Tropes you personally don't use

Well, I did say I like action-packed stories, I just don't know if I should.

I tend to put any hero willing to use lethal force against a human opponent as a clear-cut Anti-Hero and try to let the reader work out their intended position on the scale from how much they angst about it. Nicole is an interesting case - these two exchanges happen within about 15 pages of each other, and neither is at all different from how she'd regularly act in the situation:

• Later...

Note that Nicole and Jason were the ones who killed the other four.

edited 9th Jan '12 12:30:46 PM by KyleJacobs

If the story calls for it, I'll use it, so there aren't many tropes I consciously avoid...but there are a few.

• Draco in Leather Pants: I know, you can't really avoid this one but I go out of my way to not encourage it, for the simple fact that audiences (or a portion of the audience) will invoke this no matter what you do.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, and any of the "Author's Morals" tropes in general. Again, I'm not sure its possible to completely avoid it but I'll sure as hell try to work against the temptation to preach to the audience.
• There's a "Mirror World" trope, I can't remember the name of it. I do try to avoid mirror worlds.

I'm sure there's others but they aren't occurring to me now.

Nicole sounds fairly likeable, but the kind of person you wouldn't want to mess with nonetheless.

That's what I'm worried about... not having likeable characters. I want the audience to root for the heroes (and antiheroes), I'm just worried that any fight scene is doomed to fall into Evil Versus Evil.

edited 9th Jan '12 12:57:45 AM by Xandriel

I've seen many a fight scene in which Evil Versus Evil did not even come close to happening. If you're really worried about how your protagonist will be perceived, though, I do have some tips for you:

• Have your hero fight clean, if necessary averting Combat Pragmatist entirely. The idealistic side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism works in your favor in all aspects of writing if you want your hero to be unquestionably good.
• Have your hero avoid killing whenever possible, and kill quickly and cleanly rather than slowly and brutally when he does have to take a life (being humane about it is a sure way to determine whether a killer is a good guy or a bad guy).
• Don't allow your hero to slip into Jerkass territory when not fighting. It'll make it more likely that the audience sees him negatively if he says or does negative things, and this is true even in "slice of life" or Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene segments of the story.
• Don't have your hero do something morally objectionable, whether it's during a fight scene or not (stealing, torture, mutilation, rape, etc.).

Anyway, those are my suggestions for how to write characters in a way that will make you comfortable about your own fight scenes if you're having moral troubles.

As for feeling guilty about liking action-adventure... I'm afraid I can't help you. I could tell you there's nothing to feel guilty about, and I'd mean every word of it, but it probably wouldn't help with the serious issue you seem to be grappling with.

You know, I agree that this makes your hero less morally ambiguous to most people, but I really, really dislike that it's that way.

On anti-heroes: I presume my concept of morality is very different from the rest of you, as I honestly can't think of a protagonist of mine that doesn't kill...

Of course, to me, it's not a matter of "do they kill?" but rather "who do they kill?" On a related note, most of my protagonists are in fact supposed to be "anti-heroes," though it's more complicated than that (one of my general moral concepts, across all my works, is how the idea of "heroes" and "villains" is basically ridiculous, when dealing with human conflict).

Enemy Mayan: Thanks for the advice. For some reason though, I don't mind combat pragmatists, especially if it's absolutely crucial that they win that particular fight. And no, my protagonists would never resort to anything like rape or torture. Not even my antiheroes.

As for jerkass behaviour, some of my characters do fall into the Jerk with a Heart of Gold category, but I try to make the "heart of gold" part show through.

Flyboy: You write Grey-and-Grey Morality too? That's what I'm going for. Well, either that or Morality Kitchen Sink. I'm aiming to pull off A Lighter Shade of Grey for the protagonists.

I'm kinda curious whether A Lighter Shade of Black is a trope... that's generally what I go for in my heroes.

EDIT: Cool. That is a trope.

edited 10th Jan '12 9:28:45 AM by EnemyMayan

Oxymoronic as it sounds...

Yeah, I rather like that. There's a place for actual, completely moral The Cape-style heroes, but they don't make good protagonists, I find.

