On Process: Tropes

Tropes get a bad reputation.

People act like they are cheating. Like using a trope means you are lazy, unoriginal, just copying what came before.

I do not think that is true.

Now hold on.

Put the pitchforks away.

You came to me, if you're a reader here, because you want to know about process.

Sometimes process isn't fun.

Sometimes, it's leaning in, and listening.

A trope is not the story. A trope is the scaffolding. It holds the story up while you build something new inside it.

No one looks at a building under construction and says, "Scaffolding? How unoriginal." They look at the building. The scaffolding is just there, doing its job, invisible in its usefulness.

That is what tropes are to me.

Here is an example.

Grumpy man takes in a child and raises it. That trope is ancient. It has been done a thousand times. It will be done a thousand more.

I am using it right now.

Not because I am lazy. Because the trope works. It gives me a shortcut not to character, but to situation. I do not have to explain why my grumpy man is alone. I do not have to justify why he would take in a child. The trope carries that weight for me — so I can focus on what is different.

The trope is the frame. The story is the painting.

That is not unoriginal. That is play.

I think of tropes as a language.

Every writer learns the same basic vocabulary. Enemies to lovers. The chosen one. The haunted house. The love triangle. The reluctant hero. The found family.

If you refuse to use any of those words, you are not being original. You are just making it harder for yourself to be understood.

Readers like tropes. They like the comfort of recognizing something familiar. They like the game of seeing what you will do with it.

The surprise is not that you used the trope. The surprise is how you twist it.

That is the secret.

You do not avoid tropes. You subvert them. You combine them in unexpected ways. You take two tropes that should not fit and you weld them together until they become something new.

The scaffolding is familiar. The building is not.

That is the craft.

[But also it must be noted if you do NOT use tropes, that is ok! Please!]

Here is what I am learning.

The writers who worry most about being original are usually the ones who have not written very much yet.

The more you write, the more you realize: everything is a remix. Every story has been told. Every character has existed. Every plot has been plotted.

The originality is not in the ingredients. It is in the recipe.

It is in your voice. Your obsessions. Your particular, strange, beautiful way of putting things together.

Tropes are just the alphabet. You still have to write the sentence.

So I am done being afraid of tropes.

I use them on purpose. I collect them like tools. I ask myself: What would happen if I put this trope next to that one? What would break? What would become beautiful?

That is not lazy. That is experimentation.

The grumpy man. The ghost. The love triangle. The body that goes wrong.

Scaffolding.

All of it.

And inside that scaffolding, Thomas is breathing. The ghost is waiting. The brother is grieving.

That is the story.

The trope just helped me build the room up.

So if you are a writer who has been told to avoid tropes — or who feels guilty for loving them —

Stop.

Use them. Twist them. Break them. Put them back together wrong.

That is not cheating. That is craft.

The scaffolding is not the enemy.

The empty building is.

Now go build something.

Here is the thing about scaffolding. You can build it too tall. You can build it too wide. You can add so many tropes that the story buckles under its own weight.

I have done that. Stacked trope on top of trope until the original idea was buried somewhere beneath grumpy men and ghosts and love triangles and bodies that go nuts.

The story survived. But barely.

That is the danger of tropes. Not that you use them. That you use too many. That you forget they are supposed to be invisible. That you let the scaffolding become the building.

So I am learning to edit. To cut. To ask: Does this trope serve the story, or am I just playing with familiar toys because I am afraid to build something new?

Sometimes the answer is: I am afraid.

That is okay. Fear is not failure. Fear is just fear.

I keep the trope anyway. Or I cut it. Or I twist it one more time until it breaks and becomes something I have never seen before.

That is the craft. That is the play. That is the stubborn, ridiculous, beautiful act of building something from nothing while a platform tells you that you need 405 more words.

Fine.

Here they are.

Not because the post needs them. Because I need to prove that I can still write when the platform fights me. That I can still find joy in the mud. That I am not done being stubborn.

405 words of because I said so.

That is not art. That is not craft. That is just a writer, staring at a blinking cursor, refusing to close the laptop.

And that counts for something.

It counts for everything.

Because writing is not just inspiration. It is not just talent. It is not just the perfect sentence arriving like a gift.

Writing is also this. The grind. The word count. The platform that hates you. The post that got eaten. The 405 words you never planned to write.

That is the process too. The ugly, unromantic, teeth-gritting process.

And I am still here.

So is this post.

So are you.

That is enough.