It's weird we have one for works and not tropes. Not sure how I bewn around here for 11 years and I didnt notice. Trope writing was always something you were either good at from the start or you grow into it. Some people still struggle so making guidelines will be good. I have made at least 40 tropes and still not super good at writing up stuff although gathering good examples on my own is what trips me up the most.
We can come bullet points in this thread and maaybe make a new administrivia page. If the mods agree of course.
EDIT: Tips Worksheet has several guidelines about trope writing. Does it cover what you are looking for?
Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 29th 2020 at 12:55:01 PM
Macron's notes
Not really, that's more about formatting and writing examples properly and stuff. It's not about "here's how you write a good trope description when making a draft".
Or at least, I don't see what you're referring to, if that information is there.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Oh, looks like I was wrong. It's mostly about examples.
In any case, here is a list of potential pointers or rather a rough draft for a style guide.
- 1. First, it is recommended that you use The Trope Finder to make sure your idea isn't covered by another trope, is to Too Rare to Trope,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, move on to the next step.
- 2. Before you write your TLP draft, it might be helpful to create an out line of your main points. List out at least 1-3 estential components of your trope and a brief sentence describing each one. 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. Also try to think about how the trope interacts with other tropes/relative tropes. Now, you can begin putting all the elements in your outline together to make a cohesive article.
- 3. As you are writing your rough draft to keep a clear and objective focus. It is important that you make sure your trope doesn't have to broad of a focus. 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.
There should probably be more steps but that is all I got.
Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 1st 2020 at 6:17:21 AM
Macron's notesOne thing that comes to mind is posting a warning against using Example As A Thesis, as that's a common issue that pops up in the TLP, and is disliked due to obscuring the actual requirements for the trope.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallThe TLP Guidelines does have a section called "Ways to Strengthen Your TLP" that gives some tips on how to write a trope.
Personally I think the best way to learn how to write a good draft is simply to read lots of existing trope pages, and read other drafts and their feedback. I don't know how much another rules page will help people who are unwilling to do this (and most people would rather read trope pages, which are easier to find anyway). Lurk Moar, essentially.
I'm also a little concerned that a style guide could make things less "fun". There's a lot of disagreement about how tropes should be written (for example, whether Self Demonstrating Articles are good or not has a lot of strong opinions on both sides) and it's good to have some diversity in the style of articles. Depending on how it get's written, I feel like such an effort could codify the opinions of a minority of active voices.
That said, I have no objection per se to anything in ![]()
except that I don't know if we particularly need this.
That section is just "stuff that should be included if possible", not tips on how to actually write the thing to begin with. None of those bullets even tell you how to incorporate those things, just to do it.
And I'm not saying we need to give everyone an exact template to follow, just tips on how to explain their trope properly. A lot of people struggle with it, so giving good-writing pointers should be fine; it's not the same as saying "write your trope description exactly like this, bullet point by bullet point"; just "Hey, if you have trouble writing trope descriptions, here's some tips".
Besides, if the "Lurk Moar" idea worked, we wouldn't need guides on how to make Work Pages, would we?
Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 1st 2020 at 7:16:33 AM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallYeah it wouldnt be a mandatory thing. Just a guide if you think you need help. Trope writing can be hard to start. If people don't want to read it or don't think they need it, then they don't need too
Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 1st 2020 at 7:24:57 AM
Macron's notesSo one thing that might be important to add is that it's best to focus on describing the trope as clearly as possible, rather than being funny or stylistic; we can explain that it's better to focus on clarity and then style, rather than putting style first, as it can obscure the trope meaning.
Also, very few tropes can get away with being described in a paragraph or less, so posting only the minimum amount of information will only leave people with questions about the trope's definition.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWhen I write/rewrite a description, I write a paragraph to define the core idea, then another to describe connotations of the trope, then another for "related tropes", where I define the relationship of closely-related concepts. This results in generally three paragraphs of description, but only one was needed to describe the core idea and the rest was how that concept exists in relation to other, similar, concepts. Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
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I know what you mean; what I was more referring to was the people who make one-line stub descriptions that are barely more helpful than the laconic, and thought that this "add a little more" tip would help those kinds of people. But, I also tend to keep the basic information in one paragraph and then expand on it as I go along- I just think that if the description is literally less than a paragraph, there's something probably missing from it.
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Go right ahead!
The problem is that everyone has their own method of writing and we just can't fix bad grammar and formatting in some people. How to Write an Example is mostly just a broad suggestion page explaining do's and don'ts, but doesn't actually give you a format. I personally feel the Alice and Bob style is tacky, but others swear by it.
Ultimately, all a TLP idea needs is a handful of lines explaining in plain terms what the trope is, along with at least three examples to get the ball rolling. You don't need a flowery description, well designed hypothetical example concept, page quote or picture. That's what Wiki Magic is for. I've learned from experience that spending three hours on a proposal I feel is almost a final draft sucks when you only get 4 replies and nobody seemed to read the first two lines.
Right, our page is also just a bunch of "do's" and "don'ts". Judging by your comment, you've not actually looked at it, have you?
