How do you feel about tropes?

Do you love them and couldn’t write a story without them? Do you hate them and think they are a scourge on the face of literature? No matter which way you feel, they are an essential aspect of writing genre fiction.

You might think that tropes are just for romances. You would be wrong, of course. There are tropes for every genre. You’ll find an enormous list of Mystery tropes here. Fantasy is split up into so many different subgenres I can’t even give you one page to go look at. Interestingly, there is one page of “Romance Novel Tropes” on TV Tropes, but I’m sure that you’ll find many more if you search for your specific sub-genre. Oh, and for those writing “Literature”, don’t think you’re not included in this. Here’s the page on TV Tropes for Literature tropes — like fantasy it’s broken down into sub-categories.

The point is that whether you realize it or not, you’re probably using a trope as you write your novel. You may believe that you are writing something new and original that no one has ever thought of before… and, I am very sorry, you’d be wrong. You may be putting a unique spin on the trope, but it’s extremely likely that someone — or many someones — have written that story before in their own way.

But what is a trope?

Technically it’s “the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech.” (thank you Wikipedia!) But in novels, it’s the concept around which the story is built.