Rename:: Most Writers Are Writers

Ok this trope's name is just terrible I mean Really bad. The examples list is extremely small for the amount of characters this trope should cover there should be a huge list of examples but the misleading snowclone name IMO is dragging it down by people thinking its not a character trope.

I currently have a trope specifically for artists in YKTTW [1] which would be a subtrope or sister trope to this and I had no idea that this trope even existed.

edited 24th Feb '11 9:34:53 AM by Raso

The real problem I'm seeing at first glance is that the description details that is a trope when the MAIN character, which should mean the PRINCIPAL character at the CENTER of the whole story, is a writer or author (It's Write What You Know in one of its purest forms).

However, some examples are just naming any characters in works who are writers. George McFly, for example, may be a science fiction writer at the end of Back To The Future, but that movie wouldn't have an example of this trope unless Marty McFly was a writer or author.

edited 24th Feb '11 9:41:22 AM by SeanMurrayI

Wow this thread died...

I agree that the trope name is weird. Did you have any ideas for a rename?

edited 27th Feb '11 4:54:14 PM by Embryon

Protagonist Writer?

Are you sure? George Mc Fly wasn't just a pretty important character, but his aspiration of becoming a writer was also a major plot point.

"The writer of this sci-fi film treated sci-fi writing as a stock life-aspiration" seems like it is covered by this trope.

I've also frequently seen this potholed to mean Did Not Do The Research, as in "Most Writers Are Writers, not physicists, historians, psychologists (etc)". Looks like another indication that the name may not be working.

It'd be a shame to see it go altogether, though, as I think there's a trope here.

Out of the first 20 wicks on "related to", (alphabetically), only the Artistic Licence index listed it that way, that is minimal misuse.

Writers Written By Writers?

How about just Writers Write Writers in that case (you know, for Added Alliterative Appeal)

George McFly wasn't just a pretty important character, but his aspiration of becoming a writer was also a major plot point.

Like I said, Most Writers Are Writers should focus on writers creating stories where the main, central, protagonist is a writer. George McFly is far from being the one character everything in the Back To The Future trilogy follows and revolves around; that character is most certainly Marty (and, to a much lesser extent, Doc Brown). George's writing is also FAR removed from any of the films MAJOR plot points.

We should keep the title. There's really nothing wrong with it and there's little evidence that it confuses anyone. It's true the initial poster didn't find it, but I don't believe he would have found it with any of the alternate titles suggested either.

And while "Most writers are writers" is a humorous title because when taken literally it seems like an oxymoron that writers are writers, it does mean something. "Most writers are X" implies that not only are they X, but that X influences their work—which it certainly does here. And having writers who aren't protagonists still counts as the writer's profession influencing his work.

You based that on one throwaway word of the description, that isn't related to how the trope functions anyways. If it you that much, we can replace "main characters" with "characters". Problem solved.

^Look, just because a supporting character like George McFly became a science-fiction author doesn't mean that this detail was included by the screenwriter because he likes to write.

A screenwriter creating a story that is actually about a character who writes is Writing What You Know (which is the entire focus of this trope). George McFly becoming a writer in the altered timeline created by Marty is not an example of that.

Personally I think this should be Someone in the cast and not if they are just a guest star or such... If they are worthy of a Character Page entry they can be this.

Something like that, it must at least be a regular cast member. A minor character in a bit part still doesn't count.

edited 1st Mar '11 2:54:20 PM by Stratadrake

I dont know a Reoccurring Character should be the defining point to fit this.

When you get into the Loads And Loads Of Characters things start to have issues.

Or anything with a Cast Herd. Those are problematic.

edited 1st Mar '11 3:07:47 PM by shimaspawn

If the point of the trope is that it's Write What You Know, then the core requirement is clearly "the character is a writer because the writer is a writer", right? But how do we define that in a way that doesn't become "list of works depicting writers or novelists?"

That is a Character type trope in of itself IMO but still in Cast Herd and Loads And Loads Of Characters these can take the form of an Author Avatar or other things. As I said before if they are important enough to be a recurring character they should fit this trope.

Well, if the character is a writer but is never depicted doing things a writer would normally do (like write), that's probably a good sign it's not this trope. If there's a scene where the writer character is typing up drafts, talking on the phone with an editor, and complaining about deadlines, that's probably a good sign it is this trope. How to mash that sort of thing into generalized guidelines, I don't really know.

I agree that this is a very real trope, and that it gets rather extreme at times. George Orwell complained in his essay on Charles Dickens that "a writer nowadays is so hopelessly isolated that the typical modern novel is a novel about a novelist." The opening quote is about something similar — the author who really doesn't know about anything except writing, leading to an isolated story.

It's also mentioned that it covers movies about movie directors or writers, paintings about painters, photographs about photographers, plays about theater directors or writers, TV shows about television directors or writers, and so on. But the examples don't reflect this.

I think the issue is that the intro is about a meta-point, that so many writers here are writing what they know. This is something that's hard to prove or disprove by examples, barring Word of God or a tell-all biography. Maybe limit examples to where the author is clearly drawing on their own experience, or is using some kind of postmodernist No Fourth Wall to comment on it?

This is something that's hard to prove or disprove by examples, barring Word Of God or a tell-all biography. Maybe limit examples to where the author is clearly drawing on their own experience

That's something in the nature of a lot of tropes about authors.

But we're not Wikipedia. We don't need the same standards of proof. If it's reasonably plausible that a writer is being depicted in suspiciously high detail, we can allow the example, even if we can't prove it.

Think of it as a type of literary criticism or analysis (which in fact it is). It's not really possible to base literary analysis on Word of God.

edited 2nd Mar '11 1:54:08 AM by arromdee

Keep the name, but maybe expand the actual trope a bit. Limiting it to the main protsgonist seem a bit artificial.

^Why? When the in-universe writer is not a main-focus character, details about the character's writing habits are often much more general and vague (at best) and only makes having to establish that the work's creator is drawing directly from his own experiences much more difficult to accomplish.

Again, given everything we can gather about a supporting character like George McFly's writing habits, I don't think it's an example of a writer creating an Author Avatar who writes. I certainly don't think the filmmakers ever had experiences with publishing a novel.

edited 2nd Mar '11 7:56:02 AM by SeanMurrayI