Episode 140 - Troping Your Way to a Stronger Story with Jennifer Hilt
June 28, 2022
|
Jennifer Hilt discusses TROPING YOUR WAY TO A STRONGER STORY. She talks about how tropes differ from clichés; whether tropes can turn into plagiarism; the role of conventions and reader expectations; using tropes to support goals, motivation, and conflict; tropes as a marketing device; and tropes as writing prompts.
|
|
Jennifer Hilt is the author of THE TROPE THESAURUS: TROPE YOUR WAY TO A STRONGER STORY. Her next book, THE TROPE THESAURUS ROMANCE releases in June 2022. She is also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. She loves collecting dictionaries in unfamiliar languages, bingeing Scandi-Noir streaming series, and shouting out tropes from the comfort of her couch. Jennifer lives in Seattle with her family and canine fan club
|
Download | Amazon Music | Android | Apple | Google Podcasts | Libsyn | RSS | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube
"The more concrete you can make what your characters want, the more you're able to generate conflict in having them not get it. And that is what is so central to hooking any reader or audience. I don't want the main characters to just want to be together or have a happy ending. I want them to desire specific things that are in contrast with each other." —Jennifer Hilt
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
Links
Jennifer's Links:
https://www.jenniferhilt.com/
https://www.facebook.com/authorjenniferhilt
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://www.jenniferhilt.com/
https://www.facebook.com/authorjenniferhilt
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Jennifer Hilt. Hey Jennifer, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Jennifer: Great, thanks for having me.
[00:00:07] Matty: It is my pleasure.
To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jennifer Hilt is the author of "The Trope Thesaurus: Trope Your Way to a Stronger Story." Her next book, "The Trope Thesaurus: Romance," releases in June of 2022. She's also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. She loves collecting dictionaries in unfamiliar languages, which I thought was pretty cool, bingeing Scandi-noir streaming series, and shouting out tropes from the comfort of her couch. And Jennifer lives in Seattle with her family and her canine fan club.
And so we are going to be talking today, I just loved the subtitle of Jennifer's book, so I stole it for the title of the episode, "Troping Your Way to a Stronger Story."
The Motivation for "Troping Your Way to a Stronger Story"
[00:00:46] Matty: And whenever I have somebody on the podcast who's written a book for writers, I always like to ask, what did you see in the writer community that made you feel like a book about tropes was something that was needed?
[00:00:57] Jennifer: Great question. In my background, I've worked as a plotter and a concept creator, and I discovered how important tropes were through that process. Because I would be talking to authors and I'd be like, we're talking about, oh, what are the goal, motivation, conflict, backstory, all those kinds of things. And I found that we were actually using tropes to build those early layers of the story. And so that was one of the things that made me think, oh that's something that we do naturally.
And then I've always been really interested in taking apart books and stories and movies that I watch and see structurally, how it's put together, and that kind of led me down this big rabbit hole of, oh my gosh, there's tropes all over in everything. It's just, they can be developed to a degree that you don't even realize they're there. You're just identifying with the character early on, and then the author takes you on a deeper journey.
Plotting Concepts
[00:01:49] Matty: And can you talk a little bit more about the scenario you were describing? You were saying you were working on plotting concepts?
There are all different kinds of writers and sometimes there's those of us that have so many ideas, we have trouble figuring out, okay, how do I narrow this down into a workable story? And then there's some people that they can only see parts of the story. And so it's just really helpful to have another person that you can talk it through and mention those ideas. And then a lot of what I do is offer other suggestions like, oh, you could do this, but you could even springboard it and then go in this direction.
[00:02:20] Jennifer: So working as a plotter or concept creator, the plotting is like when somebody has an idea and helping them think through, okay, how do you get from the beginning to the end, and especially that crucial middle part. Which as we all know, is so important to keep the reader engaged. And then the concept creator is somebody who has an idea, but they don't know how to get that idea into an outline.
So those are like the two things that I've done and really enjoy doing, because I have a lot of ideas more than I could write.
How Does She Provide the Concept Creator Service?
[00:02:49] Matty: Do you do that as a consulting service, or do you do that informally as part of a writer's group?
[00:02:55] Jennifer: I do it as part of a consulting service. And then I just naturally do it, like when I'm talking to other people.
I was just doing the notes for the episode that's going to come up next, and one of the conversations I had with that guest was the importance of letting people sample your work. So that's what you're doing in formal conversations, you're letting people sample your work in terms of a plot assessment.
Tropes vs Clichés
So in terms of tropes, I think the first question we should get out of the way is how does a trope differ from a cliché?
This is how I found it best to think of them. I think of a trope as like a neutral building block. It's just an idea that's not necessarily have any connotations of good or bad, but it's something that the audience will immediately understand. An example I like to use is the idea of an athlete. And then I compare that with a cliché and that clichés are always, at least I always see them as negative. There's nothing about them that has any positive connotation for people. And the example for that is like dumb jock. So for me, if somebody wants to write a story and they want to develop the idea of this person have any aspect of their personality as an athlete, that's much easier for me to think about. Yeah. Then, oh, this is a dumb jock character. It's like harder to find that as a way to develop that into a well-rounded person, because all of us have different aspects of our personalities. So that's the biggest thing that I think of with the difference of tropes and clichés is that kind of neutral idea for a trope.
[00:04:32] Matty: And do you think clichés have become clichés because they're overworked or because they're intrinsically offensive, intrinsically just lazy writing?
Honestly, I think the negativity has a lot to do with their staying power. Because I think, for better or worse, it's just easier sometimes to latch on and to a really negative association for something. Where you have to work harder to make something that's positive also really interesting. I think it's just really important, at least I really try to encourage people not to think of them as the same thing, because if you separate them like that, you have this whole treasure trove of trope, of things that you can use as a writer and storyteller, and you don't have to be held back by those negative perceptions.
[00:05:18] Matty: So I think that the answer to my next question is, they can read "The Trope Thesaurus." But let's just say that you haven't written that yet, and someone is a big reader of cozy mysteries, and they want to write a cozy mystery themselves.
How to Discover Tropes
[00:05:29] Matty: Is there a way that they can discover the tropes themselves, or is it something that it's difficult to find yourself unless you have someone who's really focused on at pointing them out?
[00:05:42] Jennifer: I don't think you need to read my book to do that. I think honestly, the biggest thing is just as storytellers for us to learn to look more closely at things. And so if you want to write a cozy mystery, my biggest recommendation is, go read a bunch of cozy mysteries. Or if you want to watch some on TV, you will, if you're really paying attention and you have to stop yourself from getting sucked into the story again and again, and really think about, okay, how do they set this up? Who are they saying this person is and how does that interact?
And so I think that's really a huge benefit to us as authors, is getting used to looking at things in this kind of structural way, because it really helps when it comes time to putting our own stories together, we've absorbed that kind of self-study we've been doing. I would just say, go to the library, get out a bunch and just start thinking about what do these books have in common, and looking for that.
[00:06:42] Matty: I had an interesting experience, coincidentally right before talking with you about tropes. And that is that I'm planning for a long car drive. And whenever I take a long car drive, I listen to Neil Gaiman narrate "Neverwhere." "Neverwhere" is one of my favorite books and Neil Gaiman reading it, it's one of my favorite books. I've probably listened to that six or seven times now because it's just what, it's what I listen to when I take a long drive.
And so I was getting all ready for my next listen of Neil Gaiman reading "Neverwhere." And then I just read "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" by Alix Harrow. And I was struck right away by some similarities. Have you read? It sounds like you've read Neverwhere.
[00:07:27] Jennifer: I haven't read "Neverwhere" but I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I love "Coraline,” that’s just one of my favorite ones. And I read some other stuff of his, but I haven't read "Neverwhere," sadly.
[00:07:37] Matty: Well, the things that were similar about those two books were really striking. So right away, one of the things I noticed is that both of them use the plot device of doors. So "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" is clear. And then Door is the primary character in "Neverwhere," and she has the ability to open doors. The character in Alix Harrow's book has the ability to open doors. Actually, as I'm saying this, I'm thinking of all the other similarities.
