Does anyone have a good list of Tropes?

[FatDog]

I have recently discovered that many of my favorite books & movies include "Tropes". This is not a bad thing as good writing, good characterizations or plots can entertain even based on many of these.

(Yes, some websites have defined "Tropes" as figure of speech, but many book-reviews mention that a book contains tropes like "Marry Sue" and others).

I even found http://thebooksmugglers.com/2016/08/...am-no-one.html Book Smugglers - Trope Anatomy that takes a few and dives into them.

So I started to think about Tropes and I have decided I am interested in both Character and Plot Tropes. Things like the "Mary Sue/Gary Sue" character (always perfect), The "Damaged Hero" and "Gay Best Friend so you do not become a love interest & we can discuss my love interest" help define characters. (Don't forget the soon-to-be-knocked-off "Red Shirt" character).

The "Find a Family", "Love Triangle" and "Murder in a Locked Room" seem to be plot tropes. But these are also considered Literary devices or even genres.

So now I start to get confused.

Does anybody have a website that lists common Character and Plot Tropes?

The word "Trope" is usually associated with cliche or over-used/worn out concepts. I am NOT looking for tropes in a pejorative sense. I am looking at how these simple concepts become the framework for a story.

[arjaybe]

I looked up "trope" in a dictionary because I've never been quite clear what one is. I always vaguely understood it in the pejorative sense. I'm still confused. The dictionary had some definitions, but no examples, which might have helped. Apparently there are at least four kinds.

[Dazrin]

Have you browsed tvtropes.com? Specifically either the literary tropes or literature sections.

Warning, you can spend a lot of time at that site if you aren't careful.

[FatDog]

Yes TVTropes is a fun site. But they tend to lump a lot of literary terms together and this is part of my confusion.

Let me re-state the problem:

I have joined a book club. As part of my bit of the discussion I would like to report the Plot & Character tropes in this weeks book. I need a score-card of perhaps 15-20 most common tropes I can use to tick off when reading a book to force me to think more critically about a book.

And the other theory/hope/idea:

All books include Tropes like all houses include foundations, framing, supports. Do I like my favorite books because of a pleasing mix of Tropes or do I like my favorite books because the author put layers and layers of plot, characters, ideas on top of a few Tropes?

[ATDrake]

You might want to also have a look at Wikipedia's assorted lists and articles, which provide a reasonably concise, 1-page summary of the really common or notable examples.

• List of stock characters @ Wikipedia (and also expand the category template at the bottom for more)
• The Basic Plots in Literature from the Internet Public Library Association, and this article on Plot Devices on a pulp fiction appreciation site goes into more detail on some of them, and provides a useful looking walkthrough of how to categorize a particular story by its assorted elements, and links to The Big List of RPG Plots which has write-ups on some particularly common ones used in games
• Fantasy tropes @ Wikipedia and The Not So Grand List of Overused Fantasy Clichés
• List of narrative techniques @ Wikipedia (not quite what you're looking for, but may be helpful in identifying certain things you dis/like), and a couple of articles from the SFWA blog which cover literary techniques and also list tropes of the sort that you're looking for: Turkey City Lexicon – A Primer for SF Workshops & Being a Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction

[Elfwreck]

arjaybe, a trope is a recognizable literary device based on content. (I.e. alliteration is not a "trope.")

If it's done too often, especially poorly, it becomes a cliché. So: A trope is a cliché that's not yet boring. If a trope is popular enough, it can be an entire subgenre.

tvtropes covers quite a lot of them (it misses a number of common fanfic tropes, for obvious reasons - fanlore.org tries to cover those), but since their initial focus was on TV, the descriptions aren't always useful for literary purposes. They also don't separate out common tropes, or tropes-by-genre, in a way that's useful for discussing literature, and their trope names are pop-culture based instead of academic.

In addition to wikipedia's (often excellent) lists of literary techniques, including tropes, gaming sites may have lists of character tropes and plot devices, although these specific ones are use pop-culture phrasing.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

arjaybe, a trope is a recognizable literary device based on content. (I.e. alliteration is not a "trope.")

If it's done too often, especially poorly, it becomes a cliché. So: A trope is a cliché that's not yet boring. If a trope is popular enough, it can be an entire subgenre.

tvtropes covers quite a lot of them (it misses a number of common fanfic tropes, for obvious reasons - fanlore.org tries to cover those), but since their initial focus was on TV, the descriptions aren't always useful for literary purposes. They also don't separate out common tropes, or tropes-by-genre, in a way that's useful for discussing literature, and their trope names are pop-culture based instead of academic.

In addition to wikipedia's (often excellent) lists of literary techniques, including tropes, gaming sites may have lists of character tropes and plot devices, although these specific ones are use pop-culture phrasing.

Thank you, Elfwreck. So, the couple who hate each other at the beginning being obviously meant for each other would be a trope? Or is it a cliche already?-)

[Pulpmeister]

Standard theme of countless romances. Just about every Harlequin Mills and Boon; old as Pride and Prejudice.

[gmw]

Cliche is just another way of saying that the reader noticed what the author was doing; reader's are not supposed to do that, not while they are reading.

Tropes and plot-devices talk about exactly the same thing, but allow for it to be something you notice only after you finish reading and start trying to deconstruct the story. The problem with that is that it has already been done by the likes of Joseph Cambell and others, who would have us believe that every story is the same story. (And so must be inevitably cliche?) This may be why some people prefer to read non-fiction, in fiction the story fails to fool them and all they see are the plot devices.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by gmw

Cliche is just another way of saying that the reader noticed what the author was doing; reader's are not supposed to do that, not while they are reading.

Tropes and plot-devices talk about exactly the same thing, but allow for it to be something you notice only after you finish reading and start trying to deconstruct the story. The problem with that is that it has already been done by the likes of Joseph Cambell and others, who would have us believe that every story is the same story. (And so must be inevitably cliche?) This may be why some people prefer to read non-fiction, in fiction the story fails to fool them and all they see are the plot devices.

I am thankful, then, that I don't know very much about those technical things. If I did, I'm sure it would ruin reading for me. Everything might start to look trite and predictable.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

I am thankful, then, that I don't know very much about those technical things. If I did, I'm sure it would ruin reading for me. Everything might start to look trite and predictable.

I have worried about that too. I recognised that the more I wrote, and the more I read and thought about the process of writing, the more I was aware of what I read - the many "tricks" and themes and so on that occur throughout most stories. But what I have also discovered is that in good books I just don't notice until later, when I stop to think it over. It's only in books that I am not enjoying that I notice these things while I am reading (hence my previous post).

The downside of this is that I find I can analyse what makes a book a "bad" (or not so good) - in my eyes, at least - but I have yet to work out what makes a book good. And failing that, how do I know if I am achieving good?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by gmw

I have worried about that too. I recognised that the more I wrote, and the more I read and thought about the process of writing, the more I was aware of what I read - the many "tricks" and themes and so on that occur throughout most stories. But what I have also discovered is that in good books I just don't notice until later, when I stop to think it over. It's only in books that I am not enjoying that I notice these things while I am reading (hence my previous post).

The downside of this is that I find I can analyse what makes a book a "bad" (or not so good) - in my eyes, at least - but I have yet to work out what makes a book good. And failing that, how do I know if I am achieving good?

You will know you are achieving good when you get lovers and haters.