Tropes: Can't Have a Story Without Them
by Kimberley Allen McNamara
There's a story that floats around about movie pitches that occurred on the heels of Die Hard's box office success. Suddenly creatives were pitching movies centered around a straight couple whose marriage was suffering because she had a job that was reaching new heights, and he had a job that was not bad but wasn't great. This couple finds themselves trapped on a ship, a bus, a train, a plane, in a canyon, on a mountain--all with evil, hostile corporate/mercenaries/tech-stealing terrible guys. The creatives summed their pitch up with 'it's Die Hard on a ship-bus-train-plane or in a canyon or on a mountain top.' Die Hard's success made everyone want a piece of that success, and so they were pitching the same story. Thus the Die Hard trope, one could argue, was born.
Whether this story of these lackluster pitches is true doesn't matter. The Die Hard trope is a kind of shorthand for what kind of story the pitch is talking about, and the Die Hard comparison created the Die Hard cliche. Please, please, remember, tropes can become cliches, but they are not always cliches.
According to tvtropes.org,
"A trope is a storytelling device or convention, a shortcut for describing situations the storyteller can reasonably assume the audience will recognize. Tropes are how a story is told by anyone who has a story to tell." (tvtropes.org)
Further, tvtropes.org continues: "Tropes are not the same thing as cliches. They may be brand new but seem trite and hackneyed; they may be thousands of years old but seem fresh and new. They are not bad, they are not good; tropes are tools the creator of a work of art uses to express their ideas to the audience. It's pretty much impossible to create a story without tropes."
Tropes are a necessary part of storytelling and can help you tell a familiar story anew. How? By subverting them, or by twisting them. Setting your audience up to expect a familiar type of character, situation, etc., only to do something unexpected. The unexpected cannot be a complete surprise as in: 'and so she became a badass vigilante .'If the main character is a trope character of a Mary Sue (who lacks flaws and weaknesses), then to subvert this trope character, you must first show that she does have a flaw/weakness. This flaw is not a fatal flaw (that will cause her tragic downfall) but rather an informed flaw that will not prevent her from becoming a vigilante.
Still not convinced? Consider the widespread success of Stranger Things which seems to take pleasure in taking a trope and subverting it. Stranger Things season 4 (volumes 1& 2) has viewed over 1 billion hours according to Variety.com; the second Netflix title to ever rack up these hours.
Stranger Things, developed by the Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross Duffer), pays homage to the pop culture of the 1980s, particularly to the horror film tropes of that decade. They take these tropes, subvert them and also enrich them. Their characters undergo growth and lessen fatal flaws, opt to change, and learn as they go/grow. The story arc continues to build and the series even telegraphs what may or may not transpire by consistently having a Dungeon & Dragons game occurring throughout which forecasts or alludes to a possible solution. For more on how these horror tropes were twisted and subverted to create an intriguing, alluring, and enjoyable storyline, please visit: How 'Stranger Things: Season 4' Uses and Subverts 80 Horror Tropes By Kimberly Terasaki.
Subverting a trope is, in a broader sense subverting expectations. For example, Rom-Coms often expect that if a girl meets a boy, he'll be the wrong boy for her because he doesn't ascribe to what she holds as important. Consider that he owns a diner that serves coffee, which she loves and cannot live without, but he doesn't drink coffee or eat fried food, or hamburgers, that she also loves. He doesn't like that the church clock tower has been restored. She likes the bells, thinks they are magical and wonderful because they remind one of time passing, and appreciates their quaintness. But she will then realize what she thought was important: restoring the hourly chime of bells is annoying because their noise bothers so many townspeople (babies napping, students concentrating, referees blowing whistles, conversations on the sidewalk). The subversion: she shows up at the bell tower at the precise time he does to dismantle the bells, and she's brought the more oversized hammer! He doesn't drink coffee, but he's happy to make it for her. The tropes: he's a curmudgeon, and she's more embracing, a que sera sera kind of person; tropes subverted. (Can you guess the couple?)
On his blog, author Max Florschutz writes,
"...if you're going to subvert a trope, it needs to be a logical subversion that flows within the story's internal consistency. The characters can't just defy a trope for no other reason than "Look, I'm defying this trope!" They need to have reasons why they would go against the grain, shift gears, step sideways, etc. etc., and you need to make that logic clear so that when the subversion does happen, your reader thinks to themselves, "Oh yeah, that makes sense." (Florschutz)
To subvert a trope, you have to consider the expectation; you are counting on the expectation of your audience to fill in some of the negative space of your work without you having to bog down the writing with over-description. Your audience always brings certain expectations. However, there is the occasional, oblivious reader who will not extrapolate from the pattern of the story and the expected progression.
Kurt Vonnegut called this pattern of a story: the Shape of the Story. In his famous lecture on a story's shape at Case Western Reserve, available on YouTube, Vonnegut talks about how every story has a shape; if you know the shape and you've picked a popular one that readers will follow, i.e., Cinderella, then you build on that framework, build on that shape. Cinderella is an old tale. The first known recording was in the 1st century BCE (before the common era) and involved a Greek slave girl who married the King of Egypt.
Subverting the expectation of Cinderella might mean that she doesn't marry the prince, that he doesn't become King, that he instead abdicates the throne for her, and then they declare they are in the state of 'in love' rather than ‘happily ever after’ (see Amazon's production of Cinderella starring Camila Cabello). While this production received mixed reviews concerning the performances on Rotten Tomatoes, Richard Roeper of the Chicago SunTimes wrote:
"The Cinderella fairy tale has been adapted time and time and time again for the movies and TV, from the 1950 Disney animated version to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals from 1957 and 1997 to Kenneth Branagh's 2015 take to outliers such as "Ella Enchanted" and the Jerry Lewis comedy "Cinderfella" — and now we've got a new jukebox musical update with some modern and progressive themes about gender roles, and it's a most welcome addition to the library."
Roeper understood that the cast/writers/producers/directors were trying to subvert the expected tropes of Cinderella (courtesy of Walt's 1950 animation) and create something fresh.
Likewise, Brandy and Whitney Houston's 1997 production of Cinderella was also met with disgruntled reviews and viewers who didn't like the pair's take on Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella musical. However, in 2021, two decades later, when Brandy & Whitney's Cinderella aired on Disney+, Ashley Lee of the LA Times reported:
"Hollywood's renewed love for the movie musical — including Sony's take on "Cinderella," scheduled for release in July — has the potential to pay artistic and financial dividends for both the film and theater industries. And as "Cinderella" proves, the form thrives most on the belief that has made its legacy such a long one: that "impossible things," as Norwood and Houston sing, "are happening every day."
Bottom-line tropes will be in your story; how you use them will make all the difference. So use them.
Did you guess the Rom-Com? see comments
Any thoughts about Tropes? see comments
