Hope Against Trope

One thing we as writers and audiences don't tend to ask is what stories are actually for. Why do we consume them so eagerly and so intensely? And what is it these old weird tales had that prevents so many modern ones from sticking as well or reaching as big an audience as older stories did. What happened? I have a theory as to why some of this might be the case. It is simply a matter of disorganized thinking and mismatched priorities.

Stories have been around for a long time, but they haven't always been the same as they are today. In fact, in many ways, we are more limited today than we were when storytelling itself began countless centuries ago. Limitations aren't always a problem, but in the 21st century where mainstream book publishers have killed off reading as a hobby, it is an epidemic.

Today I thought I would cover a controversial subject in writing circles that I've never quite seen as controversial, partially because I tend to not look at things from a writer's perspective but from an outsider. This way I can get a more neutral position which is what led to my view on the subject. I didn't form these thoughts out of nowhere. Whether from NewPub or OldPub, the same advice is always given on this subject, which is always a good sign that it is misguided and out of date. I am of course speaking of tropes, and the worship of them by modern writers.

In this day and age, just about everyone knows what tropes are. Even though they've always existed, it appears that in the modern day they are inescapable. From the teenager guffawing at the snarky leader who makes funny quips, to the very educated collage student who nods sagely at the female lead not needing any man, to the adult clapping along when the comic relief references a video game made in the 1990s, tropes are everywhere. They rule all.

And that is exactly the problem: they don't.

There are two camps today in regard to storytelling: one that thinks tropes are checklists that make fiction great and another that thinks tropes are checklists that must be subverted to make great fiction. Both of these groups are horrendously wrong and incorrect to the point that they are currently damaging and dulling the creative process of modern writers and creators. If you are arguing that tropes are a "good" or "bad" in a general sense then you have already lost the plot. Tropes are neither; they just are.

Let us start from the beginning. What are stories? Stories are tales told about events that happen and protagonists that get from one place to another. That is as stripped down a description as one can get. Stories are about things that occur to people. Simple.

Since everything in this world runs on systems, it only makes sense that there would be one for the creation of stories. And there is. Many, in fact. We've learned what audiences react to in storytelling and what they do not. Hence why genres such as adventure, mystery, romance, and horror, all contain elements shared across the spectrum as well as containing aspects exclusive to their own. People who want an adventure story want certain things to happen in them, and it is the writer's job to fulfill that expectation. So of course there are universal elements they will share. This is an unavoidable reality we all must accept.

Where this goes horrible, horribly wrong is when gatekeepers begin performing shit tests and checklists to determine what the audience is allowed to consume and what a writer is allowed to write. How do they do this? They do it by using the idea of "Tropes" as a rulebook and makeshift bible. In essence, they decided certain "Tropes" are no longer acceptable to audiences and others must be included instead to appeal to whatever fancy the OldPub urbanite hipster editor has at that moment. Essentially, this turns stories into trope checklists meant to be filled out.

It goes further than that. The false genres on the OldPub book stores were all fabricated the same way. It's all a network of systems devised by a handful of urbanites that has no bearing on reality. And being so out of touch is why they are currently failing.

Want to be filed in the right section of the bookstore? If so, then be sure your story contains Genre Element or face rejection. Science Fiction might not exist, but the people in charge need it to be real in order to control it. Because that is what this is about for them.

So for the purposes of this piece, let me be clear. Tropes do not define stories; stories define tropes. What this means is that adventure stories will always have heroes exploring the unknown and the darkest pits because the story type defines it as such. They don't have those things because a checklist demands it be there. That is backwards. One is dependent on the other existing. By the same token, doing the opposite or "subverting" these fabricated checklists made by gatekeepers doesn't create anything new or original. It's simply reacting to a strawman genre that gatekeepers invented for themselves and their legions of workshop writers.

For a controversial example you can take the modern worship of the Hero's Journey. If you are altering your adventure story because you need to add The Refusal Of The Call because it is a supposed non-negotiable trope for adventure stories then you are no longer writing a story. You are now writing a story constructed around tropes--the tropes now control your story. You do not. This isn't creativity: this is a box. You should never put something in a story because it has to be there. You should only put things in a story because the story needs it to be what it is.

