Are Tropes Tools Or...?

Tropes Are Not Bad versus Tropes Are Not Good for writers with writers' block and those advising them.

The diplomatic answer is that some tropes are tools. Tropes like the Three-Act Structure have been presented as tools by writing teachers who wanted a coherent beginning, middle, and end long before this website existed and the patterns, or "tropes," that resulted are essentially "toolmarks" created by new writers using the idea. However, many if not most of the tropes on this site were created by someone, who was not even sure if he or she had seen a trope making a post to YKTTW. Other tropers added examples and eventually it was given a name and a brief summary. However, none of these people had any intention of creating a tool for writers. Yet some tropes like the The Hollywood Formula were created when a group of storytellers stumbled upon something that work, broke it down to its most basic elements, and applied it successfully to other stories.

The main argument, I think, is based on a misunderstanding between "tool" and "trick of the trade." A "tool" is something like a saw, which is used to cut boards. You can cut a board with anything from a laser to a karate chop, and some people might be impressed, but others will just be confused why you didn't "use the right tool for the job." Meanwhile a "trick" is like a magic trick: once you know how the trope is used, the "magic" is gone and you can't enjoy the sense of wonder it used to bring, which is one of the ways "tvtropes will ruin your life." If a clumsy magician was sawing his assistant in half, and knocked over the box, revealing how to the trick was done to the audience, then the best reaction you can expect is that the audience walks out yelling "fraud" and demands a refund. In the worst case scenario, all the children in the audience cry because "the magic isn't real" and no one will hire magicians after that.

Likewise, if an inept writer uses a trope clumsily, the best case is that the audience says "what a fraud, they're ripping off my favorite..." However, if they recognize the trope, they might think "...have I been just been enjoying the same trope over and over again? I feel so cheap..." In the worst case scenario, readers give up reading books, and the audience stops coming to the theater. Those who truly respect the genre, such as critics and editors, do not want to see the "tricks of the trade" in the hands of amateurs who could potentially ruin the genres.

However, writers want to know the "tricks of the trade," because they make the craft of writing seem accessible. If you don't know any of the tricks, writing a whole story seems impossible, or at least something only "gifted people" can do. Knowing all the tricks can make it seem cheap, something "anyone could do without any effort," but there is a point when you know a few tricks where writing still seems like something worthwhile but also "something maybe I can do." In writing, as in any art, it is possible to get better with practice. Someone who is a "bad writer" today could say that they "just don't have talent" and give up, or they could keep writing get better over time. Tricks can be helpful when a new writer gets stuck because, for example, when they are bogged down in the internal conflicts of the characters, it helps to step back and see who the main characters are and what roles they need to play.

In general, the difference between "tools" and "tricks of the trade" is a "tool" can hurt the writer while a "trick" can hurt the entire "trade." Take for example the Three-Act Structure, and how it can be used to break down a story. "Well, the first act started out slow, perhaps because it was the first thing the author had ever written. The second act wasn't much better at first, but then came this vignette. It didn't have much to do with the story, but you could tell the author really liked writing it. That momentum flowed though the rest of the second act, and built into a very satisfying conclusion." "So you thought it was a good book?" "Well, the first act wasn't very good, and the best thing about the second act was the tangent, so two-thirds of the book wasn't very good..." "But did you like the book?" "Oh yeah! I can't wait to read what this author does in the future." Tools have the potential to "pigeon-hole" the new author into easily criticizable pieces. Tricks can help them avoid criticism, but can also hurt the whole genre. For example, using the First-Episode Spoiler could have prevented the author in the last example from having a slow beginning. However, if authors spend too much of the first setting up the "twist," they may not have properly set up the foundation for the rest of the story, which is the real point of the "slow" first act.

Tropes are tools because trope names give us an easy handle with which to cut a story down to size. They are also tricks of the trade because they can cut a story down into a brief synopsis, a word of advice, or a writing prompt. However, it is precisely because they are tricks of the trade that new writers should not be using them carelessly.

edited 20th Dec '12 10:55:54 AM by AnimeGIF

This is cool. Long, but cool. I especially like how you point out that you can use the "tools" to break down the work and find what you need to add or remove.

There's an exact formula out there for how to make a good plot twist...

I like your analysis of "tropes are tools" I disagree rather more than somewhat with your analysis of "tricks of the trade", specifically that you are equating "tricks of the trade" with tricks as in "magic tricks". That's not really what the phrase means; it's taking "tricks" and using it from a different definition. A trick of the trade is a short-cut, a technique that a worker skilled in the action they're performing knows, that may not be exactly "proper technique", but dependably works.

