Favorite examples of tropes and subversions done well?

[Bramandin]

Tropes are tools. Trying to avoid tropes is just as likely to cause a bad story as breaking the rules when you don't know what you're doing. What are some examples of when you've seen a trope handled well or subverted in a pleasing way?

I like Firefly's use of an unspoken plan guarantee. The general rule is if the plan is explained onscreen, something is going to go wrong. If they hadn't explained the plan, it can go off without a hitch. Simon has the plan really well sussed-out and it would have worked if Jane hadn't done something stupid. In fact, all of that planning means that while we were expecting it to go wrong, getting in was a lot easier than they expected.

 

[Toby Frost]

No offence intended, but I dislike tropes. Everything can be reduced to tropes but (a) I don't think it helps understanding writing or improving it and (b) I just don't read like that. I sometimes see novels advertised by the tropes they contain ("found family, friends to lovers, chosen one") but all I ever think when I see these lists is "But is it any good?" It just isn't the way that my mind works.

I do quite like it when a fairly standard story is given some new lease of life by changing one of the elements that makes it tired: for example, a person discovers that he's destined to rule a fantasy kingdom not as an adolescent, but when he's middle aged and has a family of his own.

 

[J-Sun]

Not sure if this is what you mean, but I love space opera. And I love Harry Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers which, on one level, is a pretty darned good space opera and, on another, pokes constant hilarious fun at them. Kinda like the Spinal Tap of space operas. In a much more serious and damning way, Norman Spinrad is sort of taking on some SF tropes but it really seems more pertinent to heroic fantasy (or high, or something - not sure about the subgenres) when he writes a novel which has that internality, but is externally an alternate history metanovel, sort of, in that it's written as though Adolf Hitler had given up painting in Austria and taken up pulp fiction in America and wrote the novel. Spinrad's book is called The Iron Dream, but the novel itself is called Lord of the Swastika, iirc. Not to mention that he sends up academic writing, particularly on SF, when he has a professor write an afterword to it (or maybe it was a preface).

Of course, in TV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is probably one of the greatest (and there's Whedon again) in that it has the little blonde girl and her teenage friends be the champions of the horror movie instead of the lunchmeat. The opening scene, with Darla, also plays on that in a different way.

Maybe more, subtler things will occur to me later but that's what immediately came to mind.

 

[Bramandin]

No offence intended, but I dislike tropes. Everything can be reduced to tropes but (a) I don't think it helps understanding writing or improving it and (b) I just don't read like that. I sometimes see novels advertised by the tropes they contain ("found family, friends to lovers, chosen one") but all I ever think when I see these lists is "But is it any good?" It just isn't the way that my mind works.

I do quite like it when a fairly standard story is given some new lease of life by changing one of the elements that makes it tired: for example, a person discovers that he's destined to rule a fantasy kingdom not as an adolescent, but when he's middle aged and has a family of his own.

While sometimes I will check something out if it has a trope I like, yikes on trying to sell the stories on them. I guess it's more about recognizing the pattern, like how the basic Superman story usually follows the same format as Jesus, the First Star Wars is a classic hero's journey... I think the most useful thing about tropes and writing is if you have something that's not working, you can easily see how it's normally handled and why it tends to be like that.

 

[DLCroix]

Respectfully I advise not to mix television with literature, because the use of recipes in the series as the first thing ignores or despises the viewer's intelligence by resorting to the easy, the cliché and the effect while literature has a much greater depth and scope. Furthermore, the hero's journey is not a trope as you say but a narrative model, a monomyth that summarizes the stages of human life. The hero's journey is a narrative choice while the trope is just an element that is repeated so much that it becomes redundant. IMHO don't confuse technique with trick. In fact, the one who dominates the technique knows how to use the trick without the reader noticing it precisely because it is at the service of a greater art, not a mercantile fudge.

 

[Swank]

Star Wars subverts the Hero's Journey.

 

[Swank]

Furthermore, the hero's journey is not a trope as you say but a narrative model, a monomyth that summarizes the stages of human life.

It is a narrative model, but it has particulars that are very tropish, since it demands that the protagonist starts as an unsophisticated nobody, goes through stages of fear and training to become something different than when they started, then return home in the end. Most narratives don't include all that stuff.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Witches riding brooms and using wands have to be two huge tropes, but J. K. Rowling completely leaned into them for the Harry Potter series.

 

[therapist]

A few that pop to my mind.
The old wise mentor. Favourite examples: Gandalf, Iroh (in avatar-the last airbender).

Pirates with wooden stump legs, eye patches and shoulder parrots. A weird and specific trope, probably more of a sterotype? But when this occured in Robin Hobb's Live Ship Traders, it felt so natural and genuine that you would've thought that she invented it herself. Also, if dragons are a trope, Robin Hobb's dragons are the best written dragons I have come across. They felt nuanced and original, and she managed to give each of a large cast of dragons their own personality.

Spoiler: Spoilers for First Law Trilogy (Joe Abercrombie)

Subversion of the epic quest trope. In First Law trilogy (Joe Abercrombie), a group of misfits are gathered together to embark on an epic journey to retrieve a maguffin. After a long journey, they finally arrive. Maguffin is gone, so they turn around and go home. Found it funny at the time which fit perfectly with the authors witty writing. Also, what we really cared about was the character development along the way (mainly Logen and Jezal).

 

[sknox]

Trope is a word we use to indicate something familiar done badly. If it's done well, we call it a good story.

 

[Dave]

I think you are discussing semantics again. Shall I leave the Caps Lock on?