They're both teenage young women. There's a character who is sort of the exotic and mysterious huntress character. And I was reading it and I think that "Neverwhere" was out for a long time before Alix Harrow wrote "The Ten Thousand Doors January," but I don't think Neil Gaiman's going to call up Alix Harrow and say, hey, what's this deal with young women who can open doors and mysterious huntresses? So I realized I'm not really framing this up as a question. It just struck me because there were so many similarities.
Could Tropes Turn into Plagiarism?
[00:08:39] Jennifer: Is there a line people have to be careful about to distinguish between plagiarizing and complying with tropes? Well, first of all, now I'm thinking of all these stories that have doors in them. That's a really great idea. I think plagiarism is exactly taking the person's idea, like to the specifics of the location and the details. But what makes the tropes so powerful is it's an understood concept. So what, like you were talking about, they're both young women, they're going on these adventures and the door is like, oh, it's yeah, so exciting. Now I hadn't ever thought about that aspect before.
But I don't think that tropes and plagiarism are something people need to worry about, because what you're going to do is use that trope as a building block and develop it more. There's no way somebody could say, oh, your story has a door, my story has a door, you're plagiarizing. You know, it's just, we would have no stories because we rely on our common experiences to help us get into stories and move us through stories. And if we always had to be recreating everything brand new for every story, I don't think we would get very far, because it's really about the relationships is what I've come to understand, is that tropes are really tying relationships together. And that's what hooks the reader and hooks us, I think too, is figuring out like what's going on between these people? I mean, we can have great settings and great dialogues, but I haven't read either of those stories, but I would imagine that the relationship that those young women have is what kind of kept you going through it.
[00:10:15] Jennifer: At least that's what I find when I’m working on something or really engaged. I'm rereading "Uprooted" now. Did you ever happen to read that?
[00:10:22] Matty: No, I never read that.
It has some similarities in terms of what you're talking about. And so that got me thinking, oh yeah, but it's like also, I'm sure completely different in terms of setting and dialogue and those things, but yet it's a journey that this young girl goes through, basically opening different doors of her life.
So I really hope people don't get hung up on that, although I think it's a great thing to think about. Because it's our job to take the trope and then develop it into this person who you are sure, absolutely positively lives and breathes somewhere. They're so distinctive.
[00:10:54] Matty: Yeah, I think the distinctiveness part is key, and also the idea of having it be surprising yet inevitable, that same guidance about plot, that people are attracted by the familiarity of the idea of someone who can go through doors into different worlds or different scenarios, but you have to make it unique and surprising to your story. You have to give it your own twist.
[00:11:20] Jennifer: Exactly. Well, I was thinking of even like Narnia that had all the doors stuff. So there's just so many interesting, interesting things that you can do with that. But, yeah, I think really just thinking about them as the trope is like a building block and not a finished product can really help people in terms of structuring the story and then not feeling oh, I'm copying somebody.
I work a lot with romance writers, and they really understand their readers are, they love certain kinds of tropes. So their challenge is always to take that trope and make it a little different, enough to hook the reader, but then also to give them a journey that they really are engaged in.
Romance Tropes Example
[00:11:54] Matty: So can you give an example of one of those romance tropes and how people can work within the trope, but also make it interesting for the reader?
[00:12:02] Jennifer: Sure, sure. Lately, I've been, instead of looking at tropes as one big thing, I'm dividing them into categories. And so the thing that I'm noticing a lot with romance authors is that the relationship tropes specifically, like enemies to lovers and friends to lovers, love triangle, those are super important. And a lot of readers will like ask for those by name. So you can literally, like enemies to lovers, for example, that goes back to even Jane Austen with "Pride and Prejudice," with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. And then there's so many different iterations of that through all of the sub-genres too, of romance.
So that would be an example of now we consider historical, but then of course, the kind of more famous one was “Bridget Jones's Diary" was redone about 20 some years ago to make that into a contemporary version of the enemies to lovers.
I know that there's enemies to lovers in sci-fi for sure, and fantasy. This "Uprooted" that I'm reading now is an enemies to lovers basic trope, and there's so many other wonderful things in it, it's not like just this one trope. But it gets me so hooked into those stories because enemies to lovers has such great conflict. You start out, they can't stand each other, and then somehow at the end, they need to be the perfect fit and go through all this to get to that point. So that would be one example, I think, of a trope that we see a lot, because it has a lot of value in it.
Are Tropes Mainly a Character Development Device?
[00:13:23] Matty: Do you feel as if tropes are mainly devices for developing a character, as opposed to developing the plot?
[00:13:32] Jennifer: I actually use them both. Depending on the story that I'm working on, I will use the aspects of orphan or billionaire, or protector, loner. Those ones I'll use to develop characters, and then try to use the relationship ones to think about the story as a whole and how the two people can best work off each other. Like, opposites attract is a great one for that. I use them in different ways for different things, I guess would be the answer. So yes, to that.
And I really want to encourage people to experiment with them and don't feel like you have to just use it as it is. Even if you use a tiny part of it, doesn't have to be the person's main aspect of their identity, that they're an orphan. But it could be somewhere in the story that plot point comes up, and then, oh, that ties back to them being an orphan part of their personality. So I think it's just something really as authors and storytellers for us to experiment with and not be afraid to manipulate them.
Conventions are Important to Reader Expectations
[00:14:38] Matty: Are you a follower of The Story Grid method?
[00:14:41] Jennifer: I am not. Although I need to check that out because somebody mentioned it recently and I was like, oh yeah, what is that?
I am a big student of Story Grid. I think it's a great tool. And one of the concepts, I'm having this feeling I may not be remembering the term exactly, but obligatory scenes. So if you're writing a romance, there are the obligatory scenes. There's the couple meets, there's the introduction of conflict, there's the couple breaks up you know, that whole thing. So the theory of The Story Grid is that if you're writing that genre and you don't have an obligatory scene, the reader is going to be disappointed, because if you don't have the first kiss, let's say, as a conventional component of a romance, then the reader's going to think, what's the deal? Is that the same as tropes or is tropes more a pick and choose. Like, I think the very fact that obligatory is part of the concept that I'm discussing with Story Grid, does that make it different from tropes or is that kind of another approach to tropes?
I think that they're two separate things but can work together. I think, is the word you're thinking of, conventions?
Yeah. I think that you don't have to have a certain number or a certain set of tropes in a story. You can use as many or as few as you want. But you do have to satisfy, like if I'm doing a romance, yes, you have to have a happily ever after, unless you structured it somehow that it's a series with these characters, and it's very clear that they're going to be in the next story together, and there's going to be more progress in that storyline.
[00:16:12] Jennifer: But even in something like mystery, you need to know at the end who the murderer was, if you set up the story that the detective is looking for that. So I think that the conventions are really important to reader expectations. I think our job is somewhat similar with tropes in that we want to surprise them and keep them guessing along the way of how that we're going to get to that end point.
But yes, I think that you definitely do need to satisfy those conventions for the genre. If you're publishing genre fiction and you don't want to get like a ton of negative reviews, because if you do a romance and you don't have them end in a happily ever after, it isn't by definition a romance. And the same thing, like I said, for mystery, I think particularly, I would be really annoyed if I went through a whole mystery book, and I love mysteries, and at the end was like, I don't know who did it.
[00:17:03] Matty: Yeah.
Well, one of the things I want to talk about, but I want to hold this sort of toward the end is, what price do you pay for playing with the tropes in that way. But I know that one of the central messages of your book is how tropes can interact or support goals, motivation, and conflict. And I think we've touched upon this a little bit, but maybe not goals so much. Can you talk about that a little bit?
How Tropes Support Goals, Motivation and Conflict
I didn't understand the importance of goal, motivation and conflict for a really long time. And it happened that I understood it more when I was talking with other authors about plotting, in that the more concrete you can make what your characters want, the more you're able to generate conflict in having them not get it. And that is what is so central to hooking any reader or audience.