For instance, the man who built our deck, and the way he set the support columns. If you read the books on "How to build a deck", they say that you dig the postholes for the support columns to a measured depth, then pour a measured amount of concrete into make the pad at the bottom, then set the posts, and you have properly-anchored posts all the same height. But that's not what he did. Since the shortest length of post we could get was longer than they needed to be, he dug holes to about the right depth, poured the concrete pads to about the right thickness, set the posts, and then, when the concrete was dry and the posts were set, he put a laser level on the post at one end of the line, at the height he wanted the tops to be, marked each one along the laser, and cut them off with a Sawzall^TM to the correct height... The end result was exactly the same: properly set posts that were all the same, correct height. What he did was a "trick of the trade", but it wasn't deceptive or a "trick" as you used the term.

Any skilled trade has dozens, if not hundreds of such tricks. Using them isn't a sign of a poor workman or of poor work; in fact, when they're used correctly, someone looking at the finished product won't even be able to tell that they were used at all.

edited 30th Dec '12 9:16:05 AM by Madrugada

@ Lightflame - Thank you, it was originally intended as a middle ground on which to build the "impending" debate, but it kind of snowballed. On the bright side, no trolls have shown up yet.

@ Madrugada - I can certainly respect your opinions. Perhaps the "magic trick" analogy would be better applied to the term "magic solution" than "trick of the trade." However, your instance example is flawed on several points, to the point I must ask if you were attempting to illicit humor or provoke argument.

WARNING - If you cut sideways through a vertical post, you are much more likely to cut through something other than wood before the saw hits the dirt and/or gets shut off than if you had used a horizontal board on a secure work surface. Please do not attempt this "trick of the trade" unless you want a new definition of D.I.Y. Disaster. Cutting something that bleeds and screams could result in the same PR disaster for amateur/professional carpentry that I described for magicians, except with an even worse worst case scenario. Neither TV Tropes, Anime GIF, Sawzall TM, or the makers of saber saws are responsible for any injury resulting from taking this literal "short cut." TV Tropes is not a carpentry website, and a chain saw is not the same thing as a saber saw.

edited 30th Dec '12 2:31:44 PM by AnimeGIF

If that vertical post is solidly anchored, you are no more likely to cut through something that bleeds than you are cutting it while it's laying on a workbench. And if you only stop the saw when you hit dirt, you're doing it very, very wrong.

But that's neither here nor there. My objection to you placing "tricks of the trade" in the same category as "deception", "trickery" or "legerdemain" remains. That's not what the phrase is generally used to mean.

edited 30th Dec '12 2:31:54 PM by Madrugada

As I said, perhaps "magic solution" may have been a better alternative, though I'm open to suggestions of new terms since that seems to be the main point of your argument.

And now this brief message from Insane Troll Logic:

<T Ro LL>

"Technology" is the application of scientific principles.

Clarke's Third Law - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

A writing "tool" is an application of the principles of good writing.

Therefore any sufficiently advanced writing tool is indistinguishable from a magic solution.

</T Ro LL>

Also, the thing that screams and bleeds is a curious onlooker who you didn't hear coming because saws have a tendency to be loud. Normally, they stand to one side and watch what you're doing, which doesn't matter if you are sawing down and through. A professional with the best, lightest tool won't have this problem, but an amateur who "pushes" the wrong king of saw may find themselves "cutting a wide swath" or setting a saw "off to one side" when their arms get tired.

edited 30th Dec '12 3:55:55 PM by AnimeGIF

Because innocent bystanders are going to hear an incredibly loud saw and purposely come close enough that they could be cut by it?

edited 1st Jan '13 10:37:00 AM by SalFishFin

You saw two people with a metaphorical saw and felt the need to comment on it, showing humanity's innate need to comment on power tools

Power tools have "power" as well as an element of danger, so only relatively competent people should be using them. Therefore we have images of competence associated with them, and seeing people use them, competently or otherwise, awakens in us a desire to show off our competence. A similar emotion is awakened in a child playing with a toy bulldozer or other piece of heavy construction equipment. He or she associates competence with the machine and surround themselves with images of competence, and will rattle of the make and model and several stats to show his or her competence despite the toy in question being made of wood.

Your comment is a Self-Demonstrating Article showing this trope of the human condition, and we thank you for it.

A more common explanation of a person hearing an incredibly loud saw and purposely coming closer, even close enough to get cut, is Too Dumb to Live. Would you rather I made your comment a Self-Demonstrating Article of that?