Idealistic heroes can make good protagonists, but they can be tricky to pull off well. Then again, so can anti-heroes. I'd still like my characters to be at least somewhat idealistic, even if they're not saints.

I like idealistic heroes only when authors don't go easy on them. I hate it when a protagonist's idealism bends the universe to make their idealism go on smoothly without problem (Which often occurs in shounen.)

When my characters aren't what would qualify for an anti-hero in the average moral system, they're usually out-and-out villain protagonist.

See: my current project's protagonists, who work for dystopian governments and put down colonial rebellions (in an alternate history 1948) because if the world's empires don't have those resources we all die from eldritch monstrosities from a corrupted heaven that lies under the ocean depths.

Hence why I merely say protagonist and antagonist when possible, rather than hero and villain.

Whoa. Sounds pretty dark, in a good way. I'd definitely read it. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with moral dilemmas. They're unsettling, but something about them draws me in.

Okay, now just about the only thing I'm worried about is Moral Myopia. Is it possible to have characters who love some people but are willing to fight others without invoking that trope?

edited 16th Jan '12 1:50:00 AM by Xandriel

It's intentionally dark. The entire plot is how the end of the world (classic Christian Revelation-style, with the Leviathan, Behemoth, Horsemen and all) is unfolding before us... and there's absolutely nothing concrete to be done about it.

As for Moral Myopia, well, you could acknowledge it and have it as a major moral dilemma for the characters, rather than as an implicit issue with the narrative.

Yeah, I'm going to follow the advice given (have the characters try to talk their enemies down first, make sure they cause the minimum amount of suffering when they do fight, etc) to try to avoid it.

You'll want to avoid overvaluing the main villain and devaluing/dehumanizing the lesser villains and henchmen, then.

Also, I should add to the topic of discussion by saying that I disdain Strawman Political, and I usually try to at least come up with coherent, logical arguments for people even if I don't like them.

...

Hence why I haven't started American Armor. Coming up with logical arguments for neoconservatism is hard as balls.

I try to avoid that too. Though I'm a little concerned about falling into that if I have a Well-Intentioned Extremist or Knight Templar antagonist, but I try to give them a few logical arguments and/or contrast them with more reasonable characters who have similar views but aren't as extreme.

And yes, I'll avoid dehumanising mooks. I'm still a bit paranoid about ending up playing Moral Myopia straight anyway though. I'd like to write about close friendships between the protagonists, but that could just come across as hypocritical.

edited 16th Jan '12 8:51:28 AM by Xandriel

The way I usually get around Moral Myopia is by having those characters who would most trigger it (basically the ruthless antihero type) essentially hold it as an explicit moral position: along the lines of "I'm not following a set of rules or a particular moral position here, I don't claim to have moral superiority, but if you touch them I'll hurt you."

It's not so much ruthless anti-heroes I'm concerned about in my case, it's... well, any character who actually fights. That's what I meant by saying "is it possible to have a heroic Action Girl or anything along those lines". I want them to be ultimately heroic, even if they're not quite The Cape or The Messiah.

I do have quite a few protective characters, but try to keep them from going too far with it.

I never use Black-and-White Morality. I like writing about anti-heroes too much.

Yeah, Black-and-White Morality can be too simplistic. Well, the "good versus evil" thing can work, as long as there are a few shades of grey in between, IMO.

Hmmm, still thinking of how to avoid having morally myopic characters. One way around it I can see is to have an Anti-Hero who refuses to care about anyone at all, and when called on it, says something along the lines of "It'd be hypocritical of me to fight some people and call others friends, wouldn't it?" They'd help strangers whenever they could though, and act like an Aloof Ally if forced to work with others. I like the Sugar-and-Ice Personality archetype so that could work.

I'd still really like to have something involving True Companions though.

This is less of a singular trope and more of a group, but I try to avoid tropes that dehumanize characters. Stuff like A Million Is a Statistic and All the Myriad Ways. For some reason, I tend to see characters, even a complete monster, as people in some way.