I like that increasing the specificity of detail leads directly to “something like love,” in the same way that a sudden understanding of someone I’d thought I hated led directly to empathy.
Thanks for highlighting this, David. It was my favorite part of George’s answer. There is so much empathy in his stories and in his answers to our queries. It all comes down to a kind of open hearted observation and patience with our fellow humans (and ourselves).
When I was a kid, I learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube. I can still solve it, but don't have a clue what I'm doing. It just happens because of patterns and muscle memory and enchanted fingers. I couldn't ever teach someone to solve it. The idea of happening upon tropes to set expectations and using those expectations to move the story around is something, I think, I've tried to do, but never realized it. At least I've been more pleased than not when it happens. So, it's quite illuminating, (and validating) when you explain it. Ahah, that's what I'm doing. And why. Great question and answer—thank you both.
I liked this comment that George made in the video:
I've learned a hard lesson many years ago which is I can't really plan a story. We start an artistic problem or project–we kind of think we know what we're doing, we think we know what it's about, and the key moment is when we realize that we don't. And that the story has something to tell us that we don't know yet. You have to let go of your own concepts about the thing you're doing. In a weird way, it's almost a way of thinking about life to me now, that–you don't have to have all the answers.
And I was reminded of this comment by John Szarkowski, photographer and director of photography at the MOMA:
I taught my students that you can't wait until you've got a great idea, because it's not a great idea until you get into it. Start in on something that you're--you're interested in a little bit or you think you might be interested in, and you explore it. And if it's the right subject for you, it becomes more interesting as you work. And the more you work, the more interesting it becomes. But you can't solve artistic problems in your head and then execute them. In real art you never know what the answer is. You have to work toward it. And finally when you can't go any further, you think that must be the answer.
Hi Justin, thanks for the John Szarkowski quote. It’s great. I like being reminded that this is all a process - a messy, personal process of exploration, development and refinement. The value is mined rather than found whole.
Another great question and answer in the Story Club universe. Thank you questioner and thank you George. I love the idea that the term Trope, which can feel dismissive, is morphing here into something more like Ritual or Totem, which are reassuring - things not to be copied or repeated religiously but to be valued for their confirmation that we are tapping into the universal and the mythical. This might be getting too La La or psychological but I think the recognition of a trope, the way George describes it, is a reminder we are not alone. Writing is a solitary, introverted endeavor but we are trying to connect outwardly with readers, with the 'other.' When those recognizable patterns or types emerge from our own pages it's a reminder that we are tapping into a more universal set of feelings and experiences. It's then our job to individualize them - to add specific detail - to make the story our own, or its own, but I like the confirmation of being on a shared path. It makes me feel less alone at the keyboard. I liked how George put it here:
"...I never start with a trope, but I do sometimes find myself stumbling into one. And I usually feel this as a good thing; it means the story has started to move out of my individual imagination and dip its toes into the deeper river of myth.."
I like the idea of comparing tropes to something mythical. And it's not that stereotypes aren't often or sometimes true and even funny, it's that they are generally used to demean, dismiss and limit individuals and groups of people.
Agreed. Maybe it’s true that most over-simplified descriptions of people are limiting, or even prejudicial. It’s in the detail, the getting to know the person, the loving observation, that we find truth, or at least a truth we can relate to.
This is such a wonderful way of looking at tropes, both from George with his "deeper river of myth," and from you talking about those universal feelings and experiences. Yes, it is our job to make a human being out of a stereotype. And to lead characters into uncharted waters, defying easy answers, escapes, and expectations. The questioner, George, you, and all the story clubbers below sparked a great discussion for me personally, because I guess you could say I have been working backwards on some tropes about immigrants in the early 20th century for three years now, hoping to swim in those deeper rivers. I don't really know if it was a mistake or not, I'm just going with the flow for now.
Thanks Dee. I’m pretty sure we are heading toward thinking Tropes are no big deal, and in fact a reassuring clue that we’re on a path traveled, and valued, by others for a long time. That river runs deep. The flow is worth going with. Flow state…..