This is what makes "subversion" such a cheap gimmick and a crutch for writers. Simply looking at a list of tropes and deciding to do the Opposite is not writing a story. There is no effort, there is no soul, and there is no point beyond reacting to meta-nonsense audiences themselves don't care about. You are more interested in being clever than being creative. Basing your idea of good storytelling on fooling your customers and calling them names when they don't like your hackwork writing is a fool's errand. At this point you are no longer attempting to connect with them.

And it is why no one watches Hollywood TV and movies or reads OldPub books anymore. They deliberately refuse to give stories to their audiences by basing their entire idea of storytelling around meta-tropes that no one aside from the obsessive care about, then flipping them. Audiences want to be entertained--not have a flaming paper bag placed on their porch.

I regret to inform you that trope obsession is entirely this: it is putting the audience and the story behind obsessing over the chrome plating instead of the engine. Your average audience member wants the hero to get the girl and stop the villain. They don't care how you get there as long as the storytelling itself is internally consistent. Is it a "trope" that a hero gets the girl and stops the villain? I don't care. The audience doesn't care. It's just something that happens and is expected. Not letting that happen because it is a "trope" is exactly the issue here.

Putting tropes on a pedestal is inviting idol worship, and that is exactly what has happened here. Those obsessed with the idea of this meta-nonsense then find ways of bending and breaking these rules, unaware that you cannot bend or break the story you are constructing simply to get a result you want. That isn't storytelling. It's hackwork. If we didn't pointlessly obsess about the chrome plating to begin with then this wouldn't have ever happened. But we did, and now everything is a mess.

Take the above picture as an example. You might write a story and get to a point where you are figuring out the people who live in your world. Then you think "I want a geek character" so you begin to scan trope pages to make sure he fits every box possible. After all, you want your character to be "correct" don't you? Tropes are rock solid rules, after all! You might even just lift a "Geek" character from one of your favorite television shows and just file off the serial numbers. Anything to make sure you fall into the box, or react against it.

However, this is wrong. You are writing human beings with hopes and dreams and strengths and flaws. They very well might match a trope type somewhere. The issue is that as a writer you shouldn't care if the character does. It doesn't matter if your side character reminds someone of Steve Urkel as long as he fits the story you're trying to tell. Warping and bending your creation to hit the correct tropes for consumption is bad writing.

Now, you can very well do all the above, but doing so is not creativity. You aren't creating a character that fits naturally within the confines of your world that is reactive to the setting or plot. You are just writing a trope for the sake of having a trope because you think you have to have it there in the story. This isn't what storytelling exists for. Writing is about more than looking through lists of tropes and mixing and matching them in order to get the best audience reaction. Nothing kills creativity worse than focus-testing. When saying this became controversial, I don't know. But I do know no one who wrote the pulps wrote stories with a checklist by their side. So why do you?

This is what I meant earlier by the difference between tropes springing from the story, and stories springing from the tropes. One treats the story as an organic thing, the other as a Frankenstein hodgepodge of hacky ideas awkwardly pasted together. It is (post)modernism driving right over the edge of sanity.

When I say trope obsession is ruining storytelling, this is what I mean. Writing is about connecting to your readers, not pandering to expectations. This is a creativity killer.

It also is quite a bit devaluing to your own work to just slap random nonsense other people came up with into your writing. A "Geek" character doesn't mean a walking stereotype. No one wants to read about a cliché.

And unfortunately, this is what tropes have become: a way for writers to lean on clichés under the guise of creativity and "realism" with premade ideas ready to be copy/pasted in. Whether you agree or not with the point of tropes, it is a fact that the way they are used and worshiped today is objectively harmful. Especially when so many modern writers use them like this.

Storytelling isn't dependent on tropes; tropes are dependent on storytelling. This difference is crucial and is in danger of being forgotten in this age of automated storytelling pumped out like product.

The sooner we remember this the sooner we can get back to worrying more about plots and ideas instead of filling imaginary writing quotas. I for one, would like to put things in proper proportion again.

Creativity should not come at the expense of boring formulas and hack tropes because you have to have them. You should only have whatever the story needs to get by, and nothing else. Sometimes that requires going against what is expected.

Give the story what it needs to be the story it was meant to be. Do not add things because you think they should be there. Creativity is more than checklists.

This whole screed sounds as if I hate tropes or the very idea of tropes at all. Truth be told, I was approached by many writers when expressing the opinions you are reading here reminding me that "tropes are inescapable" and that one can't write a story without them. How can you escape the reality of the almighty trope?

