From lexico.com...
Genres are defined by their tropes. The crabby detective with a drink problem and a failed marriage, the farm boy who's really a king, the wronged woman who needs to break out of her shell, these are instantly recognizable characters to readers of hard-boiled thrillers, heroic fantasy, and traditional romance. Tropes are great, the best ones being comfort blankets, cookies, or well-worn sweaters. We love a good trope. They are signposts, shorthand, and mirrors that reflect our world view.
But we also love it when the tropes are subverted, when they're turned on their heads and a story surprises.
I write fantasy, and I'm in my forties, which means Tolkien still looms large in my consciousness, along with Ursula K le Guin. Between them, more than half a century ago, they explored good vs evil, and some would say, myself included, that they did it pretty exhaustively, at least as far as the twentieth century was concerned. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings shows that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, while le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea explores the choices we make between the good and evil that exists inside us all, and how those choices are affected by the kind of person we want to be.
And then George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire came along and painted everyone in shades of grey. Everyone is the hero of their own personal narrative, especially now in our highly individualized times.
And more recently authors like VE Schwab in her Shades of Magic series and NK Jemisin in her Broken Earth trilogy showed us networked worlds, dependent, flawed, and greater than the sum of their parts – a twenty-first century viewpoint if ever there was one. These stories still contain recognizable tropes like the ubiquitous fantasy favourite, the chosen one, but the chosen ones are often not at the forefront of the narrative, and even when they are, they're not always the protagonist.
Genres evolve when their tropes evolve. And when they don't, they die out. Westerns, anyone?
What tropes define the genres you write? The genres you love? And what are your favourite subversions?
trope
NOUN
1 A figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression.
‘both clothes and illness became tropes for new attitudes toward the self’
‘my sense that philosophy has become barren is a recurrent trope of modern philosophy’
‘perhaps it is a mistake to use tropes and parallels in this eminently unpoetic age’
1.1 A significant or recurrent theme; a motif.
‘she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope’
Genres are defined by their tropes. The crabby detective with a drink problem and a failed marriage, the farm boy who's really a king, the wronged woman who needs to break out of her shell, these are instantly recognizable characters to readers of hard-boiled thrillers, heroic fantasy, and traditional romance. Tropes are great, the best ones being comfort blankets, cookies, or well-worn sweaters. We love a good trope. They are signposts, shorthand, and mirrors that reflect our world view.
But we also love it when the tropes are subverted, when they're turned on their heads and a story surprises.
I write fantasy, and I'm in my forties, which means Tolkien still looms large in my consciousness, along with Ursula K le Guin. Between them, more than half a century ago, they explored good vs evil, and some would say, myself included, that they did it pretty exhaustively, at least as far as the twentieth century was concerned. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings shows that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, while le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea explores the choices we make between the good and evil that exists inside us all, and how those choices are affected by the kind of person we want to be.
And then George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire came along and painted everyone in shades of grey. Everyone is the hero of their own personal narrative, especially now in our highly individualized times.
And more recently authors like VE Schwab in her Shades of Magic series and NK Jemisin in her Broken Earth trilogy showed us networked worlds, dependent, flawed, and greater than the sum of their parts – a twenty-first century viewpoint if ever there was one. These stories still contain recognizable tropes like the ubiquitous fantasy favourite, the chosen one, but the chosen ones are often not at the forefront of the narrative, and even when they are, they're not always the protagonist.
Genres evolve when their tropes evolve. And when they don't, they die out. Westerns, anyone?
What tropes define the genres you write? The genres you love? And what are your favourite subversions?
I'm nearly in my 50s and I've binged on many a trope, so much so, when I see one subverted I really remember it. Gone are the days of vanilla David Eddings The Belgarath and The Mallorean series (though I enjoyed them at the time). But even back then, I feel Stephen Donaldson in his Thomas Covenant series subverted tropes (it's been a long time, so forgive me if I'm wrong). But the one I enjoyed the most was How to Train a Dragon. It felt like everything that could be subverted was. It's quite the inspiration.