While we're waiting for Madrugada, or indeed anyone, to come up with a more appropriate term than "trick of the trade" let me point out something ironic about the magician example. "A good magician never reveals his secrets." However, if we are in the audience trying to figure out the trick, we learn more from watching a bad magician than a good magician. Does that mean we can learn more about tropes from "low-brow entertainment" than "classical literature?"

I like how your only reply to Mad's criticism is orthogonal to the point at best, and outright useless at worst. Since it addressed the example and not the actual argument made.

edited 1st Jan '13 5:07:13 PM by Night

Yeah, I'm with Night here. Mads has been very tactful about calling you out on this, but you're not addressing the issue.

Really, while I think that the comparison of the calculated use a trope or archetype to a magic trick does have some merit as an analogy under certain circumstances, I think that it fails to take into account many of the fundamental differences between the art of fiction and the art of deception, unfairly equating them in a way that oversimplifies, mystifies and, frankly, sort of insults both disciplines. To put forward but one example, while the illusionist seeks to suspend the audience's disbelief in order to temporarily expand what they deem possible in this world, the author seeks to present the reader with another world entirely, and to render that artificial world with verisimilitude regardless of its degree of ostensible "realism." This is a fundamental difference of intent, if a subtle one.

Allow me to briefly summarize the forum for those just joining us:

"Long post is long"

"Long post is long, but good"

"Long post is long and good, but "tricks of the trade" don't work like that."

"Tricks of the trade may not work like that, but long post being long keeps the trolls out."

...I think the trolls took that last part as a challenge...

To return to your criticism, my only response to Madrugada was that I could understand where he was coming from about the terminology. The "tricks of the trade" were originally a body of errata to be studied in addition to the "basics of the trade." Masters of a trade, in attempting to pass on knowledge of the trade, simplified and condensed their knowledge in order to better pass it on from student to teacher. In the process of simplifying the information, they mistakenly made certain principles sound more universal than they were. This was not done out of any desire to "trick" their student, but certain "tricky situations" arise in any serious business where we must deal with the situation in front of us without the benefit of our usual methodology.

One of the central debates on this site deals with the application of generalizations. Like the masters of old, in simplifying descriptions of good writing, we have made tropes seem to be more foundational than they are. The debate is between "People Who Believe that Tropes are NOT Building Blocks" and "People Who Believe Tropes Make Perfectly Fine Building Blocks. To put it in terms of tools, it is between people who believe screwdrivers are for screws only and people who think a screwdriver makes a perfectly good ice pick. However, this is a verbose description and the OP was already quite long as it is. We have two terms for "writing principles" on this site, "writing tools" and "tricks of the trade for writing." I used the two different terms to describe two different schools of thought, the rational between naming two different schools of kung fu "tiger" and "serpent." Madrugada essentially felt that "serpent kung-fu" was the wrong name, and I agree that "serpent kick" sounds pretty dumb.

My WARNING label was not addressed to Madrugada, but to anyone stupid enough to try to learn carpentry on the internet. While we were discussing a hypothetical and metaphorical example, he brought in a real world example. This site is not designed to discuss real world examples of carpentry and lacked even a warning label. While I do not believe anyone on this site is literally looking for information on carpentry, power tools possess an image of competence that makes us want to demonstrate our competence. Our "competence" in a field where we have no real credentials and our last experience was months or years ago is a mixture of half-remembered things. Among those "half-remembered things" might be a forum post from a respected moderator, and with a half remembered thing from a respected source, someone might try to show their competence with carpentry they learned on the internet.

However, we also have a WARNING label, which should stand out in the primal "threat detection" portion of the mind responsible for dealing with bad ideas. Mine started to go off when I thought about arguing with a respected moderator. If someone ignores the warnings of this part of the brain, we enter into the territory of Murphy's Law. Godwin's Law has replaced Murphy's Law in terms of "everything that can go wrong, will go wrong," but only because Murphy's Law was more accurately "if you make it possible for things to go wrong, you have a legal responsibility when it does." We keep things hypothetical to help keep things from going wrong, and even added a warning label, so our legal responsibility is slim to none. Maybe can't keep stupid people from getting on the internet, but if you're not one of them, you don't worry about the warning label.

To summarize the above, "Chewbacca is a wookie, and he lives, at best, on the Millenium Falcon. Meanwhile, the real Chewbacca Defense is "...Droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookies are known to do that," ergo Chewbacca's tiny holographic chess monsters are defended." If that summary makes no sense, then perhaps I oversimplified.

