What do secret baby, amnesia, orphan, and billionaire have in common? They’re all tropes.
Have you heard of these things? Do you know what they are? I sure didn’t until recently.
I’d heard the word a lot over the past year, but despite doing some research, I hadn’t been able to get a grip on what the word really meant or how to apply it to my writing.
Just last month I attended a webinar given by Bryan Cohen, and he talked about tropes quite a bit. He recommended a book titled The Trope Thesaurus by Jennifer Hilt (affiliate link). Bryan’s discussion gave me enough clarity about tropes that thought I’d investigate the book. I ended up buying it.
Ms. Hilt offers this definition from Dictionary.com:
A trope [is] a convention or devise that establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character, setting, or scenario in creative work.” She went to offer a simplified definition: “a trope establishes a predictable character, setting, or scenario.”
My first thought after reading that was why would I want to write a predictable story? I don’t like predictable stories, which is probably why I don’t read much romance.
However, I kept reading. I wanted a full understanding so I could decide whether I wanted to use tropes or not. As I read, I found myself identifying several of the tropes in my own story:
- twin
- orphan
- scar
- military
- cowboy
- forced proximity
- Daddy’s spoiled daughter.
You, too, are probably using tropes without realizing it. Writers tend to be voracious readers. We absorb the way the books we love are crafted and apply them to our own writing, often subconsciously.
The romance genre is the easiest one to use as an example of tropes.
Romance Tropes
- Enemies to lovers
- Friends to lovers
- Billionaire
- Royalty (a very popular trope given the plethora of movies with princes or princesses)
- Matchmaker (often the mother of the 30-something daughter who’s still single)
- Single dad w/ child
- Single mom w/ child
- Jilted bride
- Unrequited love
This is only a smattering of the list. I hope it gives you a better understanding of what a trope is. Most tropes fit more than one genre. Using them doesn’t mean you’re writing a predictable or boring story at all.
To fully grasp tropes and learn how you can use them to improve your books, I highly recommend reading The Trope Thesaurus (affiliate link).
What tropes do you think you have in your work in progress? Put them in the comments below.
I imagine it would be difficult to write a story without any tropes. It certainly has me thinking.
Exactly. Seems to me that the protagonist and antagonist would almost always be a trope of some sort.