[00:18:26] Jennifer: So for me, when I understood that, it was kind of a light bulb moment in terms of, I don't want the main characters to just want to be together or have a happy ending. I want them to desire specific things that are in contrast with each other, say a pretty typical example would be like, they both want to acquire the same company, the hero and heroine, and they have a certain time limit to do it.
That is going to give a lot to work with in terms of you would have forced proximity into ticking time bomb and all the other things that you can pack in there to generate conflict, and still get to the happy ever after. But I'm going to have some interesting scenes along the way that will make it fun for me to write too.
So I really think that that's the important part of developing the goal, motivation and conflict is I talk about, I really feel like goals need to be meaningful to the characters and they need to be measurable. I joke about that being like the hill I'm going to die on someday, as you make them more meaningful and measurable.
[00:19:29] Matty: We talked fairly recently in another episode about "Bridget Jones's Diary," and then I sent everybody off their homework assignment was to go watch "Bridget Jones's Diary." Can you pull an example from that to illustrate what you're talking about with goals?
[00:19:41] Jennifer: Sure, sure. Bridget has great conflicting goals. I think on one hand, she wants to be taken seriously and move her career forward. And so that's like her one goal. And then she also quite understandably, is very attracted to her devilish boss, Daniel Cleaver, and that does provide some really great conflict there because they get in a relationship and then she leaves because he's been cheating on her and involved with someone else. So for Bridget, I think that provides some really good conflict for her goals for that.
I think Mark Darcy, he definitely wants to be with somebody who is respected and has his kind of level of social, of a professional standing. And then he falls for Bridget and she's about his opposite of this kind of lawyer type that he's been dating. So that's another thing that's providing inherent conflict with their goals.
[00:20:35] Jennifer: And then, oh, what could we say so much about Daniel Cleaver? Such a great character. He’s just so wolfish. And a great aspect of using the love triangle trope in that, you know, you don't like him, but you can understand Bridget's interest. Like that scene where she's imagining that they get married and he's doing a toast and he's saying, oh, and it all started out with some inappropriate office emailing or something.
And I thought it was such a great example of that kind of innate desire to like, tame the bad boy. And I felt like that book did a better job for me than "Pride and Prejudice" in terms of convincing me that he was a better, he was a viable option as opposed to Wickham, who I was never as excited about. Am I answering your question?
[00:21:18] Matty: Yeah, these are all great examples.
[00:21:20] Jennifer: Okay. So, I think she did a really great job of the juxtaposition of those elements. And then I watched it again recently and I really had more respect for the storyline with her parents, and how that was mirroring things that Bridget was going through that I didn't get, and I've seen it a lot of times. But it's just interesting how every time you see something, you can look and find something else, like her mother and the affair with the man who was kind of quote-unquote, "more exciting." And then coming back to what she and the father had, and that scene with the two of them sitting on the steps where he says, I don't work without you. And I just thought that was really lovely, and mirroring what Bridget has discovered with Mark Darcy.
Tropes Don't Have to Be Too Obvious
[00:22:04] Matty: Well, it is a good point that probably even the trope aficionado that you are, you've watched that a lot of times, and there are tropes in there that you didn't notice until subsequent readings or viewings, and the tropes shouldn't necessarily slap you in the face. You know, the subtle tropes as well as, as more overt ones.
[00:22:23] Jennifer: And I find that is so true. Have you happened to see the show "Severance"?
[00:22:29] Matty: I have not.
[00:22:30] Jennifer: Oh, it's great. I'm a huge, huge fan of it. But I have this side interest of loving the amnesia trope used in unusual ways. And that show does that. And I watched it once, then I watched it again, just to see how it was put together.
And I was like, oh, that's such a great use of the amnesia trope. I was like, I should've figured that out right away, but I was still drawn in by the characters and the concept that.
That's what our goal is, not to have people easily be able to pick out this stuff, but to feel like I'm intrigued enough with the characters that I want to go on that journey. And then through some study, you can see how they put that together.
[00:23:07] Matty: Yeah, that makes me think of, and maybe this is venturing into the red flags to watch out for is the, it was all a dream trope, which I think became a cliché. I think back, old enough to remember the whole Dallas thing where there was like, no, it was a dream. As opposed to the show with Bob Newhart, the one where he was the innkeeper. And then, I hope I'm remembering this right, in the last episode of that he woke up and he's in bed with Suzanne Pleshette in the set of the Bob Newhart one. So it was taking a trope that, like, if anyone says, it was all a dream, you kind of roll your eyes and go, oh, but they almost like they were making fun of it, obviously. They were very overtly poking fun at the, it was all a dream. But you can imagine that the first time someone did, it was all a dream, the readers would have been like, oh, that's so innovative.
[00:24:02] Matty: But then it started feeling like it was a lazy way out, or it was a desperation move, I guess. Maybe the Dallas example was a desperation move that was inorganic, you know, it didn't feel like an organic, holistic part of the story. It felt like something was kind of slapped on. So if you're going to a trope to fix a problem, that's probably a red flag.
Well, I think tropes can generate problems, but I think the problem with that particular trope, at least my problem with it that I've noticed, is a lot of time that gets used to reset the characters' relationship. That was exactly what they did with Dallas all those years ago. And I think what characters feel cheated about with it are, and I can speak for myself on using that, is that you followed them on this journey, and you've been emotionally invested in it. Then at the end, they're like, oh no, actually we were just going to call that as didn't happen. So you're negating that experience.
[00:25:02] Jennifer: And I think for me, it makes me go, well, I don't want to continue on this journey because who knows what else they're going to pull out from under me in that way. Yeah, I totally, I am not a fan of that either. And I think it's the consequences is what's missing when you do that.
And that's what we want is the problems, the choices that we make, and then what continues on from that. I think if you did that, there has to be some consequences in terms of, if one character doesn't remember what happened, somebody else does, and that has to change how they interact with them. I would feel okay about that. But just having everybody just oh, we're just going to go back to square one and start all over again--no.
[00:25:47] Matty: Well, the other example, this is fun. I'm thinking of all these examples from movies.
[00:25:52] Jennifer: It is really fun!
The "He Was Dead All Along" Trope
[00:25:54] Matty: The other thing that made me think of as the opposite, for me at least, of the whole Dallas example. And I think this would be a trope, it's the, they were really dead all along. Like "The Sixth Sense." Sorry, folks, spoiler alert. He's really dead all along. And it's the kind of thing where when you find that out at the end and you realize that you now have to rethink all the relationships and the activities that you've been seeing through the course of the movie, then I think nobody watched that episode of Dallas and said, oh, you know what? It makes me want to go back and watch all the old ones. No, nobody said that. They just threw the remote control. But with "The Sixth Sense," I immediately went back to the beginning and watched it because I wanted to see how they had handled that fact that this person who was really dead, appeared to be alive through the whole movie. Would you consider that "he was really dead" a trope?
[00:26:50] Jennifer: No, I wouldn't. And I'm trying to think of why. I think part of it is because there were clues, because we could go back and find those clues that there were those wonderful little story nuggets. That makes it different. So almost it has aspects of a thriller in that way of that. I'm just trying to think of was he really dead as a trope. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Because I guess I just think of it as like a thriller aspect or storyline. But I'm going to have to think about that further.
But I think, like you say, the idea of wanting to go back and look for the little clues is what is the difference between, yeah, throwing the TV against the wall and okay, I'm clearing the rest of my day because clearly I need to relive that experience.
What Qualifies as a Trope
[00:27:34] Matty: Yeah. The other one, okay, here comes another spoiler alert. The other one that was like that is "The Others." So that's a movie that's actually very hard to find. I don't know what the deal is, but it's not like you can easily stream it. It was with Nicole Kidman, and it was one of these ones where you were following was a family living in a creepy old house. And you thought they're being haunted because these creepy things keep happening. And then at the end, it turns out that the family is actually dead and the experiences they're having are the living inhabitants of the house just living their lives. But the dead family is experiencing it. They were both, I thought, very cleverly done. It was one of those ones where I wanted to go back and watch it. But when I went back, I could no longer find a way to watch it.