Again, we're not trying to make everyone write the same way- people just have issues with writing trope descriptions if they aren't familiar with the TLP process, and this is meant to help them do it well. We're not forcing a style on anyone, except to say that "hey, maybe a one-line description isn't enough, and Alice and Bob is a frowned-upon format".
Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 13th 2020 at 3:21:01 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallThe difference is that TLP is a proposal rather than the actual trope description, there is a confusion going on with what exactly you are trying to write for. A proposal will get gutted out and rewritten according to feedback because that is what TLP is about, and I was saying optimally you should write differently for a proposal. If a trope does get launched the description will have Wiki Magic far more often than individual examples, so there is more pressure to get that right the first time.
Not in my experience; my TLP descriptions rarely get tweaked after launching them. People might add a trope or two or fix the flow of a sentence, but that's about it.
The ideal is to aim for the final appearance as much as possible, which means we can't really rely on Wiki Magic to fix any glaring issues in a description; it should be fixed in the TLP stage. Even if things change after launch, though, people don't often hat for drafts if they think the description is in bad shape, so a lot of drafts won't even launch if the description isn't at least decent.
The point is, yeah, maybe things change after launch, but a launch is less likely to happen for people who can't write a good description to begin with, and this is to help those people get a launchworthy draft, or at least help them get the ball rolling.
A lot of newbies will just put a one-line description or a massive wall of text or muddle the trope's description unnecessarily with a lot of unnecessary information; all we're here to do is to give them tips on how to do the trope's description better, so they do get to launch and don't have to have their description edited immediately after launching. And again, we're not enforcing a style but just giving them basic writing pointers.
Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 13th 2020 at 2:26:02 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallMy experience in the Trope Description Improvement Drive
and the TRS forum
both strongly imply a sense of inertia. There's almost no changes to the description itself once launched, even when two or more tropers agree that it should be changed. During the draft stage is definitely the best time to address those concerns.
I like the new write-up a bit better (Descriptions should contain 2-3 paragraphs at minimum. 1 paragraph or a few sentences isn't enough to describe most tropes in detail. Ideally, you might be able to have one paragraph contain the basic concept, but you should have more paragraphs to expand on the concepts and clear up any confusion.), since my main concern is that people would add paragraphs that distract from the core meaning of the trope, and state connotations as if they were requirements of the convention.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.Aside from factual truth, there's also context. I get the sense that as far as descriptions are added to post-launch, it doesn't happen with respect to the whole. Not the best of example, but right now Jem and the Holograms has a fourth paragraph ("the main series ended") that was written without any contributor bothering to change the final line of the third paragraph. I also get the impresson the description of Living Dream was incompletely changed at some point to explain the switch from neutral to gendered language midway, and that the line on Voodoo Doll about ushi no toki mairi was added later without regard for if it affects the trope. So, if descriptions draw more edits than examples, that doesn't mean those edits are "good". Having a solid description - a solid idea of what the trope is and is not - from the start could amend this somewhat.
I don't know how others work the TLP, but right now I'm looking at ten weeks worth of work on a proposal to split off Kaballah golems from the golem trope. I accept whatever response it may get once I put it up. Not saying it's going to be fun if it gets barely any attention or just mystery bombs, but I don't think that should keep me from writing something that accounts for the needs both of readers and of future editors either. The TLP process can only improve the description so much, as the sponsor may be assumed to have the best knowledge of the trope and therefore reasonably be the best to nail the description (no one stopped me from putting white seahorses with hippocamps in my TLP; I had to decide myself I had way too many white seahorse examples to not make that a separate trope. Which I'll do when I get around to it). I think it's good to noncommittally encourage a little perfectionism by providing tools on what to look out for, and to lend a helping hand to people who already want to do better but lack experience.
That said, it'd not be bad to move this guideline a little away from TLP context and make it more generally useful, like to people who want to fix up an existing trope's description.
Maybe, but that seems like a different thing; if anything we'd need an extra "fixing a pre-existing description" section, but retooling the entire thing sort of misses the point of why it exists. It's not about changing a description but about writing one in the first place- I think a lot of people get Writer's Block when it comes to these things, and that's why I want to give them tips.
Tips for description improvements may be helpful, but it's not...the same. I won't fight if everyone else wants to expand the page, but to me, it's more about helping people deal with TLP writer's block and make something well-written, not just about descriptions in general.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWith "fix up" I mean something more drastic than retool. I'm thinking of a complete linguistic revision that approaches writing from scratch. Only difference is that there's core concepts already outlined. There are plenty of tropes with descriptions not even close to what the current guide suggests, so I think expanding the guideline's use is only a matter of adding a third section.
I'll see about writing something up later today to demonstrate what I mean. 'Twon't affect any of the text already put together.
The only time that happens is in TRS though, as big changes like that often change the meaning of a trope; not that it's never done, but it's just very rare and usually part of a project.
Tips would help the process, though, so go ahead.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall

All the time on the TLP I see people struggle with writing a trope page. For some of us with experience, it can be pretty easy to throw something together, but that's not how it is for everyone. TLP Guidelines doesn't tell people how to properly describe their trope and format the page- it just gives rules for participating in the TLP itself (as it should).
So I'm wondering if a "style guide" for writing a trope page well would be a good idea.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall