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A trope is a recurring theme.
fantasy
science fiction
novel writing techniques

What is a Trope?

Craig Leyenaar. Former commissioning editor at Titan Books and Gollancz and The Novelry Team Member
Craig Leyenaar
May 1, 2022
May 1, 2022

The term trope comes from the Latin tropus (a figure of speech) and the Greek word tropos (a turn, direction, course, way; manner, style, fashion).

Technically in rhetoric, it refers to figurative language in which a word or phrase is used to convey something different from its literal meaning—for example, calling a fool an ass, or a cunning person a fox.

There are certain patterns to storytelling; depending on who you listen to, there are anything from one to seven basic plots, and once you’re familiar with them, they become the obvious choice.

That’s essentially what a trope is—it’s the easiest, most obvious choice. Literary terms can cloud what we mean, but the fact is most literary devices—like common tropes—are not so grandiose.

So instead, read on for some tips on handling literary tropes, courtesy of our very own Craig Leyenaar. Here, he offers his guidance on how to handle and recycle the best-loved tropes of fiction. 

What is a trope?

Generally speaking, a trope is a recurrent motif, theme, or image.

Tropes are the dreams of speech.
—Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

We don’t create stories in a vacuum. They’re the sum of everything we’ve read and are often similar to what we enjoy reading ourselves, so it’s perfectly natural that your story will contain familiar elements.

The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.
—Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

Tropes are tools and it’s all about how you use them. Think of them as building blocks.

Remember, readers seek out more of what they like, and a common trope can add some element of familiarity that works in your favor. In a figurative sense, you have proof of concept, which publishers love.

Should I be using tropes?

These days, the notion of being accused of having tropes in your creative work might strike fear into some writers’ hearts. The use of the word ‘trope’ in pop culture, as well as some rather trite TV tropes, might make writers nervous that the presence of a common trope means their writing comes across as derivative, or draws on a common or overused theme that we’ve been seeing in literature for centuries.

But if a common trope finds its place in your writing, it’s no bad thing. In fact, even tired tropes can make for fantastic stories. The thing is: they have already been made into fantastic stories, which is how things become a classic trope.

If you’re thinking that everything in your story has to be fresh and unique, that’s not the case, and it’s probably impossible—like imagining a new color.

Examples and definitions of world-building tropes in literature and how to use them to express your themes.

Are tropes bad?

There’s no simple answer.

They can be a very useful shorthand for setting up situations, or letting us know in a few strokes who the bad guys are. Tropes can also be huge fun when you make them your own.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a brilliant, long-running series entirely based on the subversion of a single trope: the blonde high-school cheerleader, who is always the victim in horror films. The series asks: what if instead of being hunted, she was the hunter? 

Sometimes, leaning into the trope can work incredibly well. Personally, I love the mad scientist trope. Give me a crazy-haired Doc from Back to the Future any day.

What’s the difference between tropes and clichés?

Tropes and clichés can refer to a certain character, setting, or even a plot point.

Let’s think about a few examples of common tropes. Take the buddy cop movie, featuring two detectives with diametrically opposing personalities who start out hating each other but learn to respect each other, who might even save each other’s lives, learn to be a bit more like each other, and end up as friends.

The first part is the trope, the rest—which involves character, plot, and likely setting—has descended into cliché. 

Female mercenary... She is usually tall, thin and wiry, silent, and neurotic... You can rely on her absolutely in a fight. She can usually kill two people at once while guarding your back in between... Mostly, she will have no magic talents, but sometimes, in an emergency, she will come up with a gift or vision. You will end up grudgingly admiring her.
—Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

Tropes, clichés, stereotypes and archetypes

These four terms operate in pairs:

  • Trope—Cliché
  • Archetype—Stereotype 

They’re each on either end of the spectrum. They’re never positive, but instead range from neutral to negative.

What is an archetype?

According to Carl Jung, there are twelve archetypes

  • The Innocent
  • Everyman
  • Hero
  • Outlaw
  • Explorer
  • Creator
  • Ruler
  • Magician
  • Lover
  • Caregiver
  • Jester
  • Sage

These archetypes aren’t characters, as they have no past, no motive, no goals... No story. They’re concepts.

Think of them as the foundation of the character house you’re building (if you choose to use them). And that’s what you’re doing when you write them into your novel. You’re developing character.

Examples of most common literary tropes which can be overused in stories unless the concept is given a fresh spin for the audience.

Archetypes and stereotypes tend to be more specific

When we’re talking archetypes and stereotypes it gets a little more specific than the general sense in which we tend to talk about tropes and clichés. But you can take a similar approach to identifying them.

The first thing is to see that these two terms refer to characters alone, as opposed to the broader definition in terms of trope and cliché.

Archetypes are starting points, whereas a stereotype is the endpoint. Importantly, it’s a predictable and often negative endpoint.

Stereotypes are a sign of lazy writing because they’re broadly applied sets of attributes drawn from assumptions about the way people are, rather than an individual.

How do you avoid a trope becoming a cliché?

Let’s use some more examples. Say you’re writing fantasy literature with an elfin race... If your elves live in the trees and are long-lived, highly educated and condescending, then they would be on the cliché side of the spectrum. Your audience has seen it all before.

How could you mix it up? What if you had an elf character in your secondary world and they’re a broken, damaged addict because their forest home has been destroyed by exploitative resource extraction? That would be taking the same trope and using it in a fresh way, throwing dissimilar things into the mix from what we’ve seen before. But watch out: if all the elves were broken, damaged drug addicts, then that would become a stereotype (see below).

