story about their relationship in a different angle than what we are used to, like the bad guy actually being bad and the girl having so much difficulty finding good/changing him.

Or you could just straight up follow the trope and its associated story beats and find other ways to make their relationship entertaining so that people will still enjoy it.
 

Motsu

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Quack, now I am hungry.
 
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