So I don't know that if in the same way that like two points doesn't necessarily make a trend. I don't know if the two examples I can think of make it a trope, but yeah, it's a fine line between what qualifies and what doesn't qualify.
[00:28:29] Jennifer: Right, and I think it does go back, though, to the idea of that the tropes are really about relationships. And so you're trying to figure out like, that's really interesting to me, the idea that those parallel lives were interacting. That's a really interesting concept that I hadn't heard of recently or haven't come across.
Being Intrigued vs Feeling Tricked
[00:28:50] Jennifer: I was thinking of an example of the kind of, is it a dream, which has elements of the amnesia trope in it. I don't remember which Charlaine Harris book of the True Blood series, but there was one where Eric was under a spell, and he became a different person for one of the books. And I think it was like four or five. And then at the end of the book, he didn't have any memory of him being this different person and being very open and loving and all this stuff with the main character, but she did. And so then going forward, she had still that knowledge of that part of him.
And I had remembered thinking, oh, that was really clever because in a way, Charlaine Harris, who I think awesome, she reset the story, but then she also didn't make me feel tricked because I, and the main character had that knowledge going forward. It wasn't like they were both have the blank slate thing. Those are all just very interesting examples of things you can do with the general amnesia trope I think that we've been talking about.
[00:29:48] Matty: The other thing that's popped into my head is " Heaven Can Wait." So I'm thinking of the one with Warren Beatty. I'm not sure this is true for the earlier one. But at the end of that, this is all spoilers, he's reincarnated in the body of the football player. And the audience obviously knows that it's still Warren Beatty, but he doesn't know. He doesn't remember his previous life, but he has seen it coming. So he said to the woman he loves, Julie Christie, if you see a person with this kind of characteristic, you'd give them a chance, right? And she's saying, well, you know, sure, I guess so. And then she sees whatever it is in him. And that's interesting because it's not like trying to trick the audience, and I think this is like the example you're using of Charlaine Harris, the audience knows, the audience is in on the amnesia thing. And the suspense is, is she going to recognize that it's the same person?
[00:30:44] Jennifer: Exactly. I haven't seen that, but that plot line is making me realize it's very similar to "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." It's a similar idea of a redo of that with a kind of a sci-fi aspect. But at the end of it, these two people, like you say, meet, and they had gone through all this work to erase a painful relationship, but now they meet again with no knowledge of that. And so you're just like, oh, so it was all that for nothing? You know, you're intrigued as opposed to feeling tricked. And I think that's the really interesting thing to think about with this, is how the storyteller does that.
[00:31:22] Matty: Well, just so we don't spend the entire time with me going, oh, that reminds me of another movie, there were two questions that I wanted to ask before we get to my final question, which is going to be about what happens when you circumvent a trope.
Tropes as a Marketing Device
[00:31:35] Matty: And one is tropes as marketing. So I think for romance, this is very clear. Like a lot of romances are explicitly labeled enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, you know, that set of tropes. Do you see the opportunities for using tropes as a marketing device for genres outside of romance?
[00:31:52] Jennifer: Absolutely. For example, we see all the time, the like loner trope for our detectives. And personally, I love feels like tortured beat up as you can see from my Scandi noir, and for me, that's like a complete, I'm like, oh yes, I'm definitely making time to just to watch that and get in and give that a try. So it's the character, they're not all the same characters the way some people say, oh, romance is the same. And it's not when you go down the rabbit hole of learning the different things about it and follow your favorite authors. But it does form an important function in that it's hooking me as a reader audience member, whatever that I want to try that.
I would definitely say that for sure, thriller mystery, and then sci-fi also uses it so often with the secret heir and another one that gets a lot of use is the secret baby. And I talked about that a little bit in my book, but I'm so amazed how so many mysteries have secret baby in them. And it's just a great way to again, put a connection that you've laid those little clues in, but you don't get the payoff till the end.
But you definitely are going to want to allude, in like your blurbs that you have, that there's a lot of secrets in there and maybe some sense of hidden identity or things aren't how they look. So I really don't think that we should bury the tropes.
But you want to also, when you're mentioning them, you want to give two or three very definite details about what makes yours different. And you can tell when you read a blurb and you connect with it, that author has done a really good job of making something familiar, but yet different, that old expression. So I would definitely say yes, and it doesn't matter what books you read, you'll find those tropes.
Have you read Lois McMaster Bujold?
[00:33:42] Matty: No.
[00:34:06] Jennifer: She does sci-fi kind of stuff. But she's I think is great at using tropes in a different way. And I read her stories multiple times before I realized, oh, that's actually a trope that she developed. Well, it would be interesting too, to include those kinds of things in your keywords. So "secret baby," that's a phrase that readers would maybe key in in a search because they're familiar with it and that's what they're looking for. It would be a good thing to use as a keyword. And yeah, the whole loner thing, protector thing, antagonist. Secrets is huge too just as a key word.
Tropes as a Writing Prompt
[00:34:14] Matty: The other question I was going to ask, but I'm just going to throw it out there briefly to keep our time reasonable is, using tropes as a writing prompt. So I can imagine it could be super-fun to get something like "The Trope Thesaurus," and just flip it open and read like the name of a trope, and then try to write a little thing on it. You know, if people are feeling stuck, especially you can go to tropes related to the genre that you're interested in.
[00:34:41] Jennifer: Yeah. And I would say, I will talk about this stuff a lot to my poor long-suffering husband. And I'll say, like trope bingo, I'll just say, just flip through the book and pick three and give me three. And then I just start to make up a story from that. And does it have to turn into a book? No, but it's like a really fun exercise to do, because it gets your brain moving.
I will encourage people to do that and say, the character that comes off of that, you can develop that further. Because you started with these three tropes, but then you were like, oh, actually I like, it's moved into this other direction, then go with that. You aren't wed to having to use what you first started with. I find three is a nice number for using tropes and a character for a whole book and thinking about different aspects of their personality. That would be my recommendation of how to do it.
[00:35:27] Matty: It would be interesting to mix them up too. Like if you're writing sci-fi, but you go to the romance section and look for a trope to throw that in.
[00:35:35] Jennifer: Yeah. And I really feel like all tropes are fair game for all genres. There's certainly great sci-fi that has enemies to lovers. It's not like you can only use them for certain things. So it's really, as long as you are staying in the fulfilling your genre expectations, like we talked about, you can really do whatever you want. And the more that you can twist them, the more exciting it is for the audience.
[00:35:58] Matty: Well, that's a great lead into the last question I wanted to ask, which was getting back to this idea of playing with the tropes. I'm going to use your loner detective as an example. So there are loads and loads and loads of books with loner detective, he probably has an alcohol problem, he has relationship issues, he lives in a crappy apartment or whatever. So if someone loves the whole kind of noirish world that those characters live in, and I wish I could think of an example of this, I'm not coming up with one, maybe there's a reason for that. But they want to write a detective who doesn't have any substance abuse problems and is happily married and is going against that. But what are the opportunities there and what are the risks there?
[00:36:41] Jennifer: Right. Well, I have a couple of examples but they're European because of my little addiction with that. But "Gorky Park." It was the first book, and he has written just a fantastic series with Arkady Renko is exactly what you say. He's got substance abuse problems and he's depressed, and you know, all these kinds of things. And I love him because he's like incredibly tortured and he's just awesome. I think Martin Cruz Smith is on his like 12th book and he’s a fantastic writer because it's still fresh, that character, I'm still discovering other aspects of his personality of this, that are more than just the loner detective substance abuse thing. And so that's one example of how that doesn't get tired.
But on the other hand, there's this great Finnish series with a detective in there who is happily married, and he doesn't have substance abuse problems, but it's still really dark. His wife has cancer and all these other kinds of things. But it's great because it's still relationshipy stuff, and I was enjoying how he is preoccupied with his mysteries and murder and tends to put the family on the back burner, even though he says, he's not going to the next case, but we know he is.
