by Janice Hardy

When familiar becomes forgettable, it’s time to shake things up.

My husband and I recently watched a movie that was well done, but still fell flat, because it didn’t offer anything we hadn’t seen dozens of times before. We could pretty much describe how the entire movie was going to unfold based on the first few scenes, and it unfolded exactly as we expected. That made it really hard to care about the characters or the plot.

Same tropes, same character archetypes, same basic story.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as readers love the tropes that speak to them. I can’t get enough of underdog sports movies, even though they’re pretty much the same movie every time. The entire romance genre is built on stories that appeal to beloved tropes, and readers pick up a book because it has the tropes they’re looking for.

The trouble starts when “expected” slips into “predictable.”

Tropes are a natural part of writing. Every genre has them, every reader expects certain ones, and they help define a particular type of story. But when we rely too much on them, or fail to do anything new with them, they become predictable.

And predictable is deadly to stories.

When a reader can see what’s coming long before it happens and there’s nothing in place to make them anticipate that moment, the moment will have little to no impact when it arrives.

What You Can Do to Liven Up Your Tropes

The trick to avoiding “been-there/done-that” tropes is to offer something new or surprising to the reader.

1. Do what readers don’t expect

The good thing about tropes? You usually know what they are for your genre, which makes them easier to turn on their heads. If a scene or plot point starts to feel predictable, look for ways to not do what you originally planned.

• Go ahead and write that adorable meet-cute in a coffee shop, but then surprise readers by making the sweet barista who witnesses it be the actual love interest.
• Let the heroes split up to search for the killer, but doing so lets them flank the bad guy instead of being picked off one by one.
• Give your Chosen One a feeling they were special all along, but show they have the skills and ambition to deal with the prophecy.

Brainstorm what your readers will expect, and then look for ways to satisfy that expectation from a different angle or new perspective. Sometimes all it takes is tweaking the motivation or letting a minor character make the move readers assume the protagonist will make. By nudging the story a degree or two off the expected path, you can create fresh character choices and more intriguing outcomes.

2. Have the trope fail (or succeed).

It’s usually a shock when readers expect a win and the hero loses (and vice versa). While you don’t want to do it just for shock value, a loss (or win) at the worst time can shake things up in unexpected ways.

Take a clue from Deep Blue Sea and have that shark eat Samuel L. Jackson during his inspirational speech. Or follow Game of Thrones and behead the character everybody thought was the protagonist.

• The obvious escape is the hero sneaking out through a bathroom window? Brick up that window.
• The heroes suddenly remember an old piece of equipment or weapon left forgotten? Yeah, make it not work after all.
• That complete makeover the heroine goes through? The love interest is turned off by the new look and attitude that goes with it.

If you find yourself using a common trope in the way it’s always been used, brainstorm what would happen if the opposite effect occurred instead. How would that reversal ripple through the story? Would it force characters to make harder decisions? Create more tension? Reveal deeper emotional truths? A single unexpected outcome