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.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

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.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, consider checking out my show Tabletop Mercenary if you've ever thought about becoming a TTRPG creator, but you want a glimpse behind the curtain before you just jump into the deep end.

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 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!

 

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!

The Generative Aspect of A.I. Isn't The Problem... It's The Theft

Since the plagiarism software is still in the headlines (and many tech bros and corporations have attempted to force it to do jobs that it is objectively not capable of doing), I wanted to take this week's update to discuss something that I feel gets either overlooked in a lot of these discussions, or which some people are simply misunderstanding. However, it is not the "generative" part of these programs that's the issue; we've had the ability to do that for years. The problem is the theft, and the absolute lack of morals regarding what these programs are trained on in order to spit out their results.

Moral? Sorry, I thought you said MONEY, that's what I care about.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

It's Not What You Make, It's How You Learned To Make It

I first touched on this topic back in A.I. Started With Artists, But It's Coming For Authors, and there are some points I'd like to reiterate from that post. First and foremost, these programs are not intelligence, artificial or otherwise. They're just pattern-recognition software that sucks up data, and spits it back out at you. They're mimics that, more often than not, we anthropomorphisize so that we think they're smarter than they are. To reiterate, this is not a Terminator-style apocalypse; we are dealing with parrot programs that can do nothing except spit out various combinations of what's been put into them.

Which brings us to the second point. The reason people hate these programs is not because they're so much better than creators of all stripes. It's not because they, "allow anyone to make art/write a book," as so many out there claim when they get hate for using these programs. It's because they were fed stolen work to use as the basis for all of their creations. They are, quite literally, the product of theft. It's one of the main reasons the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that A.I. art cannot be copywritten.

Share these? With you? Why would I do that?

There are, for example, programs out there that don't use stolen material to train on, but which still generate results that can be used from what's in their database. For example, I recently talked about The Medieval Fantasy City Generator by Watabou, which is something that I've used for my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age TTRPG setting. I've generated dozens of maps of fantasy cities and towns using the push of a button, and then once I have a map I can fill in the details myself, and breathe life into the project. There have been generators for character names, random writing prompts, and more available for decades, and there are a lot of writers who've made use of those.

The generative aspect of these programs isn't the problem. If you were to take a generator and train it on public domain works like H.P. Lovecraft stories, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, or even paintings from Renaissance masters, no one would have a problem with that. Whether you used the results of these programs as inspiration for your own stories, or just to create cool cover art, you wouldn't be stealing work from anyone. You couldn't copyright anything created with the program, either, but if you're just using it for inspiration (or you don't care about making money) then that wouldn't be an issue.

But that's not how these programs are being used. Instead, businesses and corporations are stealing the work already created by artists, and they're being used to try to rip off those artists, authors, screen writers, etc. A classic example is Jane Friedman, who had to fight Amazon to have books with her name on them that were written by A.I. removed. Because if a business can pay nothing to get the material they're selling, and then make pure profit off of it, they're going to do that. Period. End of story.

So if you're wondering why so many creatives are angry at the proliferation of so-called A.I. programs, examine the source material that they're trained on. Because there are dozens upon dozens of prompts, machines, and engines that can spit out everything from fantasy cities to story prompts, but those which don't use material that was stolen from creatives don't generate any outrage.

When you're taking sides on an issue like this, look at who's on which side of the line. Then ask yourself if tech bros and corporations have ever been the good guys when it comes to situations like this.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

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And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business 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!

 

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!

Use Your Spare 15 Minutes (You'd Be Surprised How Much Writing You Can Get Done)

There's a story floating around the Internet about someone whose therapist found loopholes in their mental conditions in order to allow them to achieve tasks in unconventional ways, even if it looked a little odd from the outside. If they were too depressed to make a sandwich, instead of not eating, their therapist suggested just eating individual sandwich components. It was less important that they constructed a sandwich than that they got necessary calories into their body, and if that meant just eating some meat and cheese then that was what they should do. If they had a paranoid episode about their hair curler burning down their house when they left, their therapist suggested just putting the hair curler in their purse. Is that strange? Sure, but if you have the curler in your purse, and you can look at it, then you can use that to reassure your brain that no, it's not plugged in and turned on at home.

This same kind of strategy can be used with creative endeavors as well. Because so often we end up getting so caught up in what writing is supposed to be that we don't stop and ask how it is we're capable of working it into our daily life. Because there are no rules, and if all you happen to have is 15 minutes, you can do a surprising amount with that over time.

It may take time, but it will surprise you what all you can accomplish.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

It's All About Dedication and Discipline

Think for a second about people who have serious exercise regimens. They have to pack up a bag, go to a gym, take their pre-workout, make sure they're hydrated and have proper calories in them, and then they have to spend at least an hour going through a full set of exercises. All told, this can take two hours or more out of your day, and if you're someone looking at that who just wants to get in shape, you might feel like it's impossible. After all, there's no way you could do that with your life structured the way it is, to say nothing of the costs involved.

Maybe not. But doing things this way isn't the only option.

For example, if you aren't very active, you could find opportunities for more walking in your daily life, as well as just taking the stairs more. It's not going to give you a 6-pack overnight, but it's better than where you were. If you have some space at home, you could find a quick yoga routine that limbers you up, and puts your muscles to work. You could even find a body weight workout routine that you can do in 15 to 20 minutes. Drinking more water instead of soda, cutting sugar out of certain meals, or changing how you snack, can all have impacts that get you closer to your goal.

