Is being Troperiffic a bad thing?

I've had a small conversation with a close friend some time ago over writing. Since we are both stubborn writers by nature, the topic heated up pretty quickly and ended with me feeling extremely confused. The topic in question? Is being Troperiffic a good, bad or ugly thing?

My idea thus far had always been "It is pretty much impossible to stay original these days, since so many people are writing they are bound to step into one another's foots with recurring themes and elements". While he agrees with this, he also highly disagreed with the idea of trying to, on purpose, formula-rize your work by stuffing as many tropes as you can into it.

Of course, the argument was much more complex than that, but that is the core idea. So, what do you think? Is a work being Troperiffic a god, bad or ugly thing? Do state your opinions as to why.

I agree with your friend, actually. There is nothing really original, that is true, but to go the other way and deliberately write something generic strikes me as foolish. The whole writing by tropes thing just seems rather lazy to me, as if one was building a story out of predefined blocks. "Okay, here comes the Tsundere, and there we will put the Dragon, who fights the Lancer...". Tropes should not be used deliberately. Characters and plots should be developed, and with little concern to where they fall in the trope system. Deliberate usage of tropes only leads to people trying to cram in tropes that do not fit the story, but are a favorite of the author.

The story defines the tropes, not the other way around.

It really depends on what the audience wants from you. A formulaic work is a predictable and familiar work. Some people like this, others don't. Some want to be surprised and hate cliches. Others want to read the same story again and again, provided it's good every time.

Personally, I'm against making a story Troperiffic on purpose, but I'm biased. Will it hurt your work if you insert something just for the sake of it? Maybe, maybe not. If you can do it well, it won't. But many people (supposedly) try to make certain tropes fit inside their stories and fail.

In the end, what do you gain by making your work Troperiffic? Is it worth it for you to put off the "originality" crowd in order to appeal the "familiar" one? Can you pull it off?

If you can answer these questions, go for it.

I think it all depends on what kind of a story you want to write. I've read some awesome stories that were completely literary, had hardly any detectable tropes at all, and I enjoyed them a lot. And I have read stories which obviously had deliberately written-in tropes, not just a few, but myriads of them, and I enjoyed those stories a lot.

I remember the author of one of my favourite YA novels mentioning on his blog, that when he was writing his book, he had a checklist of all the things common to the genre he was writing that he simply HAD to write into the story. When I read (and reread and then again reread) that novel, I absolutely didn't feel like reading a story that was written with a checklist in hand.

In the end, it all boils down to how good a writer you are.*

Nope.

It can be. It usually isn't though.

I can see a point in making a story troperiffic as a form of constrained writing ("Can you write a good story which includes a Chef of Iron, a Jerkass Woobie, Double Speak, a Meaningful Echo, The Cheerleader, a Dream Within a Dream, a Kangaroo Court and an Abandoned Hospital?"), but that's as a way for the author to challenge themselves. Otherwise, such an approach will likely create something formulaic.

Think of tropes as shortcuts an author can use, taking advantage of the readers' preconceptions in order to convey meaning or provoke an emotional response. It works, but do it so often that the audience becomes aware of the trick and it starts to look lazy. That's when it becomes a cliché.

Same deal with subversions, inversions and deconstructions. By playing with a familiar trope, you can catch your readers off-guard and surprise them or challenge their prejudices, but do it too often and the audience will come to expect it, and then you've got yourself another cliché. Clichés, broadly speaking, are boring.

Working from the tropes forward is much more likely to cause problems than simply writing in a natural flow of events. This is because it leaves evidence of the author's involvement, and the greatest sin a writer can commit is for the reader to be able to find evidence of them.

Simply having a lot of tropes, though, is neutral.

How many tropes a work has only shows how popular it is on the wiki, nothing more.

Tropes Are Tools, so, it depends on execution.

I personally love being Troperrific, but I also tear them apart and put them back together as I go. I guess it's all down to personal preference, too. What is generic to one person is unbelievably awesome to another...

edited 23rd Aug '11 11:42:00 AM by USAF713

That's Trope Overdosed, not Troperiffic, though what's listed as Troperiffic also in large part has to do with what tropers like.

