September 10, 2024

Story Tropes: Lazy Shortcuts, or Opportunities for Depth?

Apple on books with text: Deepen Your Craft with Resident Writing Coach Jami Gold (at Writers Helping Writers)

It’s time for another one of my guest posts over at Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers site. As one of their Resident Writing Coaches, I’ve previously shared:

With this turn for another coaching article at WHW, I’m exploring how to make the most of story tropes while avoiding their perils and pitfalls. Let’s explore how we can make tropes work harder in our story by taking a (non-spoilery) look at Amazon Prime’s My Lady Jane TV series…

Story Tropes Recap: What Are They?

Tropes are one of those things that we often recognize without realizing it, simply because we’ve seen plenty of stories in different mediums that have similar storytelling approaches. If our action-ish story’s hero has a mentor, we often expect the mentor to be killed (which forces the hero to stand on their own at the finale). If our story’s feuding families have relationship-appropriate children, we often expect them to get together. And so on.

What are tropes, and is there a way to avoid using them in our stories? Share on X

Tropes have been defined many different ways over the years, from “common themes” to “story devices,” but I like thinking of them as storytelling patterns. If readers recognize a pattern enough to think they know what to expect (even subconsciously), that’s a sign of being a trope.

However, even though that pattern recognition implies that tropes can be cliché or predictable, that doesn’t mean they’re bad or negative. They’re just a part of how we humans tell stories.

We can’t avoid them, because virtually every story idea fits into a pattern that’s been done before. At this point, even most “twists” or efforts to subvert tropes have been done before, which means readers won’t be surprised by those varied patterns either. So rather than trying to avoid them, we want to make sure the tropes in our story are working hard to strengthen our storytelling.

Avoid Lazy Writing, Not Tropes

Tropes will always exist in our story, and while tropes are not inherently “bad,” they can lead to lazy writing. That lazy writing is far more of a problem for our story than the existence of tropes.

Lazy writing often means that we’re not stepping back from the “trees” of our words and paragraphs to see the “forest” of the big picture of our story. When we fail to think consciously about our story, we’re less likely to be aware of or recognize the tropes in our writing.

When we don’t see the tropes of our story, we’re also not:

thinking of what readers will expect (so we can find a way to add surprises)
trying to avoid the worst clichés or predictable outcomes
ensuring that we’re not relying on the trope to carry important story elements
thinking of how to make the trope unique to our story (rather than just going through the motions by following the pattern)
considering how to use the trope to add depth or development to our story

Those types of issues regarding tropes will make our story weaker, no matter the strength of our other story elements. So it’s in our best interest to avoid lazy writing and instead write with more awareness.

Writers Helping Writers: Resident Writing Coach Program

How to Strengthen Our Story with Tropes

Come visit my guest post at WHW, linked above, where I’m sharing more about how we make tropes a force for good in our story, including:

what uses of tropes hurt our storytelling
3 examples of how lazy writing with tropes can make our story weaker
how tropes can help our storytelling
how treating tropes like a starting point can make our story stronger
5 example steps for using a trope as an opportunity to add depth and development

Then come back here for us to explore more examples about how we can use tropes to strengthen our stories…

Case Study: How the My Lady Jane TV Show Uses Tropes to Deepen Character Development

A recently released streaming show that I adored is My Lady Jane on Amazon Prime. The show is absolutely delightful in ways that reminded me of The Princess Bride with modern vibes.

Here’s the blurb on Amazon, so you can see what I mean:

Are you ready for an epic tale of true love, high adventure, regicidal maniacs, deadpan heroism, devious intrigues, swashbuckling swordfights, a soupçon of magical realism and oodles of yearning, banter and undeniable chemistry? Of course you are. Welcome to My Lady Jane.

And here’s the trailer (warning: language).

(Unfortunately, Amazon hasn’t committed to a second season yet, but there’s a petition to encourage them to so.)

One aspect I appreciated about the show was the smart writing. In particular, the story makes the most of the many tropes about the characters, setting, and plot points found in these types of stories.

Let’s look at two examples…

Trope Example #1: No Twist, Just Character Development

One character in My Lady Jane is introduced through a self-absorbed, buffoon-ish trope. There’s no need for an “ah-ha!” type of twist, as the writing uses the trope merely as a shortcut for quickly showing the audience the starting point of the character’s development arc.

Do tropes always need a twist? See what we can learn from #MyLadyJane on @PrimeVideo Share on X

That’s the power of how tropes are helpful to our story. They’re shortcuts for getting readers to understand and/or relate to the situation because they recognize the pattern. The show doesn’t need to include several scenes to establish the character’s starting point, as the character trope’s patterns are recognizable in just a few lines of a single scene.

However, like any good writing, the show doesn’t stop there. By using the trope’s shortcut, the show now has room to give extra attention to the character’s aspects beyond the trope. In other words, the show uses that starting-point shortcut to have time to create an arc throughout the rest of the character’s development over the series.

Trope Example #2: Developing Character Relationships

Another character is introduced as a trope with a common “twist” already built in. The standard trope of a beautiful damsel in distress is so shallow and cliché that it’s almost rare now, and the twist of a damsel smart enough to escape her distress is the new normal. However, audiences don’t necessarily assume that the love interest expects the twist.

What can the TV show #MyLadyJane on @PrimeVideo teach us about using tropes to strengthen a story? Share on X

The story is set up so the audience recognizes the pattern of the love interest seemingly following the standard, shallow trope. We think the love interest is thus involved for those shallow reasons.

Again, tropes are useful as a shortcut for readers to understand situations, for characters and situations to feel relatable, etc. So in this case, the audience’s recognition of the standard trope’s patterns seems to be setting up a shallow relationship between the two characters.

When it’s later revealed that the love interest was aware of the character following the twist pattern rather than the shallow standard pattern, the shortcuts created by the tropes quickly establish that the love interest was involved because of the less-shallow version of the character trope. (“You want me for my brains?”) As a result, the audience automatically better appreciates the love interest character and is instantly more invested in their relationship together.

So for those interested in watching a fun story and seeing how to put tropes to work by adding depth and development, I highly recommend checking out the My Lady Jane TV series. Tropes can be cliché, but if we’re doing our job as writers, they’re really only a starting point for our story and character development. *smile*

Have you ever tried to avoid tropes in your writing? If so, do you think you succeeded, or did you just end up with a less-common trope (because they’re everywhere)? Have you tried to come up with a never-used-before twist? Does this post give you ideas for how to use them as shortcuts to stronger, deeper writing instead? Have you seen My Lady Jane, and if so, what was your impression? Do you have any questions about this topic? (My WHW posts are limited in word count, but I’m happy to go deeper here if anyone wants more info!)