It's the same with writing.

It all adds up.

You may not have several hours a day to write. You may not have the time, energy, etc., to make a cup of coffee, get your environment quiet, go to a particular place, and just lose yourself in the activity... but that's not the only way to write. That's how some of us do it, absolutely, but just like how you don't have to pump iron to get fit, you don't have to sit at a desk in the attic with the door locked and ear plugs in while banging out 10,000 words a day to get some writing done.

If you only have 15 minutes, ask what you can do with that.

Can you write a character description, or plot a short story idea in a notebook, or in an app on your phone? Can you write a paragraph at a time, or even put down some vignette fiction that's only a few hundred words, but which still tells a complete story? Can you just write some snatches of dialogue, or make notes on the history of a setting?

All of these things are still writing. All of these things are going to help you strengthen your mind, and get used to the process. More importantly, they're going to get you used to going through the motions so that you move with greater surety and familiarity, allowing you to turn your writing brain on and off (assuming yours even has an off button) at will. And if you do these things regularly, dedicating a little bit of time here and a little bit of time there, then you're going to find that you can put down a lot of words. As I said back in Writers, Are You An Ant or a Grasshopper? you can write at least 1 novel a year on just 500 words a day. That's the length of a decent Facebook rant... and most of us can write one of those while we're on the toilet during a work break.

If you feel like you don't have time to write, ask yourself if this is like feeling you don't have time to go to the gym. Because that might be true... but perhaps what you need is to not think of writing as an hours long activity where you sit in a special location, and put thousands of words down on a story. Instead, try doing it where you can, as you can, and just do the word count equivalent of getting in your steps.

You might be surprised at how that adds up over a year or so.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, consider checking out my show Tabletop Mercenary if you've ever thought about becoming a TTRPG creator, but you want a glimpse behind the curtain before you just jump into the deep end.

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 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!

 

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!

Writing Isn't What Makes Writers Succeed

Generally speaking, if you're a writer, you would assume that writing is what determines the success of your career. Dedication to your art form, clever execution, quality storytelling, and even the rate at which you can churn out new work, though... none of this is really what makes you successful as a writer.

No... instead it appears to be how famous you can make yourself as an influencer, YouTuber, or TikTok channel, as Matt Wallace points out.

Yeah... it's like that.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Writers Don't Get Famous For Writing Anymore

When you think of famous writers, chances are they're famous to you for their books. Whether it's Poe, Lovecraft, King, Gaiman, or dozens upon dozens of others, you know these people's names because of the books they wrote. Period. But even back in the relatively recent days of the 1980s and 1990s, things worked differently than they do now... and the things you need to do to be successful in today's market are getting further and further away from actually writing books.

I talked about this a few years back in I Just Want To Write... but Mr. Wallace really lays it out for all of us. Because 40 or 50 years ago the best advice you could give a writer was, "The best way to move copies of this book is to start working on your next book."

Sadly, that advice is for a world that no longer exists.

Now you have people trying to get seen on TikTok, to start podcasts, to run YouTube channels, and to do anything to get noticed in this media-saturated landscape we find ourselves in... and even when doing that works, and gets you attention, that doesn't mean it's going to actually get you closer to your goal of being a successful author.

Take the above story as an example. I wrote The Final Lamentation as a stand-alone piece of fan fiction set in the Warhammer 40K universe. My text version of the story, no matter how hard I tried to push it, or how many Facebook groups, subreddits, etc., I shared it on barely went anywhere. A few folks read it here and there, but generally speaking it probably hasn't amassed more than a few hundred reads at time of writing.

The audio drama version, though? That has 157,376 views, over 500 comments, and over 7,000 upvotes! Enough people have seen this version of the story that I've had folks recommend it to me, without knowing I'm the guy who wrote it in the first place.

Now, to be clear, I adore this adaptation of my work. I love how it helped more people come across my story, and how it helped boost the signal. I am remarkably touched by some of the very kind things folks said about this story, and how much they enjoyed it. However, making something like this production is both not writing, and it's something that is a far larger undertaking than just putting words on a page. It takes voice talent, recording equipment, sound effects, the right music, and so much more to turn a piece of fiction into an audio drama.

But, even worse, there's no guarantee that the popularity of a piece of media like this will turn into something profitable. Because even if someone enjoys an audio drama, or a video you made, they're not all that likely to go check out your website, or to follow the links you left in the production. They probably aren't going to type your name into a search engine to find more of your work, either. People consume what's in front of them, and then move on to the next thing more often than not.

Which leaves you making more and more content to try to pull in the audience, to let people know about your work, which rarely does anything to sell the books you've already written, but which also eats up all the time you would spend writing new books which you now aren't.

So What Can You Do To Help?

As with all my other diatribes on this subject, it really does come down to you as the audience. I've said this before, but authors are like gladiators in the arena; we could put on the finest show of weapons skill possible, and defeat three dozen opponents, but unless you all make some noise for us we aren't going to get any kind of reward at the end of the day.

We need you to elevate our signal, and make people aware of us. We need you to share links to our books on your social media pages, tell your friends and family, leave reviews, share our posts, follow our pages and our channels... in short, we need you all to raise your voices loudly enoug that the algorithm cannot ignore you, and it becomes impossible to throttle our signal because so many people are talking about what we're making.

And, of course, it always helps if you can donate to help us keep producing more work. Because the further we can keep the wolf from the door, the easier it becomes to put words on the page.

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business 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!

 

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!