You've had a great trope in your head for the longest time and now you've finally nailed down what it is and got some great examples. ...There's only one problem: how do you introduce it? Writing a trope description isn't that different from public speaking: you'll want to define your concept as quickly as possible, while keeping the audience interested and all ears. Because writing itself is hard, this page is designed to help you along.
Writing a description is a fine balancing act. Your first priority is clarity: try to convey what your trope is about. Some considerations are:
- What situations does it apply to?
- Who are involved?
- What happens if you turn the trope on its head?
- What tropes are related?
Your second priority is to be concise: try to cut down on as much detail as possible. This isn't the place for the in-depth writing worthy of an academic paper. TVTropes seeks to inform, but in a lighthearted format. You do need to define the trope, but check each detail for essentiality relative to the length of the description. Your third priority should be to entertain. A dash of humor breaks up the dry and drab writing that might otherwise be a reading buzzkill. If this all sounds familiar, that's because we actually have a guideline for that: Clear, Concise, Witty
Below is an outline of some do's and don't of writing a trope description. Remember, we're not here to lay down the law, we're only here to provide guidelines to avoid common pitfalls. (And poke you with a sword if you don't cooperate.)
Key points
- Use Trope Finder to make sure your idea isn't covered by another trope, is Too Rare to Trope, The Same, but More Specific, or just plain People Sit on Chairs. After you have confirmed that your idea isn't covered by anything we have already and that it is needed, it is time to work towards a draft.
- Look around TVTropes for related tropes or tropes that are useful to explain your trope. Knowing what you can and should link to helps conceptualize the draft. Things to look out for are similar tropes that you'll want to explain how they are different, Sister Tropes, Super Tropes, Sub Tropes, tropes that regularly coincide with your trope, tropes that cannot exist at the same time as your trope, and so on. It is also wise to look around for appropriate categories to add your trope to upon launch.
- Create an outline of your main points and your thesis before starting with the actual draft. List out at least 1-3 essential components of your trope and a brief sentence describing each one of them. After that, further outline how the trope is used in media, what type of media is prone to using it, and some variations of the trope itself. Now, you can begin putting all the elements in your outline together to make a cohesive article.
- As you are writing your draft, keep things clear, objective, and focused. It is important that your trope doesn't have too broad a range. On the flipside, make sure it isn't too narrow or that you are letting Fan Myopia cloud your judgement. Try to hone in on the key components you outlined previously.
- In regards to the examples, it is tempting to rely on your general memory and write down "Trope: Character X does this in an episode of Show Y." Do future readers and editors a favor and revisit the scene so you can provide specifics on how the trope plays out and specifics on which entry of a work contains the trope example.
- The cosmetics of a trope are: the name, the laconic, the image, the quote, and the joke on the bottom. The name and the laconic are required to submit to the TLP, but as long as the trope isn't launched they're changed as easily as the other three. Invest in them as you see fit and if you can't come up with something to your liking, maybe the other editors can.
Additional pointers
- Avoid Example as a Thesis. It obscures the meaning of the trope and makes the trope look more specific than it actually is.
- Focus on describing the trope as clearly as possible. Trying too hard to be funny or stylistic can obscure the meaning of the trope and distract the readers. There's always time to improve the style afterwards, so put clarity first.
- A paragraph is a section of sentences dedicated to one aspect of information about the topic at hand. Generally, it should be no less than three lines long or it might be an irrelevant aspect or something better combined with another paragraph. On the other end, a paragraph that goes over ten lines is likely to need weeding or breaking up. And of course a description needs paragraphs of varying lengths. Only three-line paragraphs or only ten-line paragraphs don't make for a dynamic reading experience.
- Descriptions should contain two-to-three paragraphs at minimum. One paragraph isn't enough to describe a trope proper. Ideally, there's one paragraph to explain the basic concept, and then a few more to contextualize the trope and clear up any confusion.
- In contrast, unnecessary detail can strike at any time, but if you have over five paragraphs, that's when you almost certainly can cut something out.
- If you can't come up with more to write than a paragraph on the basic concept, consider these possibilities:
- Variations: If a trope's application has multiple paths to follow, name them.
- History: Perhaps the trope can be tracked to a specific period or even a key work. Giving a quick historical rundown not only is enlightening, but also makes it possible to shorten any references to the key work in the examples.
- Common media types or genres: If a trope has a particular tendency to show up in a specific medium or genre, mention that. This type of paragraph is usually best written after setting up the examples.
- Implications: Getting to the "why" of a trope and what message the audience is left with. Tropes with
Unfortunate Implications or worse need commentary.
- Write, read, rewrite, reread, and so on. You don't have to be perfectionist, but do better than your initial draft. Maybe you should give the relation to another trope more focus? Maybe you should write down the common variations the trope follows? Maybe there's some Word Cruft to clean up? Maybe your explanation becomes clearer if you change the order of the sentences or paragraphs? Maybe you should turn the "he"s and "she"s into "they"s? A good way to do this without wasting time is to write your draft, put it aside for 2-3 days,note and then reread it and see if you're happy with it or not.
- Examples aren't just to legitimize a trope. They define it. It depends on the trope how well you can come up with (varied) examples early on, but holding the trope description up next to the (potential) examples is a good way to get an idea how broad or narrow the trope should be.
- Pay attention if your trope comes out too narrow for potential examples. If you don't define why those examples don't count, you're likely to see them again during the TLP process and afterwards the trope's at risk of Trope Decay. Mention whatever trope they fit under properly, if such exists.
- Try not to bog down your description with too much focus on how it plays out in real life. The focus should primarily be on on how the trope is used in media.
Rewriting a description
You might have taken a look around TVTropes to put example to guideline and concluded that quite a few descriptions don't match. Again, the guideline is just a guideline, not a hard rule. There is too much variety in trope types alone to make any hard rules. However, if you think a given description can be or even should be better, then much like you'd write one for your own tropes, you can improve one for an existing trope. In addition to the above, pay heed to the following:- Pages Needing A Better Description is a category for tropes and other pages with poor descriptions.
- Unlike when you are writing a description afresh, rewriting a description means there's already material present. You don't have to use any of it, but you should study it, identify the essential components, and have those components reflected in the new description. A method for identification is to copy the existing description in your work file and to erase any sentence or sentence segment that's not immediately relevant until your left with a description in Hulk Speak. Then, rebuild it into normal speak.
- Repair, Don't Respond is just as important for fixing descriptions as it is for fixing tropes. Don't try to add to what actually needs to be redone just because it's easier or because you're hesitant to mess with another's work. A wiki is a group effort, after all.
- If you don't change the essence of the trope (or create confusion about what the essence of the trope is), you can go ahead rewriting the description just fine. If you have any doubts about your (envisioned) improvement compared to the original, take it to the Trope Talk
. If your improvement includes the split-off of a Sub-Trope, an alternative route is to submit the Sub-Trope to the TLP and use that for feedback. If your improvement is a radical change to the original description, such as broadening or narrowing the trope or merging it with another trope, the Trope Repair Shop might be the way to go.
