Let's Talk Tropes

by Thomas Kies

 I taught a class last week on the campus of NC State University to room of fifty mystery buffs.  The subject of the talk was Mysteries and the Importance of Settings and Tropes.  I loved the ninety-minute time I had with those people because they’re my tribe.  They love mysteries.  We talk the same language.

And in doing the research for the class, I had a chance to think about settings (which I wrote about in my last blog) and, obviously, tropes. The big question that came to my mind was, can you write a mystery, or for that fact, any novel, without using tropes?

First of all, what are tropes?  

According to Merriam Webster:

: a word or expression used in a figurative sense 

: a common or overused theme or device   

In its most basic sense, it’s something that’s used over and over again.  Let’s talk about a few examples:

-Red Herrings—a false clue meant to mislead the audience or protagonist

-The Detective with the Tragic Past—a protagonist that has a haunting backstory

-The Corrupt Cop—An officer of the law obstructs or manipulates an investigation

-The Journalist Sleuth—Okay, okay…I use that one in my Geneva Chase novels.

-The Twist Ending---Yikes, don’t we all use that one?

-The Overlooked Clue---overlooked, that is, except by our eagle-eyes sleuth

-The Hidden Passage or Tunnel—I don’t know, this one kind of feels like cheating to me.

-The Serial Killer Pattern—How else would we know it was a serial killer?

- The MacGuffin--an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance

MacGuffins are really something we could spend a whole blog talking about.  Some famous MacGuffins are the Maltese Falcon, the briefcase in the movie Pulp Fiction, the Ark of the Covenant in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rosebud in the movie Citizen Kane, A secret letter in the Sherlock Holmes tale The Adventure of the Second Stain.

So, if tropes are used over and over again, are they cliches? They can be, obviously. But the skilled writer will know how to use trope and sometimes subvert them, making the story unique and fresh.

Like Gone Girl. First of all, that trope is the missing housewife, presumed dead and killed by her spouse (don’t we always suspect the husband or wife?) But the story is subverted by using another trope, the unreliable narrator.  In this case…two unreliable narrators. 

Is the Unreliable Narrator a new trope?  Of course not.  Agatha Christie used it in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. 

Are there any stories that don’t have tropes?  I thought that the novel The Maid by Nita Prose came close.  Her protagonist is a hotel maid who is neurodivergent.  Except that really isn’t new after all.  Think about the television series Monk. And possibly the Sherlock Holmes stories.  Was Holmes actually an investigative savant with Aspergers Syndrome?

So, my personal conclusion is that no, you can’t really write a story, any story, without using tropes.  That’s the nature of our beast.  But the true gift in storytelling is making those tropes your own and make them feel new or special with your own words. 

 

The things put into that opening scene are SO important!

by Rick Blechta

I enjoyed Tom’s post from yesterday, not only because Raiders of the Lost Ark is particular favourite movie of mine, but for how brilliant that first sequence is in establishing many of the things you need to know about the main characters and the direction the movie’s plot will eventually take, even though the goal of this sequence is too build excitement and pull viewers into the movie. It really is quite extraordinary how many moving parts it all has and how masterfully its done.

So here’s my quick breakdown of what is going on “behind the machinery” that makes this scene work so well.

First, Indy is introduced as being smart, knowledgeable, resourceful, brave but a bit reckless, cool in a crisis, but still very human (his fear of snakes), and more than a little lucky. All of these are important in building his character rapidly and is accomplished with breathtaking skill by the script, direction and acting.

We’re also introduced to his skill with a whip and his cool hat. (Interesting factoid: the part was nearly handed to Tom Selleck!)

Secondly, the character of his antagonist is also rapidly established. With barely a dozen lines, we learn everything we need to know about Belloq. (Actor Paul Freeman does a magnificent job but this role in Raiders also got him typecast into villainous characters which is too bad. He really is a fine actor with a lot more scope than this.)

What is really interesting to me is that the opening sequence has little relation to the coming main plot idea. In the movie’s next sequence, the plot takes an extreme left turn. But since we’ve already learned so much about Indy’s character, all we can think is, “Yeah, he’s the right person for this job.” And that is very important.

To me, I can’t imagine an opening sequence that could be better. Regardless that it’s part of a movie and not a novel, every writer can learn a lot about how to open a story with a bang while sneaking in nearly everything you need to know about the protagonist and the antagonist to make the rest of the story work. And all this is accomplished so effortlessly. Without the viewer noticing, we’re learning everything we need to know about why these two characters do what they do.

That is, we’re not privy to all the hard work and thought behind what we’re watching. We can only aspire to do as well in our own works.

Do you have a favourite opening scene/sequence for a movie or book, and why do you think it works so well? Please tell us!