How Not to Write a YKTTW - Television Tropes & Idioms

So you've carefully perused How Not To Write An Example and now feel ready to propose your very own trope? Some handy hints:

Remember, Wiki Magic will not only provide examples for Your Trope, but format them correctly, add a decent page summary and then launch the whole thing. Therefore the best approach is a one sentence description with at most one example, after which you never look at again:
The Plot
Some stories don't need one.
- Alternately, just use one or two examples to define what your trope is.
  - Use series known for having lots of tropes, so all the tropers will have already seen that one. No need to explain why they are your trope. After all, if you pick two series that have nothing to do with the other, they can't have more than one thing in common. For example:
The Most Awesome Trope Ever
Self Explanatory.
* Star Trek
* Code Geass Just Code Geass.
Anyone who criticises Your Trope is doing so because they hate you. React accordingly.
- E.g. by calling them nazis, fascists, bullies, and/or narrow-minded. Also do this with moderators. Use vandalism as a means of clarifying your point. Then act all insulted when you get banned. Obviously you are right and they are wrong.
Your Trope is only covered by existing entries if said entries are described using exactly the same words. Otherwise it's probably just a subtrope/supertrope/sister trope. Insist that the existing entry be accordingly split into multiple entries, each coincidentally containing the exact same list of examples.
When in doubt, name Your Trope "Crowning Moment of..." or "Everything's ___ with ___". After all, we're pretty short on those at the moment and definitely need a few more.
If still in doubt when it comes to a title, append the word 'Gambit' or 'Syndrome' to whatever you've come up with, regardless of whether it actually is a gambit or syndrome. These words don't actually have any meanings and are just intensifiers.
- If "Gambit" or "Syndrome" don't work, "Badass" is a good choice.
It is good to name Your Trope with "The X Effect" where X can be any character, item or the name of the show.
No Trope is too general. Your Trope of The Plot is great!
No Trope is too specific. Your Trope of Dropped a Bridge on Him (On A Thursday) is great!
No Trope is too non specific-to-fiction. Your Trope of People Sit on Chairs is great!
Remember, on a Wiki where anyone can launch any trope at any time, nothing is a surer sign of quality than precedent! If people criticise Your Trope, defend it by pointing out some even worse ones that already exist.
- Bonus points if those were originally Your Trope as well.
All tropes are either awesome or badges of shame (nothing in between). Good tropes should be filled with nothing but praise and be described as defining points of "awesome-ness", while bad tropes should contain as much bile and contention as you can possible muster. Be sure to list examples according to your personal preferences, too.
Remember that the Japanese do everything inherently different to everybody else. Thus, "Trope in Japan" or "Anime version of trope" is ample description.
People may not be obliging enough to say How Did We Miss This One? when they see your trope. Therefore, be sure to write it yourself in the YKTTW.
Existing tropes aren't awesome enough to capture that really cool moment you just saw on Your Show. It definitely needs its own trope because it was just that cool.
- Always name your tropes after your favorite characters because really, everyone should know them already. If it's a character archetype, title it "The Insert Name Here".
Works pages always go through YKTTW. Always.
Another wonderful fallback when you don't have any idea is to make a Sliding Scale. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your Sliding Scale Of War Realism In Sci Fi.
Want to Complain About Real Life You Don't Like? Say It With a Trope (TM)! Don't worry that your sole example is a Truth in Television, once the Wiki Magic gets to work, no one will ever suspect that there were ulterior motives behind your proposing That Stupid Guy On The Internet Who Was Totally Talking Crap About The Constitutionality Of Income Tax And Whom I Would Have Proven Wrong If Some Fascist Mod Hadnt Locked The Thread When I Started Posting Links. Why, the exact same scene probably occurs in Far From The Madding Crowd.
Don't bother to check for duplicate examples, and only loosers check they're spelling.
Make sure you name it after your favorite example, no matter how obscure or unintuitive it sounds. If other people are confused by this, it just means they aren't watching the right media.
- Be sure to exagerate the importance of the character/series it is named after. Call any criticism of this "unconstructive", "hatespeech", "ignorant", or "inane".
Your best trope title is just one or two characters different from another trope about something else entirely. Have a trope about worlds made of dreams and people's imaginations? Try Nightmare Fueled, since people will be pleasantly pleased to try and find your trope and wind up at Nightmare Fuel instead.
If someone suggests that your trope is actually covered by another trope, there's no need to even address such a ridiculous accusation. Just ignore them completely and keep adding examples.
Everyone will understand that phrase you heard on a random forum and are using for a title, so Don't Explain the Joke by giving a trope description, just write "Self Explanatory".
The Title Bin is a list of tropes just waiting to be made! Everyone will love it if you pull out a title you liked and make up an ill-thought-out trope specifically so you can use that title.
