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Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

It was a dark and stormy night as I began writing this blog. To hear critics talk about it, tropes are the bane of a writer’s, and therefore a reader’s, existence. Tropes are supposedly all the stumbling blocks that get in the way of a good story. Booktubers love making videos of tired tropes, cliché tropes, overused tropes. You know, boring tropes. The thing to remember is that tropes are everywhere. Things you would never have thought of. Did you know that eye injuries with a slashing scar across one eye is a trope in fantasy books and cartoons? I didn’t, until it was pointed out to me. Then I caught Clevenger using it in a scene!

Tropes are tools in your storytelling toolbox. They are weapons in your arsenal. You just have to remember that a rusty rake is as well, and we know how good those come across in your average Looney Tunes cartoon. And remember, shotguns are effective hunting tools, but if used poorly, a trope can ruin a story just as thoroughly as a poorly used firearm can ruin someone’s day. And there are so many tropes to be misused and tripped over. Just check out Tvtropes.org for pages upon pages, followed by more pages, of every trope imaginable, and many more that you would not believe.

But tropes really do not have to be cliched and boring. Instead, they can be a wonderful and artistic challenge. The trick is to find new ways to use tropes, to twist them, or even to subvert them. It is not tropes you want to avoid, it is cliches. As the saying goes, it doesn’t matter how evil your villain is, just don’t make them boring!

Several years ago I heard the most excellent pitch for an Anime series that was entirely based upon trope avoidance. It is common in Anime that the main characters have unusual hair colors. In practice this is done to make the characters stand out and be easily identifiable to the watcher. But this has turned it into a trope. So the pitch was basically that a Japanese couple has a new baby whose hair is a wild blue color. They instantly realize that their child is destined to be a main character in an Anime plot. Well, they simply won’t stand for it. From the time the child can comprehend speech, the parents train the child all about all the standard opening tropes for Anime series, and ways to avoid them. So each episode is just different days at school. A new teacher arrives. They have a mysterious past and opaque glasses that they constantly push up on the bridge of their nose? Transfer out of their class ASAP! A new transfer student arrives, and they have silver hair? Sit on the other side of the classroom and avoid talking to them! Seasons upon seasons where every episode is the “pilot episode” of a new Anime series, all carefully and whackily avoided. I would watch the hell out of this show!

There is another show already doing something similarly, a live action series called A Man Who Defies the World of BL, where a common, plain looking college student comes to the realization that he is surrounded by every trope imaginable from BL (boy love, formerly known as yaoi) manga. All the guys around him are either cute or hot, and all seem to have interesting stories, while all the girls seem cookie cutter and forgettable. Bullies constantly fall for their victims, teachers for students, jocks for geeks. He watches some of the more common tropes happen, and as he realizes that he seems to be the only straight guy around, prompting him to start studying BL manga to find out the more obscure tropes to avoid. Absolutely hilarious concept, if you can tolerate subtitles.

The point is, there is nothing new under the sun, it’s all been done before, and according to Tvtropes.org, your head will explode if you try to write a story without tropes. Which of course, is its own trope category. So you can either have a new Chosen One following the Hero’s Journey along with his Wise Mentor and his Trusty Sidekick while trying to stop the Evil Henchman of the Big Bad Evil Guy. Or you can be the feisty student destined to star in their own Anime, that avoids a new beginning every episode. It’s all up to you. Either way, I hope your characters live Happily Ever After.

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham