Tropes

The Building Blocks of a Narrative

First things first...

Once upon a time, over the river and through the woods, lived a farmer, who was as old as the hills, and his daughter, who was as clever as a fox.  One day, they woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and fell head over heels.  Scared out of their wits, they ran at the speed of light in the nick of time to avoid the house falling down on them.  They lived happily ever after.  The End.

The most classic of cliché, "The End."

If you've heard of any of the devices I used above before: Congratulations!  You're familiar with some of the most basic (and sadly overused) building blocks of storytelling!  We call them clichés, and they are given this unfortunate name because they are, word for word, so overused that you can't avoid them in your lifetime.  Every parent has told every child across time, at some point, some version of a cliché, either at bedtime or as a life lesson or while scolding them, etc.  These days, memes are becoming the new cliché.  But when you watch "The Big Bang Theory" on CBS and think, "Oh, Penny's blonde so she must be dumb," or you watch 'sport-of-choice' and think an athlete is dumb just because he/she/they is/is/are an athlete, congrats, cliché!  You may say, "But Shane, these are stereotypes."  Stereotypes are a type of cliché.  So enough about clichés.  If you can turn on a sitcom and figure out characters by their appearance, or see someone on the street and make a snap judgement about someone, you've 'clichéd,' and sadly that's boring.

What I find interesting is instead tropes.  Now, you may think to yourself," What's the difference?"  Or maybe, "What's a trope?"  Direct dictionary definitions aside, "a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, [or] a linguistic idiom..." (TvTropes.org).  Generally, you know them when you see them, but they don't make you rolls your eyes and sigh thinking, "Another dumb blonde/Chinese math-wiz/antisocial scientist?"  Tropes are non-disruptive, were as a cliché is, or can be, disruptive to the storytelling.

Stormtrooper Accuracy = Cliché

A classic example of a trope is "The Captain."  Star Wars, Star Trek (and all it's spin-offs), Star Gate, Babylon 5...  you name it.  If the show has a military twist, naval or otherwise, you know The Captain.  Kirk, Picard, Solo, O'Neil, Sinclair.  I could go on, but you know that when you talk about The Captain you are referring to not just someone in charge of a naval vessel, you're talking about the guy who takes command and leads people in war.  And while they don't always carry the literal rank or title of Captain, you know who they are.  That is a trope.  It's recognizable and it doesn't get in the way.  There's no one single catch phrase or slogan that goes with it, and most of the time the individual Captains have their own.  And the trope doesn't limit the attributes of this leader like a stereotype.  Kirk and Picard are not the same types of Captain.  Han Solo goes from just 'a captain' to The Captain when he turns away form being a loner and decides to help fight the Empire.  Luke Skywalker goes from disgruntled, whiny farm-boy to a pensive, insightful Jedi and squadron leader.  None of them do the same things, but they all fit the Trope.

"O Captain! my Captain!" - Walt Whitman

I love tropes.  Why?  Because noticing tropes requires not just a familiarity with genre, but an understanding of the very conventions they illustrate.  And sometimes when you think about a particular character or story or even series, you can surprise yourself with what tropes are embedded in your favorite story.  To students of Literature, these things become plain to see after enough exposure.  For instance, what do Darth Vader, Voldemort, and Sauron have in common?  If you said, "They're all villains," then you recognize them as the classic trope of villains.  But that's just the surface.  Each one of them stem from another trope, The Evil Overlord trope.  "Wow, Shane, really?"  Yeah, yeah, stick with me.  These tropes resonate across myth and time.

Meet 'Ares'

For instance, "Gods of War."  Ares, Athena, Odin, Freya, Set, Horus, Ishtar, Bishamon.  Gods of war across the world from Greece to Japan to Norway to Egypt.  They even are applied to real people.  George S Patton, US General of the Third Army during World War Two is said to have believed he was a reincarnation of the Spartans of Greece, who were the War-Godliest people of ancient Greece.  And then there's Spartans themselves.

Meet SPARTAN Team Noble:
Jorge, Kit, Carter, Emile, and Jun.

How many college and high school teams call themselves the Spartans.  The fascination with Spartans in sports, movies, and video games (whether the historical Greeks, the Fictional Greeks, or the Augmented Super-soldiers of HALO) comes from our fascinations with yet another trope: The Proud Warrior Race.

I could rant for pages about tropes.  And yet I've hardly touched how deep tropes can go.  They refer to theme, plot devices, character development, character archetypes, even the things in media that don't make sense!  When people someday read my novel I look forward to people prying it apart to discover the tropes I've purposefully worked into my novel, and discovering the tropes that snuck into it.  Because it's a form of literary archaeology, a process of looking at what was used to build the story, consciously and subconsciously, that fascinates me.  So many things from the books, games, and movies I've enjoyed over time will find there way into my novel, and I can't wait to dig them up with others and discuss them.