How to Strengthen Our Story with Tropes

Every genre and medium of storytelling uses tropes—common themes or story devices. However, the frequency of certain storytelling ideas, such as “the chosen one,” makes them so common that readers get sick of them, and every type of trope can seem cliché or predictable.

Yet tropes are so common that we can’t avoid using them, so it’s better if we can learn how to benefit from them. How can we avoid the problems of tropes and instead use them to help strengthen our story?

Wait, Why Can’t We Just Avoid Tropes?

Think of story tropes as a storytelling pattern. Some patterns are big and can encompass the entire story (coming of age), and some patterns are smaller and play out over a scene or two (a double cross).

These storytelling patterns, or tropes, can focus on:

• characters (hero’s journey, unlikely allies, unreliable narrator, reluctant hero, etc.)
• settings (going into a dark basement, vaguely European medieval surroundings, etc.)
• plot elements (road trip, love triangle, blackmail, trapped in an elevator, etc.)
• and so on…

Any storytelling idea that’s been used more than once becomes part of a pattern, from “secret admirer” to “cellphone battery is dead.” Virtually every idea, twist, obstacle, etc. falls into a pattern, which means it’s part of a trope.

At this point, even the many ways that authors attempt to subvert a trope have themselves become tropes. Think of a “damsel in distress” trope where the damsel isn’t really in danger at all.

Countless numbers of tropes exist, to the point that a whole website is dedicated to them. In other words, tropes are unavoidable.

How Can We Avoid the Weaknesses of Tropes?

The pattern aspect of tropes is part of what makes a trope a trope. Audiences can fill in the details of a trope without the story having to spell everything out because they recognize the pattern.

Not surprisingly, that pattern recognition can also create the sense of predictability, cliché, and other weaknesses. However, the worst negative effects of tropes occur when we rely on them to carry the work of the story.

Taking some of the bullet points above, here’s what it means to rely on tropes to carry the story:

• For characters, we set up an “unlikely allies” trope, but we don’t develop why these characters are working together despite the unlikeliness.
• For setting, we set up a “vaguely European medieval surroundings” trope, but we don’t develop any unique storytelling or worldbuilding details.
• For plot, we set up a “blackmail” trope, but we don’t develop the stakes and motivations of the parties involved.

In all those cases, the tropes would weaken the story, regardless of the strength of our other story elements, because we’d be relying on the trope formula to do the work. Our lazy writing would expect readers to recognize the trope to the point that we merely kick off the pattern and wait for the formula to do the rest. The story itself is just going through the motions.

How Can Tropes Strengthen Our Story?

Given that inherent pattern recognition and predictability, how can we possibly make tropes strengthen our story?

Tropes and their patterns tap into universal experiences and emotions. Readers recognize and are familiar with the patterns of those experiences and emotions from other stories they’ve been exposed to, even if they’ve never come across them in real life. With that common background, tropes can help readers instantly grasp complex relationships, emotional flips, and storytelling turns.

So while tropes can be shortcuts to lazy writing, their patterns and expectations can also be shortcuts to relatability and understanding for readers. As long as we’re then building on those shortcuts rather than expecting them to do all the work, our story will be stronger. In other words, rather than relying on tropes to the extent of shortchanging unique details or character/story development, we can use tropes to improve readers’ connection and provide opportunities for deeper development.

Example: How Tropes Can Strengthen Our Story

Let’s say we want readers to feel more connected to a minor character. Here’s one way we can use tropes to shortcut a starting point for the character’s development (which we then build on) and strengthen the character’s connection to readers:

1. Recognize what tropes/patterns the character represents: The character is an intelligent precocious child, and thus readers will expect a know-it-all who’s always a step ahead of everyone else.
2. Lean into the trope in a way that adds relatability: Make the child more relatable by showing them as an outsider or dismissed in some respects.
3. Recognize the trope’s expectations (and common subversions): Readers will believe that when cornered by the bad guy, the child will come out on top.
4. Subvert the trope in a way that adds opportunities for depth: Instead, the child doesn’t realize the bad guy is manipulating them, because…they are still a child. (Note: Sometimes this step isn’t even on the page because the opportunity is what’s important, not the subversion.)
5. Use the opportunity to add character and/or story development: In the reveal of the child being manipulated instead, use the opportunity to deepen their character development, such as by exploring their feelings of outsider-ness or being dismissed, or maybe their precociousness is a result of feeling like they’re not allowed to make mistakes, and this was a big mistake.

In this example, between the child being a victim of the bad guy’s manipulation and deepening their character development on the page, readers will feel doubly sorry for them and thus more emotionally connected to them. As a result, the story will feel deeper and stronger.

Focus on the Opportunity for More, Not the Subversion

There are plenty of advice articles out there about how to twist or subvert a trope:

• Change the context
• Gender/role reversal
• Layer tropes to come up with something unique, etc.

That advice can be great and good to know, and in fact, I’ve written one of those posts. But like mentioned above, many subversions have now become new tropes.

So if we can’t avoid using tropes, and if there’s a limit to how much we can subvert tropes, how can we make them benefit our story? Strengthening our story with — or despite — tropes is less about the specifics of subverting them and more about how we can take something potentially cliché and use it to add depth and development to our story.

We can use the shortcuts that tropes provide to give us a quick starting point to build on for more depth in our story. We can use the shorthand of trope relatability to give us room to focus on development beyond or outside of the trope.

In other words, rather than spending our time trying to think of a never-before-thought-of twist for our story’s tropes, we may be better off to accept that tropes aren’t bad—but they are just a starting point. If we instead spend our time using our story’s tropes as a launchpad for adding uniqueness and depth, our story will be stronger. *smile*

Have you struggled to understand tropes before or been stumped for how to twist the tropes in your story? Does this post help you see how embracing them as shortcuts might allow us to add more depth in other ways? Do you have any questions about tropes or their weakness and how to use them?

Check out the Character Type and Trope Thesaurus.

Use this resource to familiarize yourself with the commonalities for a certain kind of character while also exploring ways to elevate them and make them memorable, more interesting, and perfectly suited for the story you want to tell.