Have you ever read a book that sparked a sudden thought in you that you’ve seen this elsewhere? Chances are you have. You’ve probably also seen movies where you knew exactly what was going to happen, almost to the letter.
All this is because of a trope.
A Trope is a word or expression critics use when they talk about books and films.
As a result, writers began using tropes as storytelling shortcuts since you, as a reader, can instantly recognize the ideas they’re trying to communicate to you.
However, overusing tropes can make a piece feel cliched. While some people use “cliché” as a trope synonym, tropes aren’t inherently bad.
We’ll define what is a trope and its various uses that you can take advantage of as a writer.
Key Takeaways
- One popular trope definition is that a trope is a recognizable narrative pattern that appears in various books and films.
- Tropes are the means by which writers make an immediate emotional appeal to audiences.
- The greatest pitfall in using tropes is allowing them to take the place of actual character growth instead of compelling stories.
- Tropes are better used when you put a spin on them so that you can make the familiar structure feel completely original.
What Is a Trope?
When you are watching a film, and you suddenly start predicting the actions of the characters and the way things unfold with great reliability, then you are studying a trope in effect. Now, let’s define trope.
Defining Tropes
A trope is a recurring narrative shortcut or convention that is seen in various works of literature, film, and other storytelling media.
To put it in the most basic terms, a trope is a familiar pattern that is used by writers to convey the main ideas swiftly.
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But this is not the end, as the trope meaning is also applicable to character types and even visual symbols that have a certain connotation.
The ubiquity of tropes is that they appear in every genre, whether it is the “enemies to lovers” plot of romance or the “one last job” of heist movies.
Better said, there can be several tropes in a book or film to attract certain viewers.
How Did Tropes Come to Be?
Tropes naturally developed when humans narrated ancient myths and folktales.
In addition, most of the tropes in use today can be traced back to the Greek tragedies, Biblical stories, and oral traditions thousands of years ago that were appealing to audiences.
These stories were disseminated to other cultures via books, theater, and later film and television.
Consequently, these patterns continued to be used by storytellers, leading to them being codified in pop culture.
Now that people mass-produce books for commercial consumption, writers have observed what moved audiences and created satisfying marketable narratives, allowing tropes to spread faster and become more standardized.
Purpose of Tropes
People tend to view tropes as just lazy shortcuts for uncreative writers with lazy readers.
Although there are cliched trope stories out there, tropes can’t be discarded as they’re the foundation of creating new stories that make narratives more engaging for you as a reader or viewer.
A trope serves more purposes, such as:
- Tropes provide an immediate identification with readers who prefer familiar and comfortable stories without long-winded explanations.
- They set readers’ expectations and assumptions that can be either met or broken by writers, thus plot twists are more effective when they are used.
- They assist you in entering unfamiliar genres, providing you with reference points that simplify the creative process because you will have examples to rely on.
- Tropes also allow for meaningful variations when your favourite author adds fresh perspectives or cultural contexts to familiar tropes, making old stories feel new again.
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This will make it easier for you to explore a trope’s impact in your own writing or critical analysis.
How Tropes Appear in Writing
You’ll find tropes woven into the broadest plot structures down to the smallest character details of storytelling. Tropes manifest in writing through these common elements:
- Tropes are evident in character archetypes that are easily identifiable, such as the wise mentor or the comic relief sidekick. Such personality templates allow you to know who a person is in a few seconds after you have encountered them on the page.
- It appears in plots that can be summarized as a sports team of underdogs on its way to a win after decades of losses, or a second-chance love story between exes.
- Tropes show in the settings to create the tone and atmosphere. An example would be a small city where people know one another and establish social relations.
- In dialogue patterns, certain phrases carry specific meanings, for you to know exactly what trope you’re dealing with, even before the action sequence begins.
- Other more popular tropes include relationship dynamics, like love triangles and forbidden romance. Such archetypes are filled with tension that a reader wants to find in thousands of stories.
Common Pitfalls of Tropes
Although tropes can be a great foundation for your novel, they can become a drag on your work when you overuse them.
Because of this, we would like to warn you about the following traps to avoid when using tropes:
- Do not use tropes as an alternative to actual character growth without introducing new elements or motives to it. Otherwise, you will create stereotypes that would weird out your readers and enable critics to thrash your work.
- Tropes tend to change over time, and as cultures outgrow certain notions that are evident in harmful tropes. These harmful tropes continue to propagate stereotypes or otherwise problematic representations that societies would rather end. One such trope is the magical black character. Therefore, you must critically analyze tropes that you employ and how they will be perceived by your readers.
- The other trap not to fall into is having too many tropes in your story without any novel components. You risk your story being overly predictable and seeming as though you are making a trope checklist.
- These tropes have been used many times by your audience, so do not make a tired trope sound like a breakthrough, or you may lose your credibility with readers. You must find ways of refreshing old tropes to make your narrative original.
