We’ve all been there. You pick up a story. You’re excited by the cover. Maybe you even like the title. Possibly it’s an author that you love. You flip it to the back and your eyes roll so far into your skull they’re just about to drill out your occipital bone. “Not another Chosen One trope!” you decry. 

You go home, annoyed at the overused character device and sit down at your laptop/computer/pad of paper to continue your own story. You start writing about a new character who’s quirky, pretty and engaging and before you know it, this character has caught the attention of your protagonist.

You gasp! Oh no! Not a lover’s triangle! We can’t have that trope. It’s over done! You madly delete all your work. You’ve got to focus. Keep things fresh. New! You start writing about how your protagonist is going to save their home from the encroaching invaders led by a general bloodthirsty and power mad.

You pause. Wait, this is cleaving a little close to Good versus Evil trope. Or maybe you’ve stumbled into the Reluctant Hero. Now you’re wondering if you’ve accidentally placed your protagonist as the Chosen One. You break out into a cold sweat. Your fingers seize. Your mind blanks. 

Hours pass and you’ve done no writing. It’s no use. Every idea you come up with has been done before. To death! You think you’re in writer’s block and you rail against your own fragility for falling into that cliched trope too.

Then you load up tvtropes to go down a three hour rabbit hole of loosely and spuriously connected ideas and themes. 

I’ve seen this a lot. Certainly, when I was younger, I worried about this a lot too. I strove for some sort of creative novelty to the point of inspirational purity where I wouldn’t read anything while I was writing hoping that I wouldn’t be influenced and accidentally bleed some unwanted literary device into my writing. Now, with the wisdom of age and experience, I realize what all this fretting really is: nonsense. 

Please, get off tvtropes. It’s not good for you. I’m not sure it’s good for anyone.

But maybe you’re someone who has no idea what I’m talking about. Bless your sweet, springtime soul. Tropes are generally (or generously) defined as commonly recurring rhetorical devices, motifs or cliches. It’s like when you notice most fantasy is of a generalized medieval fantasy nature. There’s lots of things fantasy could be. It could be Chinese medieval inspired. It could be steampunk (though that’s now a trope) or set before the iron age. Hell, fantasy doesn’t even have to have some historical analogy. You could write a fantasy story about a world inhabited with sentient mushrooms who communicate through rigorous percussion and are struggling against an invasive melody that threatens their whole harmonic existence. 

Most of it, however, will be some sort of derivative of Dungeons and Dragons. Which is largely just kind of derivative of Lord of the Rings. And here’s the kicker, Tolkien’s stuff was just derivative of actual European mythology. 

At the end of the day, there’s a very long history of human existence and you’re going to be really hard pressed to come up with something that some person hasn’t conceived of over the thousands of years we’ve sat on this planet entertaining each other with wild tales. 

But it’s not just that originality is an illusion. In fact, I believe that originality is inevitable. Even if I were to follow the same outline of Lord of the Rings, my version would be markedly different than Tolkiens. Don’t believe me? Check out any manner of people’s fan fictions for whatever popular show or story is currently engaged with the modern zeitgeist. I mean, we got Fifty Shades of Grey because some person really loved Twilight but thought the teenagers should be a bit more freaky in the sheets. 

However, it’s the very nature of tropes themselves which can trap people into thinking that they’re “bad” and “overused.” However, trope classification is literally just observation. It’s noticing common elements and themes and trying to rope as many as you can into a single definition. It’s actively looking to make things appear more similar to each other. Trope classification is trying to fit things into arbitrary labels and boxes regardless of how well they’re really going to fit or not. Bonus points if you can give the trope some weird name (think Klingon Scientists Get No Respect). 

Moreover, if there is a rather widespread trope then it’s probably widespread for a reason. For example, in the opening, I mentioned the Good vs Evil trope. This is a pretty stock theme in fantasy and there’s a reason for it: it works. A lot of tropes are merely observing that literature relies on a number of shorthands or devices to actually make a functional story. I mentioned before that you can’t replicate reality in your work – it’ll just make an unreadable mess. So you, as the author, going through and condensing your narrative and giving it focus will inevitably make it fall into some trope or another. Tropes are just the tools we use. Railing against the overuse of a trope in fiction is like complaining about artists having green in too many of their paintings. 

Now, before anyone who actually enjoys discussing tropes comes after me, I don’t think tropes are bad. Honestly, if people want to engage in the discussion of tropes with their favourite works, all the power to them. At least they’re looking at their media critically and trying to actually tease it apart on a more analytical level rather than mindless consuming and disposing of the piece like capitalism encourages. 

I just think as a creator, it’s in your best interest to shunt the concept of tropes as far away from your mind as you can. Worry about tropes and their use, definition or application has no place in your creative process. Forget about them entirely. Let others diagnosis and classify your writing. 

Honestly, you’ve got way bigger fish to fry.

So, if you catch yourself noticing tropes in your own stories, don’t sweat it and forget about it. Tropes are oftentimes just common tools or devices that actually work for a story and, if nothing else, indicate that you’re using a conceit that has been shown to work in other people’s narratives.

Also, you should get off tvtropes and get back to writing.