A Writerly Chat: Tropes

Today in A Writerly Chat, we shall be addressing (one of) the bane(s) of a writer’s existence…the Terrible Trope. Fantasy is a terribly trope-y genre, and those authors who attempt to write fantasy may find themselves at a tangible wall of terrible tropes (can you tell I’m having fun with this?).

In fact, Sister has given her book the working title of ‘How to Write Clichés.’ *grimaces* Let’s talk to her and see what she means by this! As usual, her replies will be in bold and mine in italics.

So in general, what do you think when you’re reading tropes?

I can talk…OK. Um…*giggles and slaps face*…uh…There are certain tropes that I like to read, but, I mean, they’re good tropes to me! And then a lot of tropes that other people like I don’t.

What do you think when you’re writing tropes?

Um, I’m thinking ‘oh my gosh, everyone’s going to hate this, I’m never going to publish my novels ever, I’m going to hide in a hole.’ That’s literally what I think.

So, in the first draft of your novel, how heavy were the tropes? And what tropes did you use?

I mean, in my first draft I didn’t realize that there were tropes, but there were a lot of tropes. Just take a list of tropes and write a book about it, and that’s what my first draft was like.

How have the tropes changed now? What tropes do you keep in your novel, and which did you get rid of?

In the first draft of my novel, everyone had swords. You know, that’s the classic fantasy weapon. So I realized this is not good, I mean obviously in real life, people don’t use the same weapons, right? So I gave people different weapons and if they did have swords–like Ronan has a sword–I changed it up and made it a little interesting, like giving Ronan a curved sword.

What weapon changes occurred, and why?

Well, Bree, who is a minor antagonist, and her bodyguards had these weapons–I really don’t know what they were. So I was like, ‘this is not good, I need to know what type of weapon they had, and it has to be a weapon that makes sense!’ In the first place, I cut out Bree’s bodyguards because they were irrelevant to the plot–*pats her own back* Be proud of me!–Anyway, so I gave Bree a dirk, which is a long knife or a short sword, whatever you want to call it.

Another change I made is Ronan had a plain, cool, nice little sword thing until I realized, I mean, that’s kind of boring. I didn’t want to write just a regular sword because it’s so cliché. So I was reading this article about weapons and fantasy weapons, and it had a curved sword there. It said a sword is a weapon of a fantasy protagonist, while a curved sword is seen as a twisted, less noble variant of the straight sword. So I was like, ‘OK, since Ronan is kind of messed up–I mean, he’s kind of twisted–why not give him a curved sword?’ So I did. And boom, there you go.

(Referenced article is right here)

What other clichés did you get rid of or twist?

Well, one of my other main characters, Hadriel, was, at the start of the book, a completely bad character with nonexistent morals and since I was focused on writing other story stuff and I didn’t really focus on her, she had kind of a rushed, not-so-rounded character arc. In order to make things easier for me and also to get rid of that ‘bad girl’ cliché, I made her only slightly more twisted than Ronan and I’m trying to fix her character arc.

If someone was to stand over you and force you to remove clichés, which ones would you refuse to over your dead body?

I would DEFINITELY to refuse to get rid of Ronan’s twistedness, because I don’t know, I like that *she says with obvious love in her voice*. I would not get rid of Ronan and Elana falling in love because *makes weird noise* even though it irritates me, I just want to keep it. I think that’s it.

OK guys, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this, because I know Sister and I really REALLY love writing it. If you did, comment and check back every Monday when I post new stuff. See ya, be blessed!

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