Cliches and Tropes: The Age Old "Squares and Rectangles" Setup

Writers strive to avoid using cliches whenever they can. This is generally a good practice, but something I've found throughout all my conversations with my fellow pen monkeys is that a lot of us have trouble telling the difference between a cliche and a good, old-fashioned trope.

It reminds me of the saying I heard back in math class; all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

Related, yes... but they aren't the same.

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Avoid Cliches, But Not Necessarily Tropes

Let's be real here, cliches are bad. Even the times they're acceptable (such as when they're being subverted as a way to examine how stories really function) are sort of the exceptions that prove the rule. When readers see a cliche, it often results in them sighing, and shaking their head. While different readers have different tolerance levels, too many cliches will drain their interest, and result in them putting your book down before they really get sucked in. Or, worse, if they're deep in your story and get hit with an unexpected cliche then it could take them out of the narrative entirely, and make them give up.

This is where that phrase I mentioned comes in. Modified, it would read, "All cliches are tropes, but not all tropes are cliches."

It's easy to tell the difference once you're familiar with them.

So what is the difference between the two? Well, a trope is a common or recurring device in literature, film, etc. that sets a mood, conveys a tone, or to make something feel familiar. For example, the harsh lighting and sharp shadows associated with film noir (to say nothing of the Venetian blinds) could be thought of as a genre trope. Alternatively, the trope Red Right Hand is where a character seems normal, but a single feature such as a mismatched eye, a twisted hand, etc. gives you a clue to their monstrous (or at least deeply hidden) nature. Tropes are, in many ways, the building blocks of a story. While some are clumsier than others (and some should be left by the wayside as times and conventions have changed), there is usually nothing inherently wrong with a trope as long as it isn't based in something objectionable (such as the Mighty Whitey trope, where a white guy goes to another culture and becomes better than anyone else at something associated with that culture).

Cliches, on the other hand, are like tropes that have been blown up, magnified, and sucked dry of the meaning and impact they once had. While cliches once had their own meaning and resonance, they've been used so often they've become a Flanderized version of themselves, to the point that no one can take them seriously. For example, the opening phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night," is a cliche. Not a story taking place on a night of bad weather, but that phrase specifically. Then there's the. "It was all a dream..." ending that will make readers pitch a book straight out the window of a moving car. Character descriptions being given via a mirror, chosen one narratives, and many other tropes all fall under cliche territory.

It's important to understand the difference between these two things, not just for the sake of clarity when discussing your book with fellow writers, agents, and publishers, but so that you know what tools you're using. Because for all the negative things I've already said about cliches, they are still tools you can use, if you choose to. It's important to ask if they're really the right tool, though, as they've been used for so long that these days they make a botched job of things unless you're really thinking outside the box, and use them in a new and different way.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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"Trope" Isn't a Bad Word

Over the past several years I've met a lot of writers and hopeful writers who have come to me for advice. Sometimes it's because I'm the only professional they know, or they heard me speak on a panel, or they read an article of mine and thought it was really insightful, so they want to get my thoughts on a story or idea of theirs. And there is a recurring theme among these conversations that I wanted to address this week; namely that so many newer writers seem particularly averse to anything considered a "trope" when it comes to their stories.

Bottom line here, you may as well tell me you want to be a mason, but you don't want to use any bricks in your construction. Every story is going to have tropes, because tropes are the mechanisms we use for telling stories.

And without gears, the plot won't turn.

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Now then, let's get to it!

Tropes, And How To Use Them

A trope, according to TV Tropes, is basically a kind of storytelling shorthand. It's a shortcut, a device, or a convention that, by putting it in your story, you can be reasonably sure your audience is going to recognize it. For example, if you're watching an old-timey Western, and a man rides in with a black hat and a black duster, you know he's the bad guy. The fellow in the white hat? That's the good guy. How do you know? Because this became storytelling shorthand, giving birth to the tropes Bad Guys Wear Black (or just Black Hat for short) and Good Guys Wear White (or White Hat).

For more color-coded tropes, see Disney Villain Green.

Now, not all tropes are created equal. There's a lot of tropes we don't use anymore because the sort of stories they're connected with are things we've moved past (or should have moved past) a long time ago. Consider, for example, the trope Mighty Whitey, which refers to a displaced white person who ends up living with native people of another region, and while there becomes their greatest champion, leader, what have you. Your Tarzan, your Phantom, and the list goes on. Or the trope Yellow Peril, used to refer to the xenophobic tendency of turning Asian crime bosses or syndicate leaders into racist caricatures. This is where you get characters like The Mandarin, Fu Manchu, a lot of H.P. Lovecraft villains, etc.

Some tropes are no longer in circulation for a good reason. However, a lot of the time when someone talks about how they want to avoid using tropes, what they actually mean is they want to avoid using cliches. Which is definitely something I can get behind... within reason.

What's The Difference?

A cliché is a phrase, a motif, or even a trope, that has become such a part of a particular genre or story type that its presence is expected. For example, nobody opens a horror story or a mystery with the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night," anymore unless they're being ironic. Calling your gelatinous monster from beyond the stars indescribable isn't something anyone does legitimately in most stories anymore either.

However, the thing to remember is that even cliches have power. They are a bedrock foundation of understanding. Even if your audience rolls their eyes as soon as they see it, they immediately know what you're trying to communicate to them. And the thing about cliches is that as long as you give them a new coat of paint, or just change the lighting in the room a little bit, they can become instantly new and unique once again.

For those looking for an example...

For example, take the cliché of The Indescribable Horror. This goes back to the early days of cosmic horror where the idea was that because the creatures were so alien that to gaze upon them confused and cracked the mind of those who saw them. They violated natural law, and the number of dimensions they could exist in, leaving onlookers unable to truly describe what they saw.

Unless executed with supreme skill, that is very difficult to pull off these days. However, you could interpret this cliché in a new and unique way, reinvigorating it and putting a new spin on it so that it seems novel once again.

What would that look like? Well, you could have a creature that literally stole words out of people's vocabulary, making them physically unable to describe it; the longer they look, the more words they lose. This creature's bizarre nature might make it impossible for people's memories to store accurate images of it, perhaps going so far as to cause brain damage and memory loss when it's seen. There are all sorts of different ways you could take Howard's refusal to actually tell us what half his bestiary looked like, and twist it into a new, unique, and dreadful form that would actually affect your audience again.

So, while it's all well and good to say you don't want to have any cliches in your work, remember that these are the lingua franca of storytelling even more than the bigger tool chest of tropes. You just need to use a little elbow grease, and spit polish them up a bit so they're fresh and unique for a reader who thinks they've seen it all. You don't have to do that, of course... but just because a trope is well known, or it's become a cliché, that doesn't meant you can no longer get any use out of it.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!