I read a lot of reviews on reddit where people complain about a book and they say it's, "tropey." I don't think they know what they are saying.
Philosopher and literary historians have established 7 basic plots throughout all time. So tropes are going to be present in every powerful story. Trope means a recurring theme or motif. So tropes are meant to happen over and over.
Every successful book has a protagonist and antagonist. It is impossible to escape. These are tropes. Of course they can be amazing. The superhero trope can be annoying or boring, but Batman and Spider-man, also fall into the superhero trope, and many of there comics/movies/games are amazing.
I think when people complain of a book being "tropey", I think they mean it's cliched, stale, low-energy, poorly executed.
I agree with them if that is what they mean. When I read something, I'm looking for an author who is passionate, and energetic, and believes in the plot they are writing, even if similar plots have been done (as all plots have).
But I believe a book succeeds or fails on it's execution, not on if it contains well worn tropes.
What do ya'll think?
by Polite_Acid
5 Comments
>I think when people complain of a book being “tropey”, I think they mean it’s cliched, stale, low-energy, poorly executed.
>I agree with them if that is what they mean.
That is what they mean.Â
You are conflating structure and tropes.
I don’t complain when I see a book following the pride and prejudice path, if it is done well
There’s nothing wrong with tropes, all genres have them, they’re what works and that’s why people stick to them.
As someone who is active in the BookTok/Bookstagram/Facebook book communities, I think there’s been an increase of authors that write books that are really nothing but tropes. Or, at the very least, the only thing they advertise about the book is the tropes, since I can’t claim to have read every single book advertised like this.
Nothing turns me off trying a book more than the marketing for a book being something like “*Generic Book Title*: an enemies to lovers, second chance, fake dating, grumpy sunshine, one bed, instalove Christmas romance.” Mainly because when I’ve tried to read the books advertised like this, they just read like I’m reading a BuzzFeed list of tropes with no character development or plotline or depth at all. Its only tropes, one after the other, nothing moving the story forward other than the authors dream to include every trope they can think of.
“Protagonist” and “antagonist” are not tropes lol. Those are foundational aspects to most story structures.
A trope is a recurring element in a genre. Cryostasis sleep in sci fi, dragons in fantasy – these are tropes. Tropes can be about anything from setting to character arcs to plot structure. “Friends to enemies” is a trope. So is “enemies to friends.”
People do tend to use trope and cliche interchangeabley, yes – but they shouldn’t. A trope BECOMES a cliche when it has been so overdone by so many different artists that there is little if any nuance left in the trope. And tropes originally start with some artist who, at the time, did something wildly inventive and original and now a bunch of people want to copy elements of that because it was successful. The Dark Souls series is a great example of this becaues it occupies the full range of original > trope> cliche (not that the formula itself is stale, but there are definitely cliche iterations of it out there in the world by now).
Tropes can still have original spins or flavor to them. Cliches cannot. That is what makes them a cliche. “The chosen one” is a pretty great example of a cliche – even the reversal/deconstructionist takes on chosen ones have started to veer into cliche.
But at its face value, a trope is simply an element of a story that a reader finds noteworthy or interesting enough to warrant being imitated by other artists in the same genre. People seeking out tropes are why genres exist.