Writing to Trope

We all like to think that we write original stories that no one has ever written before. In a sense that’s true. On the other hand, it’s also highly likely that your story falls into a trope.

According to Wikipedia, a trop is “a writer’s usage of commonly recurring or overused literary techniques and rhetorical devices (characters and situations), motifs, and clichés in a work of creative literature.”

In other words, it’s a common plot device that’s used in many different stories.

Some think that it’s not a good thing to use tropes, on the other hand, if you look at most popular fiction you could probably slot every book you come across into a known trope. By using a trope, it doesn’t mean that your story is going to be exactly like every other book that uses that same trope. They are general enough that the stories you can create from a single trope could be endless.

Using a trope can be a great way to start plotting or thinking about the story you want to write. Just saying to your fantasy writing self “The One” makes you think of all the stories you’ve read where the protagonist, unbeknownst to themselves, is the one and only person who can _____ (fill in the blank: save the world, kill the big-bad evil, whatever). If that’s the sort of story you love and want to write, then you know right off how your story is going to go.