It's been really successful; they've just made like the third season of it. "Bordertown," that's what it's called. It's on Netflix. I just love it, it's fantastic. So he's a great example of doing something different with that character that's really still resonated with readers. So I would say definitely, you can definitely do that, and yeah, check it out.
[00:38:08] Matty: Cool. Well, Jennifer, this has been so much fun. I've enjoyed talking tropes with you so much. Please let the viewers and listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
[00:38:16] Jennifer: Oh, thank you. Super fun for me too, I'm always happy to talk about this stuff. You can find me at www.JenniferHilt.com.
[00:38:24] Matty: Great, thank you so much.
[00:00:06] Jennifer: Great, thanks for having me.
[00:00:07] Matty: It is my pleasure.
To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jennifer Hilt is the author of "The Trope Thesaurus: Trope Your Way to a Stronger Story." Her next book, "The Trope Thesaurus: Romance," releases in June of 2022. She's also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. She loves collecting dictionaries in unfamiliar languages, which I thought was pretty cool, bingeing Scandi-noir streaming series, and shouting out tropes from the comfort of her couch. And Jennifer lives in Seattle with her family and her canine fan club.
And so we are going to be talking today, I just loved the subtitle of Jennifer's book, so I stole it for the title of the episode, "Troping Your Way to a Stronger Story."
The Motivation for "Troping Your Way to a Stronger Story"
[00:00:46] Matty: And whenever I have somebody on the podcast who's written a book for writers, I always like to ask, what did you see in the writer community that made you feel like a book about tropes was something that was needed?
[00:00:57] Jennifer: Great question. In my background, I've worked as a plotter and a concept creator, and I discovered how important tropes were through that process. Because I would be talking to authors and I'd be like, we're talking about, oh, what are the goal, motivation, conflict, backstory, all those kinds of things. And I found that we were actually using tropes to build those early layers of the story. And so that was one of the things that made me think, oh that's something that we do naturally.
And then I've always been really interested in taking apart books and stories and movies that I watch and see structurally, how it's put together, and that kind of led me down this big rabbit hole of, oh my gosh, there's tropes all over in everything. It's just, they can be developed to a degree that you don't even realize they're there. You're just identifying with the character early on, and then the author takes you on a deeper journey.
Plotting Concepts
[00:01:49] Matty: And can you talk a little bit more about the scenario you were describing? You were saying you were working on plotting concepts?
There are all different kinds of writers and sometimes there's those of us that have so many ideas, we have trouble figuring out, okay, how do I narrow this down into a workable story? And then there's some people that they can only see parts of the story. And so it's just really helpful to have another person that you can talk it through and mention those ideas. And then a lot of what I do is offer other suggestions like, oh, you could do this, but you could even springboard it and then go in this direction.
[00:02:20] Jennifer: So working as a plotter or concept creator, the plotting is like when somebody has an idea and helping them think through, okay, how do you get from the beginning to the end, and especially that crucial middle part. Which as we all know, is so important to keep the reader engaged. And then the concept creator is somebody who has an idea, but they don't know how to get that idea into an outline.
So those are like the two things that I've done and really enjoy doing, because I have a lot of ideas more than I could write.
How Does She Provide the Concept Creator Service?
[00:02:49] Matty: Do you do that as a consulting service, or do you do that informally as part of a writer's group?
[00:02:55] Jennifer: I do it as part of a consulting service. And then I just naturally do it, like when I'm talking to other people.
I was just doing the notes for the episode that's going to come up next, and one of the conversations I had with that guest was the importance of letting people sample your work. So that's what you're doing in formal conversations, you're letting people sample your work in terms of a plot assessment.
Tropes vs Clichés
So in terms of tropes, I think the first question we should get out of the way is how does a trope differ from a cliché?
This is how I found it best to think of them. I think of a trope as like a neutral building block. It's just an idea that's not necessarily have any connotations of good or bad, but it's something that the audience will immediately understand. An example I like to use is the idea of an athlete. And then I compare that with a cliché and that clichés are always, at least I always see them as negative. There's nothing about them that has any positive connotation for people. And the example for that is like dumb jock. So for me, if somebody wants to write a story and they want to develop the idea of this person have any aspect of their personality as an athlete, that's much easier for me to think about. Yeah. Then, oh, this is a dumb jock character. It's like harder to find that as a way to develop that into a well-rounded person, because all of us have different aspects of our personalities. So that's the biggest thing that I think of with the difference of tropes and clichés is that kind of neutral idea for a trope.
[00:04:32] Matty: And do you think clichés have become clichés because they're overworked or because they're intrinsically offensive, intrinsically just lazy writing?
Honestly, I think the negativity has a lot to do with their staying power. Because I think, for better or worse, it's just easier sometimes to latch on and to a really negative association for something. Where you have to work harder to make something that's positive also really interesting. I think it's just really important, at least I really try to encourage people not to think of them as the same thing, because if you separate them like that, you have this whole treasure trove of trope, of things that you can use as a writer and storyteller, and you don't have to be held back by those negative perceptions.
[00:05:18] Matty: So I think that the answer to my next question is, they can read "The Trope Thesaurus." But let's just say that you haven't written that yet, and someone is a big reader of cozy mysteries, and they want to write a cozy mystery themselves.
How to Discover Tropes
[00:05:29] Matty: Is there a way that they can discover the tropes themselves, or is it something that it's difficult to find yourself unless you have someone who's really focused on at pointing them out?
[00:05:42] Jennifer: I don't think you need to read my book to do that. I think honestly, the biggest thing is just as storytellers for us to learn to look more closely at things. And so if you want to write a cozy mystery, my biggest recommendation is, go read a bunch of cozy mysteries. Or if you want to watch some on TV, you will, if you're really paying attention and you have to stop yourself from getting sucked into the story again and again, and really think about, okay, how do they set this up? Who are they saying this person is and how does that interact?
And so I think that's really a huge benefit to us as authors, is getting used to looking at things in this kind of structural way, because it really helps when it comes time to putting our own stories together, we've absorbed that kind of self-study we've been doing. I would just say, go to the library, get out a bunch and just start thinking about what do these books have in common, and looking for that.
[00:06:42] Matty: I had an interesting experience, coincidentally right before talking with you about tropes. And that is that I'm planning for a long car drive. And whenever I take a long car drive, I listen to Neil Gaiman narrate "Neverwhere." "Neverwhere" is one of my favorite books and Neil Gaiman reading it, it's one of my favorite books. I've probably listened to that six or seven times now because it's just what, it's what I listen to when I take a long drive.
And so I was getting all ready for my next listen of Neil Gaiman reading "Neverwhere." And then I just read "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" by Alix Harrow. And I was struck right away by some similarities. Have you read? It sounds like you've read Neverwhere.
[00:07:27] Jennifer: I haven't read "Neverwhere" but I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I love "Coraline,” that’s just one of my favorite ones. And I read some other stuff of his, but I haven't read "Neverwhere," sadly.
[00:07:37] Matty: Well, the things that were similar about those two books were really striking. So right away, one of the things I noticed is that both of them use the plot device of doors. So "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" is clear. And then Door is the primary character in "Neverwhere," and she has the ability to open doors. The character in Alix Harrow's book has the ability to open doors. Actually, as I'm saying this, I'm thinking of all the other similarities.
They're both teenage young women. There's a character who is sort of the exotic and mysterious huntress character. And I was reading it and I think that "Neverwhere" was out for a long time before Alix Harrow wrote "The Ten Thousand Doors January," but I don't think Neil Gaiman's going to call up Alix Harrow and say, hey, what's this deal with young women who can open doors and mysterious huntresses? So I realized I'm not really framing this up as a question. It just struck me because there were so many similarities.
Could Tropes Turn into Plagiarism?
[00:08:39] Jennifer: Is there a line people have to be careful about to distinguish between plagiarizing and complying with tropes? Well, first of all, now I'm thinking of all these stories that have doors in them. That's a really great idea. I think plagiarism is exactly taking the person's idea, like to the specifics of the location and the details. But what makes the tropes so powerful is it's an understood concept. So what, like you were talking about, they're both young women, they're going on these adventures and the door is like, oh, it's yeah, so exciting. Now I hadn't ever thought about that aspect before.