True. I intend to keep going where this story takes me. We all run into tropes all the time. They are everywhere in the collective unconscious and within our own imaginations. We have to try to make something resembling real people out of them.
In fact, in a story, a character can be as enigmatic as a real life walking talking person. How hard is that to pull off? Well, very very very very . . .
George, you look cool walking in slow motion. You should do that all the time.
I got a lot out of today’s question and answer, so thanks. I had more to write here, but I’ve become the Forgetful Old Man and I can’t remember what I was going to say.
This reminds me of Toni Morrison's short story "Recitativ" where racial tropes are deftly manipulated and turned on their ends. Who is white? Which is black? Morrison seems to ask, "Does it matter?" It's a story that resonates years after the reading of it.
Tropes are so useful. It gives characters something to fight against, to move beyond. I find myself wondering about how the other characters in a story treat the 'trope'. If the employees treat the Big Bad Boss as the friendly supportive boss, then do we force the trope into something different, more real? I'm reminded of the Peter Sellers film Being There, where the simple gardener (trope) is treated as a guru and genius (different trope). What happens when our characters refuse to occupy their trope in the way we and the reader expect? I guess that's escalation and drama?
Hi Tom, I really like this idea of Trope as Foil. And I loved Being There, so perhaps I'm biased to this already. But your observation that you (we) start to wonder how others will treat the trope character is a really interesting one. The trope invites us into the story then our radar is tuned and we increase our awareness.
Any story can be reduced to a trope if you go back far enough. Man against man. Man against Nature. Love is Painful. Life is Difficult. People are Lonely. Lovers quarrel. Children grow up and leave. Etc. And characters can be tropes if not made specific, if not fleshed out. So talking about tropes can just end up being confusing and not helpful. I don’t think Hemingway decided to write a story about Man Against Nature when he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. No, he just started writing about an old man going fishing. And kept going. The questioner wonders about using tropes to help write a story and I’d say whatever works. If you can work backwards from a trope/theme/thin character, then have it. Personally, i wouldn’t recommend it. Start writing and you will discover what you are writing. If you start with a trope, you will only waste time working to rid yourself of it.
Hi Mary. I like the Old Man and the Sea example. And I think you’re saying something George mentioned too, about not starting with the trope but realizing it might be inevitable when it/they show up. I like the term Archetype better for this. I find them reassuring when they show up. They remind me that I’m on a well travelled and important path rather than being lost and on my own, trying to reinvent the wheel.
Heya Mary, Story as trope? well I kinda see what you mean however the definition of trope is of something or someone within a story not so much the boiling down of the story itself.
I was taking to heart George’s notion of “escalating feud” as a trope. It seems to me that if that scenario can be considered a trope, then so can just about any scenario if written in a stereotypic way. I’ve always thought of a trope as relating to character, but the definition George posted includes scenarios. I simply pulled them back further to their core. My point being that poor writing is poor writing. Take any scenario and make it sing. Better, though, to start from a different jumping off point and grow outward.
I guess so, but who wants to read poor writing, so any story that leaves it's whole at that lesser extent will evaporate. The scenarios within or as a whole work, that appear tropish will, under an expert hand, morph into better writing that may honor the whispering archetype.
Yes to jumping in the deep end where tropes are yet to swim!
What an interesting discussion. The questioner poses the dilemma so nicely. I find tropes appear in my writing unintended, as GS mentioned, and I struggle with this because we all want to avoid the predictable. Are tropes analogous to cliche? At the end of the day, it has all been written before, and we're just finding new and hopefully novel ways to tell our stories. So I guess tropes are unavoidable, but the idea is to minimize them, as they do tend to challenge our wishes to be unique, even if only in a small way.
In 'The Overcoat' - currently being close read and conversed about behind 'The Paywall' - is AAB's character actually a story trope in so far as, even with the turn and twist after AAB's decease, there is a sense of overwhelming inescapabilty about just where this story is leading its reader(s) towards the inevitability of its 'protagonist's' or, perhaps more accurately 'pivotal central character's' end?
