#73. The Trope Special: How to Make Your Short Stories and Novels Even More Original and Exciting by Using Tropes
Can tropes – story ideas which have been churned around and repeated for centuries, if not millennia – actually improve your stories and make them more original?
Join award-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in an exploration of story tropes, with tips, tricks and tools you can use to develop your writing in new, exciting ways. Naturally, there’s plenty of experimentation with ideas, as Anna uses the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas before testing out different tropes and seeing what happens next.
A fascinating exploration of writing craft. Ignite your
imagination with these short story ideas for the ultimate writing prompt challenge. Your weekend is not weird enough (or creative enough) without Brainstoryum!
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INTRO: Hello imaginative people! I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 73 of Brainstoryum. Now, in the last couple of weeks, it seems I’ve become a little bit obsessed with tropes – or re-obsessed with tropes, as this is an aspect of my writing journey that I’ve explored before, but I just haven’t yet shared it on Brainstoryum. (Or experimented with them on here – as this podcast isn’t just about sharing my writing process and story ideas, it’s also my imaginative playground for experimenting and, well, learning.)
It’s funny, because every introduction I’ve come across, either in a book or a podcast or a blog on tropes, begins by acknowledging that a lot of writers think tropes are a dirty word and that they seem to represent the exact opposite of what we are gunning for as creative writers of fiction. We want new ideas, and as authors we want to be original and to stand out from the crowd, not churn out the same old storylines that have been written or filmed a thousand times before. And yes, at first glance, for me as a writer who especially loves the unexpected, who complains about struggling to find stories that satisfy this desire for something “with a special different something” in it, tropes do seem like the very antithesis of what I’m interested in. But that’s where my younger writing self was wrong.
Tropes are part of the language of story. They embody concepts, themes and situations or character types which we as readers and audiences expect to read or watch, though sometimes only instinctively, without realising it. A lot of these expectations are bound up in certain genres, for example, in fantasy, common tropes include the "journey" and the "quest".
Part of the reason why we as fantasy lovers read fantasy is to experience the vicarious excitement of the protagonist going on a journey into the unknown, having to face strange and dangerous obstacles, possibly creatures, and having a sense of a purpose or mission; it’s all part of the escape that fantasy promises for us.
So how do we as writers fulfill these expectations (or even “needs”, you might say) of our audience, while producing something that feels fresh and original, and not cliched?
The key to wielding the power of tropes is through unusual and unexpected combinations: switching and splicing tropes from across different genres has become a very popular, and this is what a lot of the big blockbuster movies manage to do.
I could wax lyrical on this for a while, but the point of this podcast is to share with you the process of my experimental methods of generating story ideas, and what better way is there to really explore an idea than to actually test it out. So today’s show is going to involve a bit more experimentation, and as I’m brainstorming a story, I’m going to identify the tropes that are appearing, and also try drawing in different tropes to see what new directions these suggest.
It’s my hope that this will not only be entertaining, but it may help you make up your mind what you think about tropes, how you might use them, and whether you might apply the same kind of experimental thinking in your own writing when you’re approaching a new story idea. Sparked off by this show, I have just created a free resource on this topic online, so keep listening to find out more, because I think this will be a very handy tool, especially if you are new to messing around with tropes; because of course, all creativity begins with rolling up your sleeves and messing around; a playful attitude is what inspiration responds to.
Netherlands