But I don't think that tropes and plagiarism are something people need to worry about, because what you're going to do is use that trope as a building block and develop it more. There's no way somebody could say, oh, your story has a door, my story has a door, you're plagiarizing. You know, it's just, we would have no stories because we rely on our common experiences to help us get into stories and move us through stories. And if we always had to be recreating everything brand new for every story, I don't think we would get very far, because it's really about the relationships is what I've come to understand, is that tropes are really tying relationships together. And that's what hooks the reader and hooks us, I think too, is figuring out like what's going on between these people? I mean, we can have great settings and great dialogues, but I haven't read either of those stories, but I would imagine that the relationship that those young women have is what kind of kept you going through it.
[00:10:15] Jennifer: At least that's what I find when I’m working on something or really engaged. I'm rereading "Uprooted" now. Did you ever happen to read that?
[00:10:22] Matty: No, I never read that.
It has some similarities in terms of what you're talking about. And so that got me thinking, oh yeah, but it's like also, I'm sure completely different in terms of setting and dialogue and those things, but yet it's a journey that this young girl goes through, basically opening different doors of her life.
So I really hope people don't get hung up on that, although I think it's a great thing to think about. Because it's our job to take the trope and then develop it into this person who you are sure, absolutely positively lives and breathes somewhere. They're so distinctive.
[00:10:54] Matty: Yeah, I think the distinctiveness part is key, and also the idea of having it be surprising yet inevitable, that same guidance about plot, that people are attracted by the familiarity of the idea of someone who can go through doors into different worlds or different scenarios, but you have to make it unique and surprising to your story. You have to give it your own twist.
[00:11:20] Jennifer: Exactly. Well, I was thinking of even like Narnia that had all the doors stuff. So there's just so many interesting, interesting things that you can do with that. But, yeah, I think really just thinking about them as the trope is like a building block and not a finished product can really help people in terms of structuring the story and then not feeling oh, I'm copying somebody.
I work a lot with romance writers, and they really understand their readers are, they love certain kinds of tropes. So their challenge is always to take that trope and make it a little different, enough to hook the reader, but then also to give them a journey that they really are engaged in.
Romance Tropes Example
[00:11:54] Matty: So can you give an example of one of those romance tropes and how people can work within the trope, but also make it interesting for the reader?
[00:12:02] Jennifer: Sure, sure. Lately, I've been, instead of looking at tropes as one big thing, I'm dividing them into categories. And so the thing that I'm noticing a lot with romance authors is that the relationship tropes specifically, like enemies to lovers and friends to lovers, love triangle, those are super important. And a lot of readers will like ask for those by name. So you can literally, like enemies to lovers, for example, that goes back to even Jane Austen with "Pride and Prejudice," with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. And then there's so many different iterations of that through all of the sub-genres too, of romance.
So that would be an example of now we consider historical, but then of course, the kind of more famous one was “Bridget Jones's Diary" was redone about 20 some years ago to make that into a contemporary version of the enemies to lovers.
I know that there's enemies to lovers in sci-fi for sure, and fantasy. This "Uprooted" that I'm reading now is an enemies to lovers basic trope, and there's so many other wonderful things in it, it's not like just this one trope. But it gets me so hooked into those stories because enemies to lovers has such great conflict. You start out, they can't stand each other, and then somehow at the end, they need to be the perfect fit and go through all this to get to that point. So that would be one example, I think, of a trope that we see a lot, because it has a lot of value in it.
Are Tropes Mainly a Character Development Device?
[00:13:23] Matty: Do you feel as if tropes are mainly devices for developing a character, as opposed to developing the plot?
[00:13:32] Jennifer: I actually use them both. Depending on the story that I'm working on, I will use the aspects of orphan or billionaire, or protector, loner. Those ones I'll use to develop characters, and then try to use the relationship ones to think about the story as a whole and how the two people can best work off each other. Like, opposites attract is a great one for that. I use them in different ways for different things, I guess would be the answer. So yes, to that.
And I really want to encourage people to experiment with them and don't feel like you have to just use it as it is. Even if you use a tiny part of it, doesn't have to be the person's main aspect of their identity, that they're an orphan. But it could be somewhere in the story that plot point comes up, and then, oh, that ties back to them being an orphan part of their personality. So I think it's just something really as authors and storytellers for us to experiment with and not be afraid to manipulate them.
Conventions are Important to Reader Expectations
[00:14:38] Matty: Are you a follower of The Story Grid method?
[00:14:41] Jennifer: I am not. Although I need to check that out because somebody mentioned it recently and I was like, oh yeah, what is that?
I am a big student of Story Grid. I think it's a great tool. And one of the concepts, I'm having this feeling I may not be remembering the term exactly, but obligatory scenes. So if you're writing a romance, there are the obligatory scenes. There's the couple meets, there's the introduction of conflict, there's the couple breaks up you know, that whole thing. So the theory of The Story Grid is that if you're writing that genre and you don't have an obligatory scene, the reader is going to be disappointed, because if you don't have the first kiss, let's say, as a conventional component of a romance, then the reader's going to think, what's the deal? Is that the same as tropes or is tropes more a pick and choose. Like, I think the very fact that obligatory is part of the concept that I'm discussing with Story Grid, does that make it different from tropes or is that kind of another approach to tropes?
I think that they're two separate things but can work together. I think, is the word you're thinking of, conventions?
Yeah. I think that you don't have to have a certain number or a certain set of tropes in a story. You can use as many or as few as you want. But you do have to satisfy, like if I'm doing a romance, yes, you have to have a happily ever after, unless you structured it somehow that it's a series with these characters, and it's very clear that they're going to be in the next story together, and there's going to be more progress in that storyline.
[00:16:12] Jennifer: But even in something like mystery, you need to know at the end who the murderer was, if you set up the story that the detective is looking for that. So I think that the conventions are really important to reader expectations. I think our job is somewhat similar with tropes in that we want to surprise them and keep them guessing along the way of how that we're going to get to that end point.
But yes, I think that you definitely do need to satisfy those conventions for the genre. If you're publishing genre fiction and you don't want to get like a ton of negative reviews, because if you do a romance and you don't have them end in a happily ever after, it isn't by definition a romance. And the same thing, like I said, for mystery, I think particularly, I would be really annoyed if I went through a whole mystery book, and I love mysteries, and at the end was like, I don't know who did it.
[00:17:03] Matty: Yeah.
Well, one of the things I want to talk about, but I want to hold this sort of toward the end is, what price do you pay for playing with the tropes in that way. But I know that one of the central messages of your book is how tropes can interact or support goals, motivation, and conflict. And I think we've touched upon this a little bit, but maybe not goals so much. Can you talk about that a little bit?
How Tropes Support Goals, Motivation and Conflict
I didn't understand the importance of goal, motivation and conflict for a really long time. And it happened that I understood it more when I was talking with other authors about plotting, in that the more concrete you can make what your characters want, the more you're able to generate conflict in having them not get it. And that is what is so central to hooking any reader or audience.
[00:18:26] Jennifer: So for me, when I understood that, it was kind of a light bulb moment in terms of, I don't want the main characters to just want to be together or have a happy ending. I want them to desire specific things that are in contrast with each other, say a pretty typical example would be like, they both want to acquire the same company, the hero and heroine, and they have a certain time limit to do it.
That is going to give a lot to work with in terms of you would have forced proximity into ticking time bomb and all the other things that you can pack in there to generate conflict, and still get to the happy ever after. But I'm going to have some interesting scenes along the way that will make it fun for me to write too.
So I really think that that's the important part of developing the goal, motivation and conflict is I talk about, I really feel like goals need to be meaningful to the characters and they need to be measurable. I joke about that being like the hill I'm going to die on someday, as you make them more meaningful and measurable.
[00:19:29] Matty: We talked fairly recently in another episode about "Bridget Jones's Diary," and then I sent everybody off their homework assignment was to go watch "Bridget Jones's Diary." Can you pull an example from that to illustrate what you're talking about with goals?