If you can find a namespace more suitable for your trope than the boring "Main/", launch it there, so people will have it easier finding it! This is especially true if launching video game tropes.
- If you can't find a namespace that is more interesting than Main/, just make one up. There can never be too many namespaces!
After you've launched the trope, just ignore the post-launch message and the red link on the Launches page and let the wiki-gnomes copy-paste your YKTTW contents to the new page. That's what Wiki Magic and teamwork are all about.
Good tropes are subjective. Make sure that your trope has absolutely no objective criteria, and is either blatantly positive enough that anyone who likes a work can shoehorn it into your trope, or blatantly negative enough that anyone who wants to bitch about a work can use your trope.
While Tropes Are Not Bad, everyone knows that some tropes ARE bad. If a character or work you like shows up on one of those bad tropes, feel free to make a new trope that's the exact same except comes with a built-in-excuse, like Flanderized But Better Because Of It or Did Not Do The Research But Its Okay Because Its Cooler That Way.
- Isn't that last one Rule Of Cool?
A good idea for a YKTTW is to take an existing trope and create one that's The Same But More, or The Same But Less. This works especially well with subjective tropes— we have Nightmare Fuel and Crowning Moment of Funny, so why not Mildly Creepy or Amusing If You Like That Kind Of Thing?
Good YKTT Ws are like volleyball, they're about 70% bumps. Never mind that you can bump the YKTTW by editing it without changing anything, what people love to see is 45 replies, 30 of which are "Bump!" or "YKTTW Bump!"
The more, the better. Submitting YKTT Ws is a badge of pride, whether they are ultimately tropable or not. Twenty per day is the baseline for good YKTT Wing.
- Tropers have short attention spans as they're always wandering off to read other things. They can't be expected to go through more than ~~three~~ two hours' worth of ideas to get to your trope.
Always add "Up for Grabs" to every YKTTW you start from the very beginning. If other people really like your proposal, they'll be happy to launch it, right?
If you have a response to someone who replies to a YKTTW it is required that you edit their reply. Who wants to read a conversation? Just spoil tag it (now that you can't overwrite). Oh, come on. Nobody would do anything so inconsiderate as that.
If you feel that you must provide something more for Wiki Magic to work with than a title, "Self Explanatory" and "How Did We Miss This One?", writing a nice long essay on the sociological, political, psychological, historical or scientific (or some combination of them — bonus points for covering all of them in one essay) ramifications of the underlying idea is an excellent choice. If you can't write at least 500 to 1000 words, try harder — someone might misunderstand what you meant.
If a number of responses point out that We Already Have This, and give the name of the trope your YKTTW supposedly duplicates, you have two options: you can ignore them completely, or you can explain in minute detail how your trope is different from the trope that already exists. The more minute or subjective the difference, the better. By no means is it acceptable to respond "Oh, OK then," and discard the proposal.
You clearly know better than anyone on the trope/work you're writing about (otherwise you wouldn't be writing it, would you?), make sure to enlighten us all by including your theories and opinions as to what it really meant. Those who disagree with you on this are simply wrong, say this loudly and clearly, using as much profanity as possible.
If you see a trope you think is stupid, just launch it to discard. No need to bother with a disparaging comment. The original poster will immediately find their trope in the launches list and understand exactly why you felt their idea was not trope - worthy.
Don't put any examples - your vague (or media specific) title and 1 sentence explanation is clear enough. Be sure to punctuate with Seen It a Million Times anyway, though.
Some examples may be duplicates. That's okay, leave them in anyway.
- And if you must add examples, X, Just...X should get the point across. After all, everyone here has read and seen all the same media you have— if they haven't, well, they're not real tropers.
Remember to constantly shut down any jokes or wit you don't find funny. After all, if you don't like it, it shouldn't be there, right?
YKTTW is a great tool, just use it to write up your trope, and launch it before anyone has a chance to reply.
Conversely, you don't really need to YKTTW a trope. Wiki Magic is just as good. Other people can fix anything.
If your trope is rejected for some reason, look for existing tropes that you think also fit that reason and send them to the Cut List. Everyone will appreciate that you want to help the wiki by getting rid of other pages like the rejected one, even if one of the pages would create Red Links in over 2000 pages.
If your work is removed, just upload it again. Even better, tell the mods that you intend on doing that no matter how many times it's removed. Edit Wars are in no way against the rules of the site and won't get you banned. In fact, your dedication will probably allow you to get your way.
If none of the above things work, throw a temper tantrum and insult the mods. That always works.
Finally, just launch Your Trope without regard to replies! No one in YKTTW will mind!
Under no circumstances should you explain or spell out acronyms or abbreviations.
- Exception: Captain Obvious can save the day with knowledge of said acronym or abbreviation.
Never chek ur speeling; it's blatant Google abuse.