I'm really interested in how you describe writing character as something like love. I didn't have the words for it, but you are so right- specificity feels like getting closer to something we didn't know. I've been writing a flawed character lately, I disagree with her, but have felt the need to keep writing. I wrote a detail the other day where she squeezes a plastic whale in a shop whenever she passes it. It's sounds stupid, but it felt like love, like I'm there for her, I've got her back, whatever she does.
So put a name on one yet to begin to emerge character, say Gen, and then do like wise for a second yet to begin to emerge character, say Brenda, and next have something - probably small scale and apparently minor - happen between them and you've lit the blue touchpaper from vital that spark that has every potential to fan up and flame as fully fledged story by differentiating these characters, drawing out why what's initially happened between them in the tip of an iceberg under which there lie all manner of meaningful actions?
I do feel I'm increasingly, albeit inching, getting 'inside' how short story fictions work.
Great question... and good to be feeling that while I need to be beware 'tropes', not least starting from one, they can be an original fiction writers friend in some steps in the writing process.
Mind you, I'm now catching up with the pennies dropping into this still mind pond of mine, I never thought about there being a pair of tropes to be aware of, as in situation/event tropes' and 'character tropes'... that's two pebbles setting two ripples of perturbation running out from their splash points across the still and mill pond that mind tends to be.
Really enjoyed reading the question and the answer. “Trope” wasn’t a concept I was familiar with and it made think archetypes, which I think of as universal (psychological?) character types that bob up and down between the air of consciousness and the water of unconsciousness. I think trope, as it’s talked about here, is a better term because it doesn’t rely on general characteristics such as gender, race, nationality, religion, etc. Thanks for enlarging my sense of what it means to be human.
Oh man, "enlarging my sense of what it means to be human..." How's that for a fabulous compliment to George and to Story Club? We are all so lucky to be here...
I googled "Big Book of Tropes" as I was sure someone must have wriiten it. Apparently not...however, there are many books, websites and lists of tropes out there. So no excuse for not staying away from them...
One of those neither shaken or stirred but rather finished by the deft plop of an iceball into the stratified layers of a gently crafted up cocktail concoction 🍹
And the ripples of perturbation are now freed by ice and darkness to spread galaxy-wide and do their mind-numbing work unseen, unheard, and unfelt by time-bound beings.
Should I give way to fear or invest all in hope in riding the ripples now set radiating all about time-bound me and you and we?
Have Martians landed stealthily, lessons learned from the failure to carry the day in their previous machine-age 'War of the Worlds' invasion?
"What? Didn't you realise? H. G. Wells terrifying account was never actually 'mere' fiction but rather a highest grade plutonium work of searingly creative non-fiction... wasn't it? And, surely,
seen through the cloud of disinformation wrapped around Orson Welles radio active rendition of Wells' words? Orson was reporting a real breaking story much more than delivering a creatively confected adaptation of a sci-fi fairy tale... wasn't he?"
So, it's using the brain against the brain? As i understand, the brain - in pursuit of making sense, which is its main job - is constantly using existing cookie cutters or, when none is available, creates one? I understand a well-written character to be a multitude of tropes. As in, "rich, bored housewife throws herself under the train" becomes a tragedy of biblical magnitude.
Or, alternatively, "Praise be. So thankful to read that 'yet another rich bored housewife throws herself under the train'"?
And then reading on to find that "Mayor Lear is mighty relieved to be able to tell his local electorate that liability for cleaning up the mess lies entirely on the railroad not on our town!"
George, thanks for this. I’m heartened by the encouragement to play with tropes. A novel is beginning to new within me, one with two trope characters who are pushed out of their zones and work together against what Kristen Lamb calls the Big Bad Boss (in this case, a patriarchal system that punishes school librarians for having specific books in the collection and also has a forced-birth policy). Sadly, I think my BBB might also becoming a trope now.
That is so funny—it’s a spellcheck-forced error. I typed ‘brew.’ I don’t know why that wasn’t acceptable. Must have hit a wrong key. Wouldn’t it be fun to write a story based on spellchecked ideas and events?