[00:19:41] Jennifer: Sure, sure. Bridget has great conflicting goals. I think on one hand, she wants to be taken seriously and move her career forward. And so that's like her one goal. And then she also quite understandably, is very attracted to her devilish boss, Daniel Cleaver, and that does provide some really great conflict there because they get in a relationship and then she leaves because he's been cheating on her and involved with someone else. So for Bridget, I think that provides some really good conflict for her goals for that.
I think Mark Darcy, he definitely wants to be with somebody who is respected and has his kind of level of social, of a professional standing. And then he falls for Bridget and she's about his opposite of this kind of lawyer type that he's been dating. So that's another thing that's providing inherent conflict with their goals.
[00:20:35] Jennifer: And then, oh, what could we say so much about Daniel Cleaver? Such a great character. He’s just so wolfish. And a great aspect of using the love triangle trope in that, you know, you don't like him, but you can understand Bridget's interest. Like that scene where she's imagining that they get married and he's doing a toast and he's saying, oh, and it all started out with some inappropriate office emailing or something.
And I thought it was such a great example of that kind of innate desire to like, tame the bad boy. And I felt like that book did a better job for me than "Pride and Prejudice" in terms of convincing me that he was a better, he was a viable option as opposed to Wickham, who I was never as excited about. Am I answering your question?
[00:21:18] Matty: Yeah, these are all great examples.
[00:21:20] Jennifer: Okay. So, I think she did a really great job of the juxtaposition of those elements. And then I watched it again recently and I really had more respect for the storyline with her parents, and how that was mirroring things that Bridget was going through that I didn't get, and I've seen it a lot of times. But it's just interesting how every time you see something, you can look and find something else, like her mother and the affair with the man who was kind of quote-unquote, "more exciting." And then coming back to what she and the father had, and that scene with the two of them sitting on the steps where he says, I don't work without you. And I just thought that was really lovely, and mirroring what Bridget has discovered with Mark Darcy.
Tropes Don't Have to Be Too Obvious
[00:22:04] Matty: Well, it is a good point that probably even the trope aficionado that you are, you've watched that a lot of times, and there are tropes in there that you didn't notice until subsequent readings or viewings, and the tropes shouldn't necessarily slap you in the face. You know, the subtle tropes as well as, as more overt ones.
[00:22:23] Jennifer: And I find that is so true. Have you happened to see the show "Severance"?
[00:22:29] Matty: I have not.
[00:22:30] Jennifer: Oh, it's great. I'm a huge, huge fan of it. But I have this side interest of loving the amnesia trope used in unusual ways. And that show does that. And I watched it once, then I watched it again, just to see how it was put together.
And I was like, oh, that's such a great use of the amnesia trope. I was like, I should've figured that out right away, but I was still drawn in by the characters and the concept that.
That's what our goal is, not to have people easily be able to pick out this stuff, but to feel like I'm intrigued enough with the characters that I want to go on that journey. And then through some study, you can see how they put that together.
[00:23:07] Matty: Yeah, that makes me think of, and maybe this is venturing into the red flags to watch out for is the, it was all a dream trope, which I think became a cliché. I think back, old enough to remember the whole Dallas thing where there was like, no, it was a dream. As opposed to the show with Bob Newhart, the one where he was the innkeeper. And then, I hope I'm remembering this right, in the last episode of that he woke up and he's in bed with Suzanne Pleshette in the set of the Bob Newhart one. So it was taking a trope that, like, if anyone says, it was all a dream, you kind of roll your eyes and go, oh, but they almost like they were making fun of it, obviously. They were very overtly poking fun at the, it was all a dream. But you can imagine that the first time someone did, it was all a dream, the readers would have been like, oh, that's so innovative.
[00:24:02] Matty: But then it started feeling like it was a lazy way out, or it was a desperation move, I guess. Maybe the Dallas example was a desperation move that was inorganic, you know, it didn't feel like an organic, holistic part of the story. It felt like something was kind of slapped on. So if you're going to a trope to fix a problem, that's probably a red flag.
Well, I think tropes can generate problems, but I think the problem with that particular trope, at least my problem with it that I've noticed, is a lot of time that gets used to reset the characters' relationship. That was exactly what they did with Dallas all those years ago. And I think what characters feel cheated about with it are, and I can speak for myself on using that, is that you followed them on this journey, and you've been emotionally invested in it. Then at the end, they're like, oh no, actually we were just going to call that as didn't happen. So you're negating that experience.
[00:25:02] Jennifer: And I think for me, it makes me go, well, I don't want to continue on this journey because who knows what else they're going to pull out from under me in that way. Yeah, I totally, I am not a fan of that either. And I think it's the consequences is what's missing when you do that.
And that's what we want is the problems, the choices that we make, and then what continues on from that. I think if you did that, there has to be some consequences in terms of, if one character doesn't remember what happened, somebody else does, and that has to change how they interact with them. I would feel okay about that. But just having everybody just oh, we're just going to go back to square one and start all over again--no.
[00:25:47] Matty: Well, the other example, this is fun. I'm thinking of all these examples from movies.
[00:25:52] Jennifer: It is really fun!
The "He Was Dead All Along" Trope
[00:25:54] Matty: The other thing that made me think of as the opposite, for me at least, of the whole Dallas example. And I think this would be a trope, it's the, they were really dead all along. Like "The Sixth Sense." Sorry, folks, spoiler alert. He's really dead all along. And it's the kind of thing where when you find that out at the end and you realize that you now have to rethink all the relationships and the activities that you've been seeing through the course of the movie, then I think nobody watched that episode of Dallas and said, oh, you know what? It makes me want to go back and watch all the old ones. No, nobody said that. They just threw the remote control. But with "The Sixth Sense," I immediately went back to the beginning and watched it because I wanted to see how they had handled that fact that this person who was really dead, appeared to be alive through the whole movie. Would you consider that "he was really dead" a trope?
[00:26:50] Jennifer: No, I wouldn't. And I'm trying to think of why. I think part of it is because there were clues, because we could go back and find those clues that there were those wonderful little story nuggets. That makes it different. So almost it has aspects of a thriller in that way of that. I'm just trying to think of was he really dead as a trope. It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Because I guess I just think of it as like a thriller aspect or storyline. But I'm going to have to think about that further.
But I think, like you say, the idea of wanting to go back and look for the little clues is what is the difference between, yeah, throwing the TV against the wall and okay, I'm clearing the rest of my day because clearly I need to relive that experience.
What Qualifies as a Trope
[00:27:34] Matty: Yeah. The other one, okay, here comes another spoiler alert. The other one that was like that is "The Others." So that's a movie that's actually very hard to find. I don't know what the deal is, but it's not like you can easily stream it. It was with Nicole Kidman, and it was one of these ones where you were following was a family living in a creepy old house. And you thought they're being haunted because these creepy things keep happening. And then at the end, it turns out that the family is actually dead and the experiences they're having are the living inhabitants of the house just living their lives. But the dead family is experiencing it. They were both, I thought, very cleverly done. It was one of those ones where I wanted to go back and watch it. But when I went back, I could no longer find a way to watch it.
So I don't know that if in the same way that like two points doesn't necessarily make a trend. I don't know if the two examples I can think of make it a trope, but yeah, it's a fine line between what qualifies and what doesn't qualify.
[00:28:29] Jennifer: Right, and I think it does go back, though, to the idea of that the tropes are really about relationships. And so you're trying to figure out like, that's really interesting to me, the idea that those parallel lives were interacting. That's a really interesting concept that I hadn't heard of recently or haven't come across.
Being Intrigued vs Feeling Tricked
[00:28:50] Jennifer: I was thinking of an example of the kind of, is it a dream, which has elements of the amnesia trope in it. I don't remember which Charlaine Harris book of the True Blood series, but there was one where Eric was under a spell, and he became a different person for one of the books. And I think it was like four or five. And then at the end of the book, he didn't have any memory of him being this different person and being very open and loving and all this stuff with the main character, but she did. And so then going forward, she had still that knowledge of that part of him.
