“Where do you get your ideas?” People are always curious how writers can come up with unique new stories, especially when those writers are producing books at a fast clip. This is especially true when writing genre fiction, where tropes and genre conventions are prevalent. How do you keep from repeating yourself? How do you come up with fresh concepts? And how do you know if your story ideas are truly unique, or if they’re just a regurgitated product of the collective unconscious?
These are the questions that came up for me early last month when I read this New Yorker article. It discusses a copyright infringement lawsuit between two authors (also involving at least one agent and a publishing house). What it all comes down to is that both authors work in the same genre—Romantasy—and that genre is governed by tropes, conventions, and expectations. This means there’s inevitably a lot of overlap between different stories. The question is, when does overlap become more than mere coincidence, and what are potential stumbling blocks for authors (aside from possible infringement)?
It’s a fine line between following genre conventions and giving readers what they want versus repeating yourself or sounding derivative. Most genre readers want things fresh and interesting, but also familiar—“the same, but different.” In other words, when they pick up a book, they want to know what they’re getting and they want to know what to expect. Of course, they don’t want an exact repeat of something they’ve read before, but they want something that follows similar conventions and gives those conventions a new spin.
Remember: for many readers, reading books is like eating comfort food. Yes, they want stories that feel fresh and new, but they also want that familiar feeling they always get when they read other stories in the same genre. A romance reader wants the Happily Ever After. The mystery reader wants to solve the puzzle along with the sleuth. And the thriller reader wants that urgency of the protagonist’s race against the clock. So if tropes and genre conventions are so important, but we also want to be original, how do we walk that fine line?
Voice and Reading Experience Matter
When reading the New Yorker article, one element that struck me was how the defendants emphasized the difference in voice between the two books. One author’s book is “sassy, fun, commercial, and hot” while the other’s is “raw, ruminative, [and] interior.” In other words, these two books seem to differ dramatically in terms of voice and they each offer very different reading experiences.
This is where we can make our stories unique. Tropes are like cookie cutters, producing the same shape again and again. Voice is like the icing that decorates the cookies, making each one unique. A cookie with chocolate icing will provide a very different taste experience than one with vanilla.
So too is it with voice. A book with a dreamy, sentimental voice and lush descriptions will feel nothing like an action-packed book with a crisp, satirical voice, even if they use the exact same tropes. In fact, these books will also likely attract and resonate with a different pool of readers.
If you’re wondering about how to make your story unique, hone your voice first and foremost. Not sure how to do that? This article can help you jumpstart the process.
Understand the Tropes and Genre Conventions
If you’re going to play in the genre fiction sandbox, you have to understand how your genre operates. This means reading a lot and understanding the tropes, conventions, and expectations readers have for that genre. You have to know what themes and ideas fit those conventions without letting them feel stale or overdone. To complicate things further, tropes that seem fun and familiar to some readers might feel cliche to others, so even if you walk that tightrope perfectly, you might still disappoint some people.
To understand tropes and genre conventions, you first need to know what they are. Today we’ll take a look at some tropes that come up most frequently in different genres, but before we do that, we need to talk about what a trope actually is.
What is a Trope?
According to Merriam-Webster, a trope is a “common or overused theme or device,” i.e., a cliche. I beg to differ. I think of tropes as a useful shorthand, giving us a snapshot of some aspect of a story that is far more complex within the story itself. For example, if I told you a romance novel was enemies to lovers, you instantly get the gist of what the story is about but you wouldn’t get the specifics. On the other hand, if you were to watch the film When Harry Met Sally you would see a much more complex execution of that trope. After all, the trope doesn’t come close to capturing the idea of that famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene.
Tropes come in many different flavors, including: premise tropes, structural tropes, pacing tropes and character tropes. These tropes can be found in several different genres and can be a useful shortcut to help us quickly express a complex aspect of the story without getting into all the details. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of tropes.
Premise Tropes
These are tropes that give us an idea of what the story is about. Premise tropes are sometimes also considered subgenres. When you define a book by one of these tropes, people instantly have a sense for the overall story. In some genres, the sub-genres also operate like premise tropes, giving us a quick snapshot of what the story is going to be about. Some examples of premise tropes include:
ROMANCE: Friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, fake relationship, love triangle, forbidden love, opposites attract (sometimes called “grumpy-sunshine”), and second chance.
MYSTERY: (often considered subgenres) amateur sleuth or cozy, police procedural, hardboiled or noir, locked room, and caper.
THRILLER: (again, often considered subgenres) spy/international, legal/political, science/medical, military, psychological, paranormal, and domestic suspense.
SCI-FI / FANTASY / HORROR: outsider (fish-out-of-water), quest (including side quests!), hidden truth (i.e., a prophecy or inheritance), weird things are happening, good vs. evil, coming into power.