Oversimplifying can be dangerous.

edited 1st Jan '13 6:45:37 PM by AnimeGIF

Tricks of the trade were and are not "errata". That's where you and I have a fundamental difference of opinion. You clearly see them as "doing something wrong and getting away with it". I see them as "Doing something in a way that works and is relatively simpler than another way to accomplish the same thing, which has been arbitrarily declared to be 'the right way'."

Errata can mean mistakes, but it also can mean corrections or amendments. Within a book of errata, an author can go over obscure points glossed over in the main text to ensure greatest accuracy. Nowadays, they just print up a new edition with any errata in "changes to this edition" section, because of the associations of having "an entire book of errata." However, "errata" are no more "errors" than "tricks of the trade" are "tricks."

What we're experiencing is not so much a difference of opinion, but a breakdown in language. A society based on central authority and singular truth does not have simple universal terms to describe "different and sometimes better." What terms it does have are mired in connotations of deception to the point that we're not getting through to each other.

Let me be very clear in that I am trying to be neutral. My first sentence beneath the byline was "The diplomatic answer is that some tropes are tools." I do not feel that tricks of the trades are "wrong" any more than tools are "the right way." My goal was simply to clarify the argument and set up a neutral forum for its discussion. I may have failed in this, and once again ask that you provide more appropriate terms as the one most aware of their faults. If you need more time at least indicate that you are trying to correct the analogy and not a misunderstanding that I state emphatically that I do not have. Writers are not carpenters or magicians, but they share elements of planning and presentation that are useful in outlining a book. An outline moves the story from beginning to end with no snags, no "loose boards to nail down," and everything fits together. A magic show builds to a climax with a series of smaller illusions that helps the reader to accept the big finale, directing their attention to where it needs to be at each step along the way. The "clumsy magician" who breaks the fictive dream and "knocks the reader out of the book" could as easily be nervous carpenter who isn't used to the stage as a magician who isn't used to real tools. We haven't discussed which tropes are tools because "is a piece of bad writing a 'trick' or a tool outlining something to avoid?" To discuss metaconcepts requires us to constantly wander into places where the metaphors break down and have to be replaced. I have no qualms about replacing them, but it would be nice to have some direction...

This is something experience has taught me

There are no bad tropes.

There are only bad writers.

After taking a close look at the thread to make sure I actually read your argument correctly, I've decided that I agree with most of what I think your argument is, but that there's indeed a problem with your language and your categorization that makes it a bit misleading as to what you're really trying to say. Specifically, you call "tricks of the trade" (something I'm more inclined to use for the same thing that Mad does) and conflate them with what I would label "shortcuts." In this context, a shortcut is, basically, something that people use in an attempt to take credit for good workmanship without actually doing the work, which is lazy, dishonest, and (in some real life professions) possibly dangerous.

One thing does bother me about what you said, though:

This statement leads me to believe that you've bought into the idea of Measuring the Marigolds. I won't deny that, for some people, this might be a true response — some people would rather enjoy things without thinking about them — but for others, knowing the mechanics behind how something works (a book, a magic trick, a well-fitted chair, a mathematical equation... anything) doesn't destroy their admiration, it just moves it to a higher level. Knowing how a magic trick works might certainly remove the thrill of seeing something apparently impossible happen, but it also allows those who are "in" on the secret to appreciate things the rest of the audience wouldn't — for instance, admiring how the furniture and the lighting on the stage are carefully arranged and maintained to direct the audience's attention elsewhere while the trick is being set up.

A layman will be satisfied if a chair holds him up when he sits down in it, regardless of whether it's a well-fitted one or simply mediocre. An expert carpenter will be able to appreciate the excellent, efficient construction (and make a mental note that he should build his own chairs like that, if he doesn't already have a way of doing so that works as well or better). This doesn't mean that he'll only sit in exquisite chairs; after all, while not as well put together, the mediocre chair will still hold him up when his feet are tired and allow him to rest. Meanwhile, he will also be able to spot and avoid a chair that has been poorly put together because the hack who fitted it tried to take shortcuts, while the layman sits down in it and is promptly dropped on his ass, which is now sore from the fall.

As a closing note, not addressing anything in particular but handy to keep in mind: A good workman never blames his tools for his own mistakes. This is not because the tools are not sometimes flawed; it's because the good workman has enough experience to either fix those flaws early on or, if he can't, to compensate for them so that his work is good in spite of them. Not only does he know which chainsaws he can handle, but he also knows when a simple handsaw will make the more precise and delicate cut that he needs in order to make the plank fit into the whole construction properly.

edited 9th Jan '13 7:43:33 PM by Specialist290