Best Practices for Using Tropes
Before you start on the story or script, you need to thoughtfully balance using tropes with your originality to elevate your work rather than drag it down into predictability.
These are some excellent tips to guide you when using tropes henceforth:
- You have to look into the trope’s history and conventional ways that other writers have used it. With this background, you can then properly apply tropes meaningfully to your work.
- You also need to give the trope specific details that make it feel fresh. This can be you giving your character a culture that similar characters have not previously had.
- Consider mixing unconventional tropes to come up with something novel that will not seem overly complicated to your readers.
- You ought to make sure that your characters do not simply drop into their tropes. Develop the characters so they appear as real people who respond authentically to unexpected situations.
- Discover the balance between using the trope as it is and when it is possible to surprise the audience by going against expectations when writing from start to finish.
- Mostly, use tropes as starting points for your story, but they mustn’t determine how things end to give your readers something different about your version.
Well-Known Examples of Tropes
By now, you’re no stranger to tropes, having come across at least a couple of tropes in the media you’ve consumed.
We’ve brought together a couple of some of the most popular tropes you must know:
- The Hero’s Journey: This trope follows a seemingly ordinary person who is forced to embark in an adventure that will determine if what he’s fighting for survives or not. Popular characters who went on a hero’s journey include Luke Skywalker and Frodo.
- The Mentor’s Death: This is another classic trope that tends to appear during the climax of the story. When events reach a fever pitch, our hero will be in dire situations and need advice from the mentor the most. Unfortunately, the mentor dies just before they can help the hero. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Dumbledore fall into this trope.
- Enemies to Lovers: This is a popular trope in the romance genre where we see the main characters are at odds with each other. Some extreme cases present them as life and death enemies. However, as the story progresses and they’re forced into situations together, they gradually start to like each other. Pride and Prejudice and romantic comedies often use this trope.
- The Chosen One: This is an ancient trope generally used in fantasy stories like Game of Thrones with Daenerys Targaryen. It details a prophecy or the birth of a person who is the only one that can save the entire world from total annihilation. The chosen one can also go on a hero’s journey as these tropes overlap. Some great examples of this trope are Harry Potter and Anakin Skywalker.
- The MacGuffin: A MacGuffin is an extraordinary object in a story that helps move the plot forward. Importantly, it gives the characters a reason to act. Yet, the object is there to highlight the characters’ journey in obtaining it. The Infinity Stones in Marvel movies, for example, are a textbook example of a MacGuffin.
- The Love Triangle: The protagonist, usually a woman, is torn between two male love interests that often represent two different life choices or aspects of life that the female lead is grappling with. You will find this trope in books such as Twilight and Hunger Games.
- The Reluctant Hero: The reluctant hero trope is about a character who has the capacity to save a situation or entity. Yet, the hero avoids involving himself in the situation for personal reasons. But in the end, the situation forces him to act. Han Solo and Rick Blaine from Casablanca are some of the best examples of reluctant heroes.
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FAQs
What is the Difference Between a Trope and a Cliché?
A trope is a specific pattern of events that occurs in stories and movies that we consume which tend to consistently appear.
A cliché, by contrast, is a trope that’s been used so often without variation that it’s become stale and predictable to readers. It has therefore lost its ability to engage you as a reader.
For example, the “mentor” is a trope, but a description like the “wise old man with a long beard” is a cliché.
Should I Use Tropes in my Writing, or Avoid Them?
You can absolutely use tropes since avoiding them entirely is impossible and unnecessary. Every story relies on some familiar narrative patterns that become tropes that your readers know.
Your goal is to use tropes intentionally and understand what expectations they create and decide whether you want to subvert or complicate those expectations for maximum impact.
Are Tropes Specific to Certain Genres?
It depends. Certain tropes have become firmly linked to a certain genre when, in reality, the majority of tropes do much more cross-genre mixing than you might have thought.
As an example, the enemies to lovers cliche is presented in romance, though action films, fantasy series, and even workplace comedies.
In any case, you can either work to fulfill the expectations of your genre to please your intended audience, or you can import tropes across genres in order to produce something out of the ordinary.
What is the Most Overused Trope?
The most used trope is arguably the chosen one trope (particularly used in science fiction and fantasy). You have seen it everywhere, as a special child whose destiny is to save the world, and there is something about him or her that is frequently unusual, or there is something about the manner of his birth that is mysterious.
This has been done so much that most contemporary authors deliberately twist it by revealing the prophecy was fake or showing multiple chosen ones competing.
Conclusion
Tropes are an unavoidable and universal element of storytelling in books, movies, and TV. Writers from Shakespeare and Jane Austen to beginners can’t help but use them.
These tropes become something more when used creatively.
But tropes employed forcefully result in cliched and boring stories that readers don’t want. The best solution to this is to practice how tropes are best applied in storytelling using our AI Essay Writer to write interesting stories too.
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