"ChatBOT GPT advises that the writing game you are playing is unacceptably disrespectful to not just this but all Spellcheckers.. Desist or take the consequences. This is your first and final warning."
You look, knowing exactly what you'll read... 'DO NOT REPLY This has been sent from a one-way, ChatBOT GPT to You, outbox.'
This was truly insightful -- I'm always afraid of drawing my characters too broadly, i.e., too much according to type (or trope). But reminding me to zero in on them with "specificity of detail" is like throwing me a lifesaver -- if I can can just hang on to it. I seem to forget everything I Iearn when I'm writing. Then I have to relearn it. Then I forget, again, and have to re-learn, again, etc.. Am I alone in this? George's comment that specific detail is something like love reminds me that paying attention, whether to people or to writing, is love.
I like that increasing the specificity of detail leads directly to “something like love,” in the same way that a sudden understanding of someone I’d thought I hated led directly to empathy.
Thanks for highlighting this, David. It was my favorite part of George’s answer. There is so much empathy in his stories and in his answers to our queries. It all comes down to a kind of open hearted observation and patience with our fellow humans (and ourselves).
Thank you, Kurt. This seems like the key to life.
Amen Brother !! (in the not religious, just brethren in a life of observation and empathy kind of way...)
Gotta love a well drawn villain.
A well-drawn or melodic or well-written anyone!
Well hung!
Thanks, David. Some days I can only get as far as tolerate, but I'm working toward empathy.
Empathy might be the hardest place to get to including towards oneself.
Oh, gosh darn, David, you've done it again! And here I was just barely, and happy enough!, to get to tolerate!! Ha!
No worries: I struggle with this stuff every day!!
Then I'm in good company!
When I was a kid, I learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube. I can still solve it, but don't have a clue what I'm doing. It just happens because of patterns and muscle memory and enchanted fingers. I couldn't ever teach someone to solve it. The idea of happening upon tropes to set expectations and using those expectations to move the story around is something, I think, I've tried to do, but never realized it. At least I've been more pleased than not when it happens. So, it's quite illuminating, (and validating) when you explain it. Ahah, that's what I'm doing. And why. Great question and answer—thank you both.
I liked this comment that George made in the video:
I've learned a hard lesson many years ago which is I can't really plan a story. We start an artistic problem or project–we kind of think we know what we're doing, we think we know what it's about, and the key moment is when we realize that we don't. And that the story has something to tell us that we don't know yet. You have to let go of your own concepts about the thing you're doing. In a weird way, it's almost a way of thinking about life to me now, that–you don't have to have all the answers.
And I was reminded of this comment by John Szarkowski, photographer and director of photography at the MOMA:
I taught my students that you can't wait until you've got a great idea, because it's not a great idea until you get into it. Start in on something that you're--you're interested in a little bit or you think you might be interested in, and you explore it. And if it's the right subject for you, it becomes more interesting as you work. And the more you work, the more interesting it becomes. But you can't solve artistic problems in your head and then execute them. In real art you never know what the answer is. You have to work toward it. And finally when you can't go any further, you think that must be the answer.
(From https://www.britannica.com/video/164461/John-Szarkowski-curator-Szarkowski-A-Life-in)
Great minds/working artists thinking alike?
Hi Justin, thanks for the John Szarkowski quote. It’s great. I like being reminded that this is all a process - a messy, personal process of exploration, development and refinement. The value is mined rather than found whole.
Thanks, Kurt--I've got that image in my mind now, of each of us swirling water and ore in a pan, looking for the good stuff!
Closing Q? Answer: Yes!