Very easily, actually. I simply don't let them control me or what I do. They are controlled by me. Do you see the difference?

I write stories that contain tropes; I don't write tropes to be placed in stories. Clearly I know there are recurring themes and archetypes that occur in fiction--we are writing in a tradition after all. There is nothing wrong with that. What I am telling you is that tropes are not the lifeblood of the fiction itself. Such an idea is completely backwards as to where tropes come from in the first place. We are looking at them upside down.

Tropes exist outside the framework of the creative process and are meant for analyzation by those who care about such things. Audiences don't care about any of this, though, and that is what really matters here. 

I don't tend to talk about tropes on this blog because I find them corny to discuss with any degree of seriousness and that I don't care about them. I don't care because they don't matter. It's a waste of my time to think about them.

As I said, the bigger point is that none of this actually matters in the slightest, and thinking it matters is why storytelling has been so damaged by idolization for so long. The fact that we obsess over this instead of discussing the actual stories or themes that roll out of the eternal truths being expressed is part of the reason having conversations about storycraft is such an unfruitful endeavor these days. Trope discussion is horrendously boring.

This is a difficult subject to write about because I do like art and entertainment and I do like talking about what people like about it and what affects people. That is fun as much as it is illuminating. But tropes are surface level descriptions of things similar stories might or might not contain. My interest in them is very limited and I honestly don't think about them at all when writing characters or plot points, so being told constantly they are the lifeblood or cornerstone of fiction itself is not matching of my experience.

I think this is entirely backwards. Fiction is what gives tropes any meaning at all. Otherwise they are just a list of things that might or might not be in a specific kind of story. Nothing more and nothing less. They aren't in control of the story, they are the what is being controlled.

Do Tropes exist? Sure. But the audience doesn't care. They just want entertainment. And that is all that matters, in the end.

At the end of the day, writing is a craft with tools like any other. Just like those other crafts, the tools do not define what the craft is. They only aid in getting it completed in the best shape possible. You cannot master a craft without mastering tools, but the tools are merely part of the process of crafting. They are not what drives the craft.

And that is all that needs to be said. Do not worship the tools. Do not worship the paint. Do not worship the aesthetic. Do not worship any part of a craft, honestly. Keep it all balanced in the knowledge that every piece contributes to a greater collective whole. This is what makes the whole process so fun and exciting, both as a writer and a reader.

Since art is a way to connect it only stands to reason every part of the story should be in the service of doing just that, but no individual part should stand above the others. Separating and cordoning off different segments to fetishize them is exactly the reason so much art is alienating and insular these days. This is the opposite of how it is meant to be done.

Since we want to bring fiction back to the masses and to get more people to read again, we cannot use this failure of an approach any longer. We need to stop bowing to tools instead of just using them. It is time to put things back in their proper place. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lord Dunsany, Abraham Merritt, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Stanley Weinbaum, Donald Wandrei, E.E. "Doc" Smith, and C.L. Moore, didn't need to scan lists of tropes to write their stories, and neither do you. I can tell you that none of them stressed over or gave a second thought as whether their stories fit in any boxes. That sort of thing is entirely incidental. What mattered to them was the story itself above all else.

All you need to do is write the story you need to write. That's what the audience wants and desires. To grow and reach more people, we need a new focus. We need to turn away from insular perspectives and thought processes that fetishize the craft. We need to grow outward. It is the only way to connect with audiences.

We live in a NewPub world now. The many mistakes of OldPub no longer apply to us or the fresh landscape we are currently exploring and building in. Therefore we no longer need the same bad habits that led us to the glorified car wreck that is the old dead industry. We can finally move on to better frontiers.

We need a new approach, a fiction and audience first perspective. In order to put the audience first we need to give everything to the story itself. This means putting things in their proper place. Tools must remain tools--not the focal point of the craft. Disorganized passions lead to disorganized thinking. There is a reason writing seminars and courses have so many applicants despite being next to useless in creating writing careers. The people in the OldPub industry have everything exactly backwards. That is why they are dying.

But you're not in that industry anymore. Nobody is except a shrinking demographic of readers and aspiring writers who like the idea of clout from cliques more than entertaining audiences. This old crumbling road has no future. But you do.

So it is time to reassess and get everything back in order again. With so much freedom and creativity in NewPub we can do anything.

Let's finally act like it.

In other news, I have a story in the upcoming Pulp Rock anthology! More details here!