HISTORICAL: war or political/social conflict, current events of time period, long journey.
Structural Tropes
These are tropes that impact the actual structure of the story, or how the story is told. These tropes relate to specific moments in the story that the genre reader will expect to see. While not all stories might include all of these tropes or expected story moments, they tend to come up frequently in their respective genres.
ROMANCE: In this genre, you often have the meet-cute at the beginning and a grand gesture at the end (at the climax of the story). Many stories also include a break-up, usually around 75% of the way into the story, where the characters are forced apart for some reason. Often this break-up stems from a misunderstanding (another structural trope) where one or both of the characters misreads a situation, leading them to break up.
Another structural trope that we often see in romance is forced proximity, where the couple is forced to be together in close quarters, leading them to fall in love. This trope is especially important in stories using the enemies to lovers premise, because there needs to be a reason for these two people who dislike each other to spend time together… and later fall in love. Forced proximity allows that to happen.
MYSTERY: There are certain structural expectations specific to mystery stories. These include the discovery of the crime/body at the beginning and the moment when the solution to the crime is revealed at the end. Many mysteries also include structural elements like collecting evidence and interviewing suspects, and of course, we also have red herrings which serve to set the reader off track for a bit. Some mysteries also include a moment where the crime becomes personal for the sleuth. This is often a moment where someone the sleuth cares about becomes a suspect and it’s up to the sleuth to clear their name.
THRILLER: I once heard agent Donald Maass say that most thrillers boil down to one of two storylines: “Stop!” and “Run!” With the “Stop!” type of story, the hero is trying to stop a big bad thing from happening (a bomb from going off, an assassination from happening, a serial killer from striking again). With the “Run!” type of story, the hero is trying to get away from some sort of monster or other bad thing (think horror/slasher movies where the characters are running away from the killer). Both of these structural tropes dictate how the story will unfold and what the protagonist needs to do to save the day.
Sometimes, in thrillers or adventure stories, we also see a trope called the MacGuffin—a plot device (or object/character) that moves the plot forward but is not actually important to the story itself. An example might be the Ark in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, which creates a reason for the adventure to happen, but doesn’t contribute very much to the overall story.
SCI-FI / FANTASY: Perhaps the most famous structural trope of all is one we often see in science fiction and fantasy. This is the hero’s journey. Originally developed by Joseph Campbell, this trope begins with the character living in an ordinary world. They get called to adventure and eventually meet a guide who will help them on their journey. Their journey takes them through various highs and lows, finally bringing them home, changed by their experience. While the hero’s journey is by no means the only possible storyline for these genres, it is one that appears quite often.
HISTORICAL: In historical fiction, one trope that sometimes comes up is the dual timeline, where you have two different time periods that are intertwined in some way. Historical fiction also sometimes overlaps with other genres, in which case it might pull structural tropes from another genre. For example, a historical mystery might include things like the discovery of the body or the sleuth announcing the solution to the crime.
Pacing Tropes
Not all genres have pacing-related tropes. The most common occur in romance—where you have insta-love and the slow burn—and with the ticking clock in thrillers. Other genres might borrow these tropes if they have a romance subplot or a thriller component.
Character Tropes
There are certain character types that tend to come up again and again in different genres. Here are some examples (with their typical genres in parentheses):
- Unexpected Love Interest (Romance)
- Plucky Best Friend (Romance)
- Someone Incapable of Love (Romance)
- Alpha Hero (Romance)
- Wisened Mentor (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
- Chosen One (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
- Unexpected Hero (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
- Source of All Evil (Fantasy)
- Reluctant Hero (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
- Unknowing Heir to the Throne (Fantasy)
- Found Family (Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
- Monsters or Aliens (Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror)
- Expendable Minor Character (Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror)
- Hero/Sleuth with a Troubled Past (Mystery / Thriller)
- Unlikeable Victim (Mystery / Thriller)
- Bumbling Law Enforcement (Mystery / Thriller)
- Unlikely Hero/Sleuth (Mystery / Thriller as well as some Sci-Fi / Fantasy)
- Criminal Mastermind (Mystery / Thriller)
- Protagonist Ahead of Their Time (Historical)
- Historical Figures as Characters (Historical)
Using Tropes and Navigating Genre Conventions
I share these tropes and genre conventions with you, not to make you feel pigeon-holed or limited, but rather to give you ideas of elements you could include in your story. Keep in mind, stories don’t need to include all the tropes listed above (because that would be overkill!) and what helps make stories unique are the different combinations of these elements.
Remember too, that your voice is what will make your story truly stand out from all the other books using the same tropes and formulas. In the end, tropes and genre conventions are just there to guide you and give you a sense for your options. It’s up to you to make your story sparkle!
Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!
P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.