Another great question and answer in the Story Club universe. Thank you questioner and thank you George. I love the idea that the term Trope, which can feel dismissive, is morphing here into something more like Ritual or Totem, which are reassuring - things not to be copied or repeated religiously but to be valued for their confirmation that we are tapping into the universal and the mythical. This might be getting too La La or psychological but I think the recognition of a trope, the way George describes it, is a reminder we are not alone. Writing is a solitary, introverted endeavor but we are trying to connect outwardly with readers, with the 'other.' When those recognizable patterns or types emerge from our own pages it's a reminder that we are tapping into a more universal set of feelings and experiences. It's then our job to individualize them - to add specific detail - to make the story our own, or its own, but I like the confirmation of being on a shared path. It makes me feel less alone at the keyboard. I liked how George put it here:
"...I never start with a trope, but I do sometimes find myself stumbling into one. And I usually feel this as a good thing; it means the story has started to move out of my individual imagination and dip its toes into the deeper river of myth.."
I like the idea of comparing tropes to something mythical. And it's not that stereotypes aren't often or sometimes true and even funny, it's that they are generally used to demean, dismiss and limit individuals and groups of people.
Agreed. Maybe it’s true that most over-simplified descriptions of people are limiting, or even prejudicial. It’s in the detail, the getting to know the person, the loving observation, that we find truth, or at least a truth we can relate to.
This is such a wonderful way of looking at tropes, both from George with his "deeper river of myth," and from you talking about those universal feelings and experiences. Yes, it is our job to make a human being out of a stereotype. And to lead characters into uncharted waters, defying easy answers, escapes, and expectations. The questioner, George, you, and all the story clubbers below sparked a great discussion for me personally, because I guess you could say I have been working backwards on some tropes about immigrants in the early 20th century for three years now, hoping to swim in those deeper rivers. I don't really know if it was a mistake or not, I'm just going with the flow for now.
Thanks Dee. I’m pretty sure we are heading toward thinking Tropes are no big deal, and in fact a reassuring clue that we’re on a path traveled, and valued, by others for a long time. That river runs deep. The flow is worth going with. Flow state…..
True. I intend to keep going where this story takes me. We all run into tropes all the time. They are everywhere in the collective unconscious and within our own imaginations. We have to try to make something resembling real people out of them.
In fact, in a story, a character can be as enigmatic as a real life walking talking person. How hard is that to pull off? Well, very very very very . . .
But worth the effort!
George, you look cool walking in slow motion. You should do that all the time.
I got a lot out of today’s question and answer, so thanks. I had more to write here, but I’ve become the Forgetful Old Man and I can’t remember what I was going to say.
It will recycle itself back to you at 3:00 am!
Ain’t that the truth!
This reminds me of Toni Morrison's short story "Recitativ" where racial tropes are deftly manipulated and turned on their ends. Who is white? Which is black? Morrison seems to ask, "Does it matter?" It's a story that resonates years after the reading of it.
Thanks for the tip.
Rectatif
Recitatif
"French form of recitative: a style of musical declamation that hovers between song and ordinary speech."
Probly hear a lot of this once Lincoln in the Bardo is operatised.
Tropes are so useful. It gives characters something to fight against, to move beyond. I find myself wondering about how the other characters in a story treat the 'trope'. If the employees treat the Big Bad Boss as the friendly supportive boss, then do we force the trope into something different, more real? I'm reminded of the Peter Sellers film Being There, where the simple gardener (trope) is treated as a guru and genius (different trope). What happens when our characters refuse to occupy their trope in the way we and the reader expect? I guess that's escalation and drama?
Hi Tom, I really like this idea of Trope as Foil. And I loved Being There, so perhaps I'm biased to this already. But your observation that you (we) start to wonder how others will treat the trope character is a really interesting one. The trope invites us into the story then our radar is tuned and we increase our awareness.
Any story can be reduced to a trope if you go back far enough. Man against man. Man against Nature. Love is Painful. Life is Difficult. People are Lonely. Lovers quarrel. Children grow up and leave. Etc. And characters can be tropes if not made specific, if not fleshed out. So talking about tropes can just end up being confusing and not helpful. I don’t think Hemingway decided to write a story about Man Against Nature when he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. No, he just started writing about an old man going fishing. And kept going. The questioner wonders about using tropes to help write a story and I’d say whatever works. If you can work backwards from a trope/theme/thin character, then have it. Personally, i wouldn’t recommend it. Start writing and you will discover what you are writing. If you start with a trope, you will only waste time working to rid yourself of it.