It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.
—Stephen Fry

What is a stereotype?

Stereotypes are a specific set of characteristics assigned to a category. They represent wider assumptions about a particular group of people.

If characters don’t develop beyond the concept (or archetype), then they can become stereotypes.

For example, if your dystopian underclass is populated by pimps, prostitutes and addicts, or every character from a particular ethnic group just happens to be a criminal, then those are stereotypes that should be avoided because they are harmful.

If your novel features different species that hate each other just because (and worse, if they’re thinly veiled stand-ins for real groups of people), then that is both a cliché and a stereotype, which should be avoided at all costs!

A trope could introduce verbal irony—and we don’t just mean the reluctant hero trope.

Examples of tropes

Fantasy and horror tropes

Fantasy world-building tropes are not necessarily negative. Some of the most common tropes are needed for the basic story to function. Let’s think of some examples...

A great example whereby a trope might be necessary as a plot device is a horror novel that needs the haunted house, otherwise there would no story—Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House or Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic are both brilliant novels that couldn’t exist without this trope. Of course, you can do all kinds of things with this trope, from the words you use to describe it, to the people that inhabit it. You can also think more broadly, making the house a metaphor for all kinds of social ailments and thus giving it a deeper meaning. 

The story of Bluebeard has been retold through its own tropes in countless horror stories. Take the film Get Out as an example, with the monstrous Rose as a Bluebeard figure, described by Maria Tatar in an article for Harvard as ‘a monster straight out of our culture’s master horror-narrative, with its classic tropes; a secluded mansion with a dark place inhabited by a brooding homicidal maniac.’ Also consider Fifty Shades of Grey—Christian Grey, a shadow Bluebeard for our troubled times. 

Secondary-world fantasy literature is hard to imagine without the pseudo-medieval setting. But if you change that to ‘pre-industrial,’ it opens up a whole range of possibilities that aren’t repackaged versions of medieval Europe.

Romance tropes

The romance genre has plenty of tropes that are both loved and loathed by readers.

You’ve probably heard of friends-to-lovers (think People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry) and enemies-to-lovers (another Emily Henry, Book Lovers, and Ali Hazelwood’s Love on the Brain fit the bill).

Romances are often formulaic, with a steady structure of rising and falling action toward a satisfying resolution. Hence, tropes are often applied and subverted by romance authors, which allows readers to find and categorize novels they enjoy the most according to their central tropes.

Forced proximity is another example of an effective romance trope: The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary forces the two main characters into the same living space, paving the way for conflict and romantic tension. In Libby Page’s The Lifeline, one of the love interests works directly below the apartment of one of the main characters.

Crime and suspense tropes

In The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty, the protagonist finds a letter written by her husband, only to be opened in the event of his death. Even though he’s very much alive, she opens it and chaos duly ensues.

One of the stock tropes of domestic noir, of psychological thrillers, is that of the woman who won’t do what she’s told, who won’t conform, who isn’t a good enough mother, who isn’t a chaste enough wife. All of them transgressive women, breaching the interdict that’s been laid upon them.

The latin tropus figurative use meaning a turn or direction.

How to subvert a trope

I’m sure you’re tired of hearing ‘subvert the trope.’ That phrase has become something of a cliché itself!

But the intention behind it is still relevant. All it means is do something unexpected. And that’s what good storytelling is. It’s unexpected.

Think of the classic ‘farm boy finds sword’ tale. What happens if it’s a different character type? Maybe a farm girl who finds the sword? In the standard medieval fantasy setting, this immediately creates a lot more potential conflict if it’s a patriarchal society where women aren’t allowed to be soldiers.

Most subversions ultimately turn into tropes themselves, so be wary of taking the easy option. The easy choice is rarely the right one when it comes to writing.

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Don’t try to be unique

The one takeaway you should have from all this is essentially one word. And it’s not unique. Unique is unobtainable and also a bit of a no-no because publishers are risk-averse, and if other similar novels have a proven track record then it makes everyone’s lives a little easier. 

Conversely, one of the biggest pitfalls of using tropes is the idea that it makes your novel predictable. Safe. Comfortable.

Being a writer is about walking that line and knowing when to lean into a trope to give readers what they want, while also taking your story in a fresh direction.

What you should aim for is to be unexpected.

Once there was a girl who ate an apple not meant for her... Up until the apples, she had been living in a wonderful house in the wilderness, happy in her fate and her ways. She had seven aunts and seven uncles and a postdoctorate in anthropology.
—Catherynne M. Valente, Silently and Very Fast

To be unexpected, you first need to set up reader expectations, so go ahead and use those tropes and archetypes, but use them in a way that’s uniquely yours.

(And yes, I know I used the bad word.)

Tropes can comfort a reader, but be careful not to overuse them.

Trope bingo

Here are 36 tropes that relate to settings, plots and characters which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. Why not have a bit of fun and see how many might apply to your story?

Don’t worry if you tick off a few! Remember, it’s all about the metaphors and how you use them. 

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Craig Leyenaar. Former commissioning editor at Titan Books and Gollancz and The Novelry Team Member

Craig Leyenaar

Before joining The Novelry, Craig Leyenaar was a Commissioning Editor at the famous Titan Books, a publisher specializing in science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime and thrillers, and home to authors including Stephen King, V.E. Schwab, James Lovegrove and Mickey Spillane.

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