Character Tropes in Queer Romance Are Only the Beginning
Character archetypes, character tropes, and character cliches are used interchangeably. By and large, the three principles cover the same area of the drafting process. They also differ significantly in how they’re used in that process. Even experienced editors and authors occasionally get them mixed up.
Archetypes are the universal roles characters play in a narrative. These are the major building blocks of your story. They transcend geography, culture, and time, following the same character journey. Meanwhile, tropes are the genre-specific situations characters find themselves in. Additionally, they’re the personality characteristics that allow them to navigate those situations.
“Authors love [tropes] because they provide a framework for the story we want to tell, a no-fail way to propel a plot in familiar and compelling ways,” says Jessica Joyce.
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What you especially want to avoid is loading up your character’s personality with cliches. Cliches are those traits, details, or acts that are so overused, they’ve lost their originality, their uniqueness. There’s only so many times the Billionaire with abandonment issues (scar) ends up changed by his Best Friend who returned to their hometown (road trip) for a vacation from his modeling career (ugly duckling).
With this in mind, I’ve provided three ways to help your queer romance story start from the best place and with the right characters.
Choose Your Character Tropes
Two of my favorite resources are Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s The Positive Traits Thesaurus and The Negative Traits Thesaurus. I had begun experimenting with my two main protagonists, but I reached a point where the words just stopped coming. I realized it was because I knew as much as I was going to know about them at that early stage. So, I flipped through those two books page-by-page. I established baseline personalities for those characters, which helped me tremendously.
It’s important to realize just how massive a role your choices of character tropes play in your character’s personality. Their personality comes from their backstory, the events that happened prior to current story time. When you have a baseline trope list to work from, you’ll find that not only will your character’s internal arc develop a little more smoothly, but so too will their external arc. Tropes ensure you can meet your readers’ expectations.
Janet Burroway, in Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (p. 83), offers clear thoughts on the problem with writing characters too broadly.
If you aim for a universal character you may end up with a vague or dull or windy one. If you set out to write a typical character, you’re likely to produce a caricature, because people are typical only in the generalized qualities that lump them together.
The premise on the back of your book—or in your respective e-bookstore description—comes from your chosen tropes. If you don’t deliver, your readers will likely turn to others who do.
Journey to the Right Character Tropes
How can you decide which tropes best fit your character?
Determine who they are at their core. Search for what it was that made them stand out to you enough to build a story around. In essence, develop your characters from the inside out. They’ll slot right into the story you’re trying to tell. By the way, you don’t need a degree in psychology to study your character’s inner workings.
In his book Story Trumps Structure: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules (p. 260), Steven James asks, “Does each main character have a peculiarity, foible, special skill, or emblem that represents something significant in his life?”
Yes, your story’s events affect your character. However, your character’s personality, relationship history, and belief system affect how they engage with the story’s events (or don’t engage). Try using exploratory writing prompts to get to know your characters, no matter their role in the story. Find what makes them unique in such a way that readers instantly identify with them. As Tiffany Yates Martin says in Intuitive Editing: A Creative & Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing (p. 26):
Learning to create well-developed, three-dimensional, relatable characters and taking them on a meaningful journey is the most important [craft] skill you will ever master.
(emphasis added)
Blend Your Character and Plot
Writing original fiction continues to be a learning experience for me. I have a surprisingly long list of story ideas for someone who spent ninety-five percent of her writing career in the fanfiction and journalism worlds. Yet I’m 100-percent sure that none of those ideas will turn into premises until I’ve created baseline characters that fit the internal growth intended by those premises. There’s no story without characters. On the other hand, there are no characters without a firm foundational story idea.
Depending on your queer romance’s theme or overall message, generally the character will come first. Your brain throws out a being (human or otherwise) that has a story to tell. Certain character tropes fit more easily to certain genre tropes, of course. Use both to satisfy your readers. Robert Lee Brewer believes “writers who are trope-aware can subvert those tropes judiciously for effective emotional impact.”
There are situations, like mine, where story ideas come first. With enough time rolling around in your gray matter, ideas turn into premises strong enough to build a plot around. You can lean into the tropes that fit the idea best. As I’ve previously mentioned, the romance genre centers on relationships. Plot tropes must be clear in how they either support or hinder your characters’ romantic connection.
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To Sum It All Up
As can be seen, it is a must that you are specific with your trope choices. Throwing a bunch of pieces together and hoping they make sense to your reader? That’s a recipe for disaster. The most solidly plotted story won’t matter if readers can’t make sense of who your characters are or who they’re intended to become.
This is where knowledge about your trope choices comes into play. Character tropes combine with plot tropes only insomuch as they complement each other. If you’re lazy about those combinations, Jami Gold boldly assures you’ll have a “boring, unengaging, and formulaic [story], not to mention disappointed readers.”
Finally, remember that you have two options available when it comes to tropes. You can use them as intended—in the way readers expect them to be used. Originality is still key here, but you have a baseline to work from. Use this other option with clear intention. Subvert character tropes when it makes sense to your character’s development. When you subvert them merely for shock factor? You disappoint your readers.
As a queer romance author, no matter your subgenre, draw readers in on every page. The right character trope blended with the right plot trope will get you there.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