Hi Mary. I like the Old Man and the Sea example. And I think you’re saying something George mentioned too, about not starting with the trope but realizing it might be inevitable when it/they show up. I like the term Archetype better for this. I find them reassuring when they show up. They remind me that I’m on a well travelled and important path rather than being lost and on my own, trying to reinvent the wheel.
Heya Mary, Story as trope? well I kinda see what you mean however the definition of trope is of something or someone within a story not so much the boiling down of the story itself.
I was taking to heart George’s notion of “escalating feud” as a trope. It seems to me that if that scenario can be considered a trope, then so can just about any scenario if written in a stereotypic way. I’ve always thought of a trope as relating to character, but the definition George posted includes scenarios. I simply pulled them back further to their core. My point being that poor writing is poor writing. Take any scenario and make it sing. Better, though, to start from a different jumping off point and grow outward.
I guess so, but who wants to read poor writing, so any story that leaves it's whole at that lesser extent will evaporate. The scenarios within or as a whole work, that appear tropish will, under an expert hand, morph into better writing that may honor the whispering archetype.
Yes to jumping in the deep end where tropes are yet to swim!
Absolutely. You articulated this better than I did. But this is what I meant. Thank you.
Always a bit nervous when I knock out a post from the gut of feelings so it's good to know I'm getting somewhere, thanks to Story Club.
On point Mary. I agree. Hemingway was conjuring a story from sparks of observation that having struck left the scar of their ignition his imagination.
Do you think that Hemingway threw back each and every story that landed as trope and went back to fishing for the truly fresh story?
🐟 nice, 🐡, neat, 🐠 nicer...🦈BITES!
What an interesting discussion. The questioner poses the dilemma so nicely. I find tropes appear in my writing unintended, as GS mentioned, and I struggle with this because we all want to avoid the predictable. Are tropes analogous to cliche? At the end of the day, it has all been written before, and we're just finding new and hopefully novel ways to tell our stories. So I guess tropes are unavoidable, but the idea is to minimize them, as they do tend to challenge our wishes to be unique, even if only in a small way.
In 'The Overcoat' - currently being close read and conversed about behind 'The Paywall' - is AAB's character actually a story trope in so far as, even with the turn and twist after AAB's decease, there is a sense of overwhelming inescapabilty about just where this story is leading its reader(s) towards the inevitability of its 'protagonist's' or, perhaps more accurately 'pivotal central character's' end?
I'm really interested in how you describe writing character as something like love. I didn't have the words for it, but you are so right- specificity feels like getting closer to something we didn't know. I've been writing a flawed character lately, I disagree with her, but have felt the need to keep writing. I wrote a detail the other day where she squeezes a plastic whale in a shop whenever she passes it. It's sounds stupid, but it felt like love, like I'm there for her, I've got her back, whatever she does.
So put a name on one yet to begin to emerge character, say Gen, and then do like wise for a second yet to begin to emerge character, say Brenda, and next have something - probably small scale and apparently minor - happen between them and you've lit the blue touchpaper from vital that spark that has every potential to fan up and flame as fully fledged story by differentiating these characters, drawing out why what's initially happened between them in the tip of an iceberg under which there lie all manner of meaningful actions?
I do feel I'm increasingly, albeit inching, getting 'inside' how short story fictions work.
Great question... and good to be feeling that while I need to be beware 'tropes', not least starting from one, they can be an original fiction writers friend in some steps in the writing process.
As in, they draw your story into the universal unconscious, which might then inform it?
Yes David, I think maybe so.
Mind you, I'm now catching up with the pennies dropping into this still mind pond of mine, I never thought about there being a pair of tropes to be aware of, as in situation/event tropes' and 'character tropes'... that's two pebbles setting two ripples of perturbation running out from their splash points across the still and mill pond that mind tends to be.
Give a person enough trope, and eventually they will hang out with more original people!