And I had remembered thinking, oh, that was really clever because in a way, Charlaine Harris, who I think awesome, she reset the story, but then she also didn't make me feel tricked because I, and the main character had that knowledge going forward. It wasn't like they were both have the blank slate thing. Those are all just very interesting examples of things you can do with the general amnesia trope I think that we've been talking about.
[00:29:48] Matty: The other thing that's popped into my head is " Heaven Can Wait." So I'm thinking of the one with Warren Beatty. I'm not sure this is true for the earlier one. But at the end of that, this is all spoilers, he's reincarnated in the body of the football player. And the audience obviously knows that it's still Warren Beatty, but he doesn't know. He doesn't remember his previous life, but he has seen it coming. So he said to the woman he loves, Julie Christie, if you see a person with this kind of characteristic, you'd give them a chance, right? And she's saying, well, you know, sure, I guess so. And then she sees whatever it is in him. And that's interesting because it's not like trying to trick the audience, and I think this is like the example you're using of Charlaine Harris, the audience knows, the audience is in on the amnesia thing. And the suspense is, is she going to recognize that it's the same person?
[00:30:44] Jennifer: Exactly. I haven't seen that, but that plot line is making me realize it's very similar to "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." It's a similar idea of a redo of that with a kind of a sci-fi aspect. But at the end of it, these two people, like you say, meet, and they had gone through all this work to erase a painful relationship, but now they meet again with no knowledge of that. And so you're just like, oh, so it was all that for nothing? You know, you're intrigued as opposed to feeling tricked. And I think that's the really interesting thing to think about with this, is how the storyteller does that.
[00:31:22] Matty: Well, just so we don't spend the entire time with me going, oh, that reminds me of another movie, there were two questions that I wanted to ask before we get to my final question, which is going to be about what happens when you circumvent a trope.
Tropes as a Marketing Device
[00:31:35] Matty: And one is tropes as marketing. So I think for romance, this is very clear. Like a lot of romances are explicitly labeled enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, you know, that set of tropes. Do you see the opportunities for using tropes as a marketing device for genres outside of romance?
[00:31:52] Jennifer: Absolutely. For example, we see all the time, the like loner trope for our detectives. And personally, I love feels like tortured beat up as you can see from my Scandi noir, and for me, that's like a complete, I'm like, oh yes, I'm definitely making time to just to watch that and get in and give that a try. So it's the character, they're not all the same characters the way some people say, oh, romance is the same. And it's not when you go down the rabbit hole of learning the different things about it and follow your favorite authors. But it does form an important function in that it's hooking me as a reader audience member, whatever that I want to try that.
I would definitely say that for sure, thriller mystery, and then sci-fi also uses it so often with the secret heir and another one that gets a lot of use is the secret baby. And I talked about that a little bit in my book, but I'm so amazed how so many mysteries have secret baby in them. And it's just a great way to again, put a connection that you've laid those little clues in, but you don't get the payoff till the end.
But you definitely are going to want to allude, in like your blurbs that you have, that there's a lot of secrets in there and maybe some sense of hidden identity or things aren't how they look. So I really don't think that we should bury the tropes.
But you want to also, when you're mentioning them, you want to give two or three very definite details about what makes yours different. And you can tell when you read a blurb and you connect with it, that author has done a really good job of making something familiar, but yet different, that old expression. So I would definitely say yes, and it doesn't matter what books you read, you'll find those tropes.
Have you read Lois McMaster Bujold?
[00:33:42] Matty: No.
[00:34:06] Jennifer: She does sci-fi kind of stuff. But she's I think is great at using tropes in a different way. And I read her stories multiple times before I realized, oh, that's actually a trope that she developed. Well, it would be interesting too, to include those kinds of things in your keywords. So "secret baby," that's a phrase that readers would maybe key in in a search because they're familiar with it and that's what they're looking for. It would be a good thing to use as a keyword. And yeah, the whole loner thing, protector thing, antagonist. Secrets is huge too just as a key word.
Tropes as a Writing Prompt
[00:34:14] Matty: The other question I was going to ask, but I'm just going to throw it out there briefly to keep our time reasonable is, using tropes as a writing prompt. So I can imagine it could be super-fun to get something like "The Trope Thesaurus," and just flip it open and read like the name of a trope, and then try to write a little thing on it. You know, if people are feeling stuck, especially you can go to tropes related to the genre that you're interested in.
[00:34:41] Jennifer: Yeah. And I would say, I will talk about this stuff a lot to my poor long-suffering husband. And I'll say, like trope bingo, I'll just say, just flip through the book and pick three and give me three. And then I just start to make up a story from that. And does it have to turn into a book? No, but it's like a really fun exercise to do, because it gets your brain moving.
I will encourage people to do that and say, the character that comes off of that, you can develop that further. Because you started with these three tropes, but then you were like, oh, actually I like, it's moved into this other direction, then go with that. You aren't wed to having to use what you first started with. I find three is a nice number for using tropes and a character for a whole book and thinking about different aspects of their personality. That would be my recommendation of how to do it.
[00:35:27] Matty: It would be interesting to mix them up too. Like if you're writing sci-fi, but you go to the romance section and look for a trope to throw that in.
[00:35:35] Jennifer: Yeah. And I really feel like all tropes are fair game for all genres. There's certainly great sci-fi that has enemies to lovers. It's not like you can only use them for certain things. So it's really, as long as you are staying in the fulfilling your genre expectations, like we talked about, you can really do whatever you want. And the more that you can twist them, the more exciting it is for the audience.
[00:35:58] Matty: Well, that's a great lead into the last question I wanted to ask, which was getting back to this idea of playing with the tropes. I'm going to use your loner detective as an example. So there are loads and loads and loads of books with loner detective, he probably has an alcohol problem, he has relationship issues, he lives in a crappy apartment or whatever. So if someone loves the whole kind of noirish world that those characters live in, and I wish I could think of an example of this, I'm not coming up with one, maybe there's a reason for that. But they want to write a detective who doesn't have any substance abuse problems and is happily married and is going against that. But what are the opportunities there and what are the risks there?
[00:36:41] Jennifer: Right. Well, I have a couple of examples but they're European because of my little addiction with that. But "Gorky Park." It was the first book, and he has written just a fantastic series with Arkady Renko is exactly what you say. He's got substance abuse problems and he's depressed, and you know, all these kinds of things. And I love him because he's like incredibly tortured and he's just awesome. I think Martin Cruz Smith is on his like 12th book and he’s a fantastic writer because it's still fresh, that character, I'm still discovering other aspects of his personality of this, that are more than just the loner detective substance abuse thing. And so that's one example of how that doesn't get tired.
But on the other hand, there's this great Finnish series with a detective in there who is happily married, and he doesn't have substance abuse problems, but it's still really dark. His wife has cancer and all these other kinds of things. But it's great because it's still relationshipy stuff, and I was enjoying how he is preoccupied with his mysteries and murder and tends to put the family on the back burner, even though he says, he's not going to the next case, but we know he is.
It's been really successful; they've just made like the third season of it. "Bordertown," that's what it's called. It's on Netflix. I just love it, it's fantastic. So he's a great example of doing something different with that character that's really still resonated with readers. So I would say definitely, you can definitely do that, and yeah, check it out.
[00:38:08] Matty: Cool. Well, Jennifer, this has been so much fun. I've enjoyed talking tropes with you so much. Please let the viewers and listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
[00:38:16] Jennifer: Oh, thank you. Super fun for me too, I'm always happy to talk about this stuff. You can find me at www.JenniferHilt.com.
[00:38:24] Matty: Great, thank you so much.
A question for you ...
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jennifer! What is your favorite trope in the genre you like to write in, or to read in? Who is an author you think does an especially good job of playing with that trope so that it meets your expectations as a reader and yet is fresh and innovative?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
However, I don’t get notifications of comments posted here, which means I may miss some, and my website builder doesn’t enable commenters to respond to a specific comment, which makes it hard to engage in any kind of dialogue. So I’m recommending that you post any comments on YouTube.
