Story Tropes and I: A Match Made in Queer Romance Heaven
Even if I didn’t know it at the time, my first exposure to story tropes was as an adolescent. My mom’s two milk crates filled with Harlequin novellas shoved me into the romance genre world. Sure, each book essentially had the same cover, page count, and plot.
The Big, Strong Man saves the Independent Damsel in Distress from the Cruel Villain. By the last page, the Man and Damsel are riding into the sunset to live their Happily Ever After. Nonetheless, there I was, plowing through a different book night after night in less than three to four hours.
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Tumblr in similar fashion introduced me to a wider plethora of story tropes as they specifically applied to queer romance. I learned countless plot devices, characterization options, and conflict and resolution combinations. Moreover, I saw those tools used to accurately and adequately represent queer relationships across the spectrum.
“Tropes are important building blocks of storytelling, especially in genre fiction, because they help set and/or fulfill expectations readers have,” says Robert Lee Brewer.
Similarly, the framework tropes provide me as the author remove a lot of the stress of writing original fiction. Archetypes exist as building blocks, yes. It’s up to me to construct the house. Here’s a couple ways I’ve benefited from having tropes at hand.
Balancing Story Tropes and My AuDHD
Technically it’ll be another four months or so before I’m formally diagnosed. Still, I don’t hide the fact that I am very much autistic with a heap of ADHD for a little razzle-dazzle. Story tropes bolster that pride because they give me a clear template from which to work. I have Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman’s entire Writers Helping Writers Thesaurus series. The ten books go over every aspect from settings to careers to positive and negative character traits. I credit that series for me having a work-in-progress (WIP) currently sitting at 52,435 words.
Story tropes provide the order I need in my writing life. I can use the expectations of those tropes to personalize my story in a way that is unique to both my writing and my lived experiences. For this reason, it’s easy to get into that hyperfocused mode that is so prevalent among us who live with autism. Having a clear idea of what my scene’s intentions are based on those tropes makes the writing that much easier.
At the same time, the ADHD forcibly takes its turn in the driver’s seat and will send us down a rabbit hole of exploring tropes I never considered. Of course, I don’t fight this too hard because sometimes my brain just needs a break from the outline-in-progress I’m working from. I’ll read research other novels similar to what I’m writing to see how that author portrays the tropes I’m using for my story. If I’m not careful, though, reading researching can easily take over my day.
How My Writing Process is Affected
Cindy Dees offers these words of wisdom to genre writers working with story tropes:
If you introduce a trope, the readers will expect the middle, the black moment, and the ending that goes with that trope.
I love a good writing prompt. It’s how the current WIP came to be. Even my other two projects in Scrivener were created from writing prompts centered around story tropes prevalent in the queer romance genre. They’re (somewhat) patiently waiting for their turn at the helm.
Simultaneously, I cannot plot a story from start to finish. I admire those who can, truly I do. The past week, though, has more often seen me sitting with my arms crossed staring at my computer screen wondering why the next five scene ideas aren’t fitting together the way I want them to. See, I write the fun scenes first, the major turning point scenes or comic relief scenes or even just experimental scenes.
Only then do I figure out how to get from the most recently completed scene to that newly written one. Tropes let me plants my way through my outline with abandon. I know what readers will be expecting and when they’ll expect it. My characters and my plot circle each other in a way that I’m quite proud of, even with those empty Scrivener cards between the scenes giving me the stink eye.
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To Sum It All Up
The past week has given me a chance to revamp the story I’m trying to tell in my WIP. A scene I was stuck on for two weeks finally let me know it was in the wrong place. My second protagonist told me it was a Major Decision Time for him. Identically, my main protagonist made it clear that if the other guy had a Major Decision to make, then he needed one as well.
Story tropes are what made me try my hand at writing queer romance. I’m at the forty-percent mark of my first draft of my debut novel because of story tropes. They’ve given me two pages of story ideas, with more waiting to emerge from my subconscious. I see story ideas everywhere I look now.
I study craft books daily. It’s my job, after all. Never did I think I would be inspired to get back into writing queer fiction, let alone on the way to seeing that story idea in the hands of people I don’t know. Yet story tropes have returned to me the joy of story creation, the need to write certain archetypes in as many different ways as I can. They’ve allowed me to regularly reflect on my story. Trust in them to do the same for you.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