Really enjoyed reading the question and the answer. “Trope” wasn’t a concept I was familiar with and it made think archetypes, which I think of as universal (psychological?) character types that bob up and down between the air of consciousness and the water of unconsciousness. I think trope, as it’s talked about here, is a better term because it doesn’t rely on general characteristics such as gender, race, nationality, religion, etc. Thanks for enlarging my sense of what it means to be human.
Oh man, "enlarging my sense of what it means to be human..." How's that for a fabulous compliment to George and to Story Club? We are all so lucky to be here...
I googled "Big Book of Tropes" as I was sure someone must have wriiten it. Apparently not...however, there are many books, websites and lists of tropes out there. So no excuse for not staying away from them...
I love, “ripples of perturbation.” Sounds like a part of a recipe for a disturbed cocktail.
One of those neither shaken or stirred but rather finished by the deft plop of an iceball into the stratified layers of a gently crafted up cocktail concoction 🍹
And the ripples of perturbation are now freed by ice and darkness to spread galaxy-wide and do their mind-numbing work unseen, unheard, and unfelt by time-bound beings.
You tear my senses asunder.
Should I give way to fear or invest all in hope in riding the ripples now set radiating all about time-bound me and you and we?
Have Martians landed stealthily, lessons learned from the failure to carry the day in their previous machine-age 'War of the Worlds' invasion?
"What? Didn't you realise? H. G. Wells terrifying account was never actually 'mere' fiction but rather a highest grade plutonium work of searingly creative non-fiction... wasn't it? And, surely,
seen through the cloud of disinformation wrapped around Orson Welles radio active rendition of Wells' words? Orson was reporting a real breaking story much more than delivering a creatively confected adaptation of a sci-fi fairy tale... wasn't he?"
"...wriiten.." of course being that little known variant of "written". Sheesh...
I have heard tropes/archetypes mentioned by writers as if they are something to be avoided at all costs (how?!). This has been a reassuring read.
Hard to avoid, but a worthy challenge to transgress them.
So, it's using the brain against the brain? As i understand, the brain - in pursuit of making sense, which is its main job - is constantly using existing cookie cutters or, when none is available, creates one? I understand a well-written character to be a multitude of tropes. As in, "rich, bored housewife throws herself under the train" becomes a tragedy of biblical magnitude.
Or, alternatively, "Praise be. So thankful to read that 'yet another rich bored housewife throws herself under the train'"?
And then reading on to find that "Mayor Lear is mighty relieved to be able to tell his local electorate that liability for cleaning up the mess lies entirely on the railroad not on our town!"
Very Magritte.
George, thanks for this. I’m heartened by the encouragement to play with tropes. A novel is beginning to new within me, one with two trope characters who are pushed out of their zones and work together against what Kristen Lamb calls the Big Bad Boss (in this case, a patriarchal system that punishes school librarians for having specific books in the collection and also has a forced-birth policy). Sadly, I think my BBB might also becoming a trope now.
Lovely words "A novel is beginning to new within me"... hope that BBB is going to be much more than "a character become a trope"!
That is so funny—it’s a spellcheck-forced error. I typed ‘brew.’ I don’t know why that wasn’t acceptable. Must have hit a wrong key. Wouldn’t it be fun to write a story based on spellchecked ideas and events?
Or, possibly terrifying...
"ChatBOT GPT advises that the writing game you are playing is unacceptably disrespectful to not just this but all Spellcheckers.. Desist or take the consequences. This is your first and final warning."
You look, knowing exactly what you'll read... 'DO NOT REPLY This has been sent from a one-way, ChatBOT GPT to You, outbox.'
This was truly insightful -- I'm always afraid of drawing my characters too broadly, i.e., too much according to type (or trope). But reminding me to zero in on them with "specificity of detail" is like throwing me a lifesaver -- if I can can just hang on to it. I seem to forget everything I Iearn when I'm writing. Then I have to relearn it. Then I forget, again, and have to re-learn, again, etc.. Am I alone in this? George's comment that specific detail is something like love reminds me that paying attention, whether to people or to writing, is love.