A WRITER’S PERSPECTIVE: FIVE LITERARY TROPES THAT BORE ME

Mabuhay, friends! 

I hope you’ve had a great weekend. Today, it’s all about the tropes! Firstly, I’m not sticking to a specific genre in this post. And secondly, as the title says, I’ll be talking about the tropes from a writer’s perspective. This could possibly be a new series for the blog since I’ve been wanting to expand this platform and go beyond talking about books. That aside, if you’re a writer, I hope you enjoy this post and find it helpful! If you’re a reader, chime in with tropes you find overused!

ROTTEN BAD BOY WITH A HEART OF GOLD

Probably one of the most irritating tropes for me. The broody, oh-so swoony male characters are overrated. Give me more boys who are soft, who love colours, who aren’t afraid to be silly. Give me more feminine boys; boys who are terrible at being mysterious.

DRAGONS, DRAGONS, DRAGONS

*hides from the tomatoes*

Just hear me out. A majority of the fantasy books I’ve come across are overflowing with dragons. While I do love those scaley creatures, I would love to read of other fantasy creatures like unicorns (the very underrated!). I think unicorns have great potential and it’s so sad no one is writing about them. Also, we have so many diverse backgrounds to pull our stories from!

THE MISCOMMUNICATION EXCUSE

This trope is just lazy writing, in my opinion. There are so many other ways to create conflict between characters besides miscommunication. For example, just when character A is about to reveal the truth to character B but halfway through they’re interrupted so B only knows half of what A is about to say, or B only hears what they want to hear and bursts out at A. Usually when something like this happens, it is frustrating. What is the point of all this drama?

THE PERFECT NEWBIE 

It makes for a boring read when the newbie or chosen one is exceptionally skilled at everything. It never makes sense to have a character who has no struggles. When it’s written that way, we never truly understand who the character is. When you don’t challenge your character, they have no depth.

BLACK AND WHITE EVIL

The evil empire with its evil citizens does evil things just because. Or because of evil emperor’s sob-story. Seriously though, the “evil” villain does not need to have an incredibly sorrowful background to be the villain, however, it does need to be believable. People rise to power and do bad things for simple reasons and some of them don’t even have a sob story to accompany their actions. It can be as simple as the villain being power hungry or their misguided justice. How you choose to write your villain is up to you but always remember that a good villain is not there to make your MC look good.

WHICH LITERARY TROPES BORE YOU?

WHICH BOOKS DEFY THE ABOVE MENTIONED TROPES?

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