Strictly speaking, though, the definition isn't just "uses a lot of tropes", it's "uses and plays with a lot of tropes". Which is why, in answer to the original question, I have to say no, it is not a bad thing in and of itself (though it certainly can be in the wrong person's hands). There's a difference between the kind of itemized "trope A goes here, trope B goes there" stuff Archangel was talking about and trying to play with a lot of conventions. Again, being Troperiffic certainly isn't inherently good - as I've remarked before, I think there's too much of a "trope played straight = bad, played with = good" mentality on this site, when neither is always true - but it's not the same thing as deliberately formulizing your work.

edited 23rd Aug '11 1:07:52 PM by nrjxll

Like others said before, being Troperiffic is only a bad thing if you just stick to the basic tropes and use them like building blocks.

It's not a bad thing to use tropes as long as you're willing to play with them somehow. Playing with tropes means you're both discovering the way to make your story work and helping the plot and characters develop naturally.

I'd contest that. Playing with tropes is not a substitute for good writing. It's not always even preferable to using tropes straight, or even not consciously using any tropes in particular.

Well, duh. If you've got issues with quality writing, playing with tropes is the least of your concerns. And, after joining TV Tropes, I don't think I could think about my writing in any form but tropes ever again...

I'd contest that playing with tropes is any more natural than playing them regularly. In fact I'd again state that working backwards from the tropes you want to use to the story is probably less natural in general.

^^ TV Tropes will ruin your creativity?

That doesn't sound like something we'd wanna promote...

Why is there this constant stigma against thinking in tropes?

Tropes will be used whether or not you acknowledge them and know what they are. By knowing what they are, you can use them more effectively. It's not like we're creating anything new here. We're just naming and categorizing what already exists. As a writer and a member of the site, that helps me know what's been done well, what's been done poorly, and what could be done better...

I'm not saying tropes are bad. But tropes are tools. Yes, all writers use tropes, and it certainly can't hurt to be aware of the tropes you're using. But they're not the be-all, end-all of writing, and the use of tropes isn't always the best approach. I think there's a tendency on this site to treat tropes as the building blocks of storytelling, when it would be more accurate to say that they're devices that writers use (sometimes subconsciously).

Well, I wouldn't call tropes the exact building blocks, fitting together perfectly. They're more like undersized bricks that can be easily painted. You pick the various colors you want (playing with a trope) and then you stick them together and add a generous helping of mortar (worldbuilding, quality writing, characterization, etc), and then you get a beautiful nightmare of a house that is good looking in its own way, rather than a bland, brown house (a generic piece of work that just uses tropes in a boring, unfulfilled manner).

I think there's a Metaphorgotten somewhere in there, but...

On the contrary. TV Tropes has enhanced my creativity.

@ USAF: I guess where that analogy falls down for me is, you can't build a good house out of mostly mortar.

@ Tom: Oh, sure, I don't deny that it can. That post was a flippant response to USAF's claim of no longer being able to think of his writing except in tropes.

If the tropes involved are being used for the sake of being there and not because they enhance the story, then yes.

True dat.

Well, "can't think about it in anything other than tropes" isn't a good way to put it. I think about it on it's own. But it's really fun to take what I have so far and distill it down to tropes, to see what I'm using, how well I'm using it, and what others have done so that I can improve upon it.

It's Been Done doesn't mean it can't be done again, and better this time around. After all, the lovely piece of advice of "say what you say as if it's never been said before" (paraphrase) is a wonderful aphorism for this kind of thing...

The thing is, I see the conscious use of tropes in making a story as essentially forcing the story rather than letting it flow naturally; if you are already a capable writer, there is little reason to do this and many not to.

Writing is all about depicting an internally consistent sequence of events; whenever you stop building from what has come before you run a risk that you'll break that consistency.

edited 24th Aug '11 7:24:50 PM by Night