Thread by @Delafina777

Oh, boy, I keep hearing people use the term "trope" like it's a negative. So let's talk about tropes and cliches.

Part of the confusion probably stems from the fact that... dictionaries seem confused as to what a trope is? Here's whichever dictionary comes up automatically defining "trope" as... a metaphor.

Cambridge correctly (at least in terms of narrative) defines it as an idea that's used repeatedly in a particular artist's work, or a particular type of art.

(Merriam-Webster brings in the sense of cliché, and notes the use of the term in cantillation, but ignores that it's used for Jewish cantillation at least as often as for the Catholic equivalent, so thanks for that bit of erasure, @MerriamWebster. (Predates Middle Ages, too.))

But dictionary peculiarities aside, in terms of narrative, a trope is a frequently used idea, image, phrase, characterization, etc. N.B.: "frequently used" does not automatically equal "bad" or "overused" or "shallow."

When a trope is deployed badly, you get a cliché. But what does it mean to be deployed badly? Obviously, that's largely subjective, but all criticism is subjective, which doesn't stop it from being analyzable, so let's dig in.

Most people actually love tropes, whether they realize it or not. Our brains get super-jazzed about pattern recognition, and we like familiar things. (We tend to dislike unfamiliar music, for example: themarysue.com/unfamiliar-mus…)

But while we like things that are familiar, we clearly aren't looking for the EXACT same story over and over again. Part of our pleasure in consuming stories is seeing *how* familiar tropes are deployed and play out.

Conventions for that have changed over time--one of the hurdles to enjoying ancient literature can be what seems like senseless, boring repetition. But that's probably because things like type-scenes fulfilled some of the same functions genre does today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_scene

We might get bored the 90th time there's a hospitality scene in the Iliad or the 600th time a man meets his future wife at a well in the Tanakh, but once you learn to parse the subtle differences in the scenes and what they communicate, the repetition becomes interesting and fun.

And that's similar to the function that genre plays in our storytelling today. Take a common structure for Westerns: gunslinger comes into town, faces off with bad guy, there's a period of tension increase, there's a gunfight, gunslinger wins.

We know all that is going to happen. So why aren't they all boring? Well, as it turns out, knowing WHAT is going to happen doesn't stop us from enjoying HOW it happens.

One of my mentors in game design, Jordan Weisman, used to say, "emphasize the familiar so people can appreciate the exotic." He was talking about fantasy and sci-fi, but that actually holds true for pretty much any storytelling.

Real life is so complex our brains tend to simplify it into familiar narratives. Given that fiction is, well, fictional, we need familiar touchstones in it so we can process it.

If you create a scifi universe in which EVERYTHING is different from reality, people will be completely lost and unable to follow the story. Basically, we need to know which parts of a story (the familiar) we don't have to concentrate on.

So, as a storyteller, tropes are both a shortcut for you, and a guidepost for your audience to show them where to focus their attention. I'll get back to that in a moment.

Think of it sort of like musical composition. In a symphony, which parts are moving, which parts are doing something interesting, trades off between instruments. While you have melody and interesting accompaniment in some instruments, in others, you've got...

...pedal tones, very simple accompaniment figures, etc. Because if you have 100ish players all doing moving, interesting parts at the same time, it's going to sound like complete chaos, and people aren't going to be able to follow any of the interesting stuff.

So, as a storyteller, tropes deployed *exactly*--not being developed, subverted, etc.--are basically a signal that This Is Not Where The Spotlight Goes Right Now. Because you can't develop everything, every character, every plot point, every setting, simultaneously.

If, for example, you take a pilot script for a TV show, or even the first episode of a new season, it's got a LOT of work to do just in terms of table-setting. It has to (re)introduce a ton of characters, set plots in motion, establish setting, etc.

And often, it's got to sell first studio execs, and then audiences, on the show, so it has to get What It's Doing out there as efficiently as possible. Basically, its major struggle is just to get the audience to *understand* it.

You don't have time, in one 42-minute episode, to convey a complex plot, make every character as complex as a real person, introduce a setting so complex it mimics reality, etc. when all of this is the audience's first exposure. You have to pick and choose what to focus on.

So tropes like "this is the bar the character goes to to unburden himself" or "this is the grizzled sheriff," or "this is a murder mystery" both allow you as a creator to highlight what IS new & different, and help the audience quickly grasp what's going on so they can see it too

And the same holds true for opening scenes in books or movies, games, etc. When it becomes a problem--a cliché--is when no more work gets done to nuance any of the tropes you set up.

Or, put another way, playing exactly to tropes is efficient storytelling when it says to the audience, "here's the elevator pitch for what this place/character/plot point is--stick a pin in it for now because we've got other stuff we need to do first."

So how do you come back and develop it?

Well, you can always subvert it. Writers LOVE subverting tropes because it makes us feel like magicians. "You thought you were looking at A, but voila! it is actually B! *bows to awed applause*"

That's how it goes in our heads.

Of course, a lot of trope subversion have themselves become tropes at this point, and even cliches. Also, subverting tropes is actually the easiest thing to do with them.

Something that I think is far richer and rewarding is deepening and adding to the trope. "You thought this was thing A, but it's also actually thing B, too." That sort of addition is relatively easy to do (though not always to do well). It also tends to feel realistic.

Because that's often how we experience people and places and events in real life. She IS the sweet girl next door, but she's also wrestling with depression. This IS a sleazy dive bar, but it's also a place where people find community. Etc.

It's especially powerful when it's combined with filling out the trope. If the trope itself is the outline, what are the real lived details of it? What does it MEAN to be the sweet girl next door? What is that trope actually shorthand *for*?

When we complain about a character being "just a trope," what we're actually saying is they're a cliché, and what we're actually saying about that is that the trope never becomes more than an outline. We keep tracing that outline rather than filling it in.

For the most part, as long as that happens on a fairly timely basis--as long as at least a little bit of coloring in gets done shortly after a character is introduced--people don't complain about it being a trope/cliché.

So the balancing act for the writer(s) becomes rotating through who you're coloring in at any given moment, to be able to focus on moving the plot forward while also making sure no character languishes too long in outline-only land.

It's also why I get sort of frustrated when people complain about clichés in TV pilots. Like, look, if there was nothing BUT empty tropes, I get it. But if there are one or two, give it an episode or two. Pilots have to cram so much into a short space.

And I while I love TV Tropes because it's one of the few super-popular tools out there teaching people some very basic criticism skills, I also think it's definitely contributing to the problem, in that it seems to produce an "if I recognize it, it's bad" mindset.

And like I said earlier, sometimes the pleasure of consuming a story is seeing HOW a trope is used. (This is especially relevant in things like modern-day or scifi updates of classic stories. HOW is Lancelot going to be Lancelot on a space station?)

In conclusion: tropes are essentially outlines that can be colored in in different ways. Having an outline is not bad. If it never gets any shading or color, it's probably a cliché. Tropes are useful storytelling tools. The end.