Worried about tropes.

[Omits]

Being my first attempt at a novel (for retirement activity), during research I come across suggestions to avoid Sc-Fi Tropes. I have olive skinned Aliens (NOT from Mars and don't know why I ended up with them). Not wanting Spacecraft with wings and pilots with fingers on firing buttons! Panels inside which start giving off sparks and small fires dotted around. Also, being a near future scenario I wonder about hard Sci-Fi and it's challengeable accuracy (how does one take quantum physics forward with Aliens that have got it sorted?). I do not like mixing what I see as real fantasy with ordinary tech as in some books–always reads weird to me.

Interested in views. Thanks.

 

[sule]

I know I personally also struggle with worrying that everything I write is cliched or falling into some sort of trope that's been done a thousand times before. I think the best thing to do is acknowledge that in some ways tropes are unavoidable. There's so much fiction floating around that almost everything has been tried at least once; there's an entire website devoted to all the things in fiction that show up multiple times.

If I see something in my writing that I know is a trope, or suspect could be some sort fo trope that I didn't know about, I have to sit back and ask myself, "Is there something about this particular trope that makes my story stronger? Does it feel distinct enough from the other times it's been done? If not, is there something I can do in this story to make it feel fresh?" I want to find a way to change or subvert the trope even in the smallest way so it doesn't feel cliched.

In my opinion, tropes are fine so long as you know why you are putting that trope into your story and you find some way (with characters, setting, or something else) to make it stand out from the other times it's been done. A trope that doesn't have something fresh or new about it is just a cliche, and I don't think anybody wants to have their work be full of cliches.

 

[hitmouse]

Just write the story and dont get too hung up. What you are fretting about are minor details which can be adjusted and de-clicheed later.

 

[.matthew.]

If it's an enjoyable read, it doesn't matter if it's the hundredth time I've come across the trope - it's the presentation that matters.

As for hard sci-fi, do you have any examples of your influences?

 

[sknox]

Isn't everything a cliche? Wings or no wings, it's all be done before, hundreds of times.

But there's another angle to this that I don't see mentioned much, so I'll put it forward, namely this: what is a hackneyed cliche to one reader is wondrous new to another. Just because you the author are overly familiar with green-skinned aliens as a reader doesn't mean *I* have read about them before. Everything is new, the first time we read it.

So write your greenies flying winged rockets and do it in such a way as to knock my socks off. To coin a phrase.

 

[Steve Harrison]

Little green men and flying saucers are key features of my latest novel and I had a huge amount of fun with them. Everything has been done before, so why worry and let unimportant things hinder your progress? When it comes to writing, avoidance, in my opinion, should be avoided.

 

[The Big Peat]

There are three options here.

1) Do your utmost to avoid the tropes and present something as new/fresh as possible; this will involve a lot of research into what's currently being written *and* what the community regard as tropes (not one and the same), with the annoying possibility somebody will write your new/fresh idea while you were busy researching tropes

2) Take the belief that the most popular stories actually cleave pretty hard to eternal tropes under a layer of paint, and spend a lot of time researching what's resonant with readers/what type of paint isn't being used much so you can be New and Old, , and risk the annoying possibility somebody will find your combination and publish before you

3) Try not to let it bother you too much and concentrate on writing a very good story that will live or die regardless of whether someone has similar ideas to you, doing only just enough research to know you're not making a gigantic faux pas and getting on with the writing.

I will admit to being biased, but 3 does seem the obvious path to me.

And remember, every trope has someone who hates it, but that doesn't tell you how many will read it.

 

[-K2-]

Regular green aliens? Nope... They gotta be;

K2

 

[Cydramech]

Having read probably the majority of articles on TVtropes, I'd be impressed to find any piece of published work not getting posted there eventually.

 

[sknox]

The advice about just write it is solid. The strategy is known as "trope-a-dope". Little known fact.

 

[Toby Frost]

Having read probably the majority of articles on TVtropes, I'd be impressed to find any piece of published work not getting posted there eventually.

I agree. If people want to play "spot the trope", they can and will. I think it's rather futile and doesn't help you enjoy or understand a book very much, but there's no stopping them. You might as well just write the book you want to read, as best as you can.

Besides, as @sknox says, there will be people to whom these tropes will be new and exciting. Provided there's nothing jarringly old-fashioned (and I suspect that's more to do with the characters as much as the setting) the setting should be fine.

 

[Pyan]

What Toby said.
His Chronicles of Isambard Smith series is basically stuffed full of tropes - but that doesn't stop them being excellent fun and very enjoyable to read...

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree! (Well, I would)

 

[Pyan]

Cash, small bills, please. No cheques.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Trying to write something completely original is like trying to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. Anyway, as much as we say we like originality, what most people want is familiarity.

Writing sci-fi literature with the benefit of having read Clarke, Asimov, Adams and Wells is a great advantage; some of their stuff works, some doesn't - use the good bits to help develop your own story.

 

[JimC]

I like tropes and Mary Sues.
Telzey Amberdon, River Tam, Cameron Phillips, Trigger Argee, Jiril of Joiry, ad infinitum.
Bring em on, I'll read em.

 

[JNG01]

I read somewhere once that tropes can make or break a book. You can't avoid them--at least not really. They are encoded with a whole matrix of understanding and assumptions that an author can use to bridge the gap between the familiar world the reader knows and the strange one the author is creating.

My thought would be to consider whether tropes need to be avoided, or just managed well.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

One thing I have noticed is that when writers try especially hard to avoid all the tropes/clichés they know about, they usually manage to incorporate a very great number of those they were not personally familiar with but many others readers will be.

The best way to write a book that is fresh and original is to write about things that really interest you, whether they have been written about before or not. Enthusiasm for what you are writing, living with your characters and in your world over a long period of time while you write whatever it is you are writing, is bound to bring up a lot of new ideas and insights, making what is old new again ... and maybe, just maybe, lead you to take your story in a direction that has never been done before. But you can't do that if you worry too much about dos and don'ts in the early stages.

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

I've found myself strangely happier and less inclined to judge a much-used trope used in a book if the author in some way indicates that they're quite aware it's a trope, and doing it anyway--by, for instance, having another one of the characters point it out (especially if that character has a history of doing that sort of thing.) Playing with our general knowledge of genre tropes, although harder to do, is endlessly entertaining to me--even if it's played straight, if you acknowledge it as a trope, you can get away with a lot more just by calling yourself out on it and essentially promising to the reader that you know what you're doing and it'll all be worth it.

Suppose you've got the good old orphan-left-in-a-basket-on-the-doorstep trope. A character can ask sarcastically if there was a letter and a locket left in their swaddling clothes, too. A bit of dialogue, maybe something more--and now it's been established that you're aware of the trope and you're going ahead with it, and you're promising it's going to be good anyway.

 

[Astro Pen]

I have a nagging feeling that many readers expect tropes. They help them block up the shape of the story ahead and the arc they are subconsciously waiting for, and satisfied by the arrival of.