A "trope" is not the same as a "cliché" but in certain circles online, that is exactly how it is used; as a pejorative for something that is stereotyped and trite, hoary and old, and something that weakens the piece of work . However, as pointed out, it can be fresh and new, original and inspired, particularly when it breaks the mould.

In general, clichés are only good for comedy effect and need to be avoided.

 

[Toby Frost]

About halfway through The First Law, I realised that you could predict the plot by the formula "If cliched fantasy novel goes one way, this will go the opposite direction". For me it made it harder to take the trilogy seriously and not just see it as an unusually violent parody.

Recently it occurred to me that an awful lot of my stock list of mental images come from a few sources: the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Shakespeare, King Arthur, the Bible and a few others - the sort of things that a person like me would have picked up in childhood. Now that films and books have more potential to go global, I wonder how easy it is to sell stories to people who don't have the same list of images (or tropes?).

 

[Bramandin]

Now that films and books have more potential to go global, I wonder how easy it is to sell stories to people who don't have the same list of images (or tropes?).

Perhaps we could look at what gets translated, what gets altered, what stays in its home country. Anime is the easiest example I think, though I don't know how many American movies get translated into non-European languages. I wonder if other countries have their versions of tropes.

 

[paranoid marvin]

For me tropes are recurring situations that happen far more often in stories than in real life.

The blacksmith's son isn't really the king, an old engraved ring is just a piece of jewellery and having a an odd looking scar doesn't mean that you're destined to save the world.

Real life is much more complicated than that; but when I'm reading do I really want complications? I'm usually reading/listening/watching to escape from real life from a brief glimpse of time. So when a boy becomes King of the Britons, a Hobbit becomes the owner of the most powerful object in Middle-earth and Harry Potter becomes a great wizard then that is fine. As long as the story is well told.

I think we can all hazard a guess at the outcome of a story depending who is the author, the protagonist, the title or the blurb on the back of a book. We can sometimes also see the way that a story is going once we've read a few chapters. It doesn't detract from the story that Sharpe/Bond/Hornblower will pull through and likely achieve victory, but it's how they do it that determines whether the book is enjoyable or not.

It's nice to have something different from time to time though, and it's also nice at times to have your expectations upturned by a series of events. GRR Martin I think was the first author I read to kill off well liked and well written protagonists in GoT series. But when that starts to happen too regularly it loses its impact and becomes a trope of its own making.

I do think that most people like originality and to sometimes have their expectations challenged, but we also like familiarity. Which is why we will re-read/re-watch stuff, and tend to buy books by certain authors. Familiarity is comforting, and knowing that the good guys will come out on top reassuring. Most of the time.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Witches riding brooms and using wands have to be two huge tropes, but J. K. Rowling completely leaned into them for the Harry Potter series.

As did Terry Pratchett in his 'witches' stories.

 

[BAYLOR]

As did Terry Pratchett in his 'witches' stories.

In Moving Pictueres he did some very imaginative and hilariously funny things with tropes and movie cliches .

 

[The Big Peat]

Since people are talking of Discworld, it's reminded me of my favourite subversion, which I will put in spoilers for the Watch sub-series

Spoiler

Carrot is the lost heir to the throne. He is it to a tee - an orphan with mysterious heirlooms and a crown shaped birthmark and almost supernatural levels of might and charm.

But he doesn't want to be king. Not because he doesn't want to serve Ankh-Morpork, which he does to a huge degree as a copper. It just doesn't feel right to him to be king.

However, the fantastic thing about it is the way it evolves and matters. First it's a joke that here's a dragon, which is when the long-lost heir is meant to show up but nobody notices. Then you have people plotting to make him king... then people plot to make other people king as he'd be a problem... then you hit this stage where everyone kind of knows and nobody says but every now and again his potential authority is wheeled out...

And it goes with his character growth too. Carrot appears to be very simple at first. But as it goes on, he shows he can be very clever, very subtle... but he still mostly appears to be simple. That's because he wants life to be simple and also because it's that bit easier to manipulate people when you have to by appearing to be simple, straight-forward, honest and the rest of it.

What makes that example great - and what makes similar examples great, and where I think it differs from The First Law trilogy is that it's not about the shock factor or subverting expectations, it's about exploring an idea. I didn't cotton on to The First Law until quite late on and while that made for a big shock and memorable book, it also means it's not a series I have much interest in revisiting as without that shock it doesn't have as much going as it could (tbf, first trilogy, I probably can't do better). And the thing about expecting the twist and stories becoming predictable is real too.

 

[Bramandin]

@BAYLOR and @The Big Peat man I need to step up on reading Pratchett because Moving Pictures and a lot of The Watch books are ones I haven't read. I tried to post which ones to my profile, but it was too long. 18 books.

 

[sknox]

>it's about exploring an idea
Yeah, this. When inversion is simply a device, it usually tries my patience. It's just too easy to take what someone else has done, then flip it.

It's much harder to stay withint the trope and somehow find ways to create meaning.

It's even harder to start with story and characters and develop them, to explore an idea, and then deliver with good writing. In that context, tropes are rather meaningless. Also (and I've said this before), what is trope to one reader is brand new to another. The author who worries about treading trodden ground is worrying needlessly, and the author who relies on knowledge of the trope in order to pull off the inversion is going to miss completely with part of the audience.

To pull from a different art form, I know people who love the blues. Three chords. 8 bars (or 12). I know other people who say it's all been done and they're not interested. What's a musician to do? Write what you feel.

 

[Swank]

There might be limited utility discussing tropes in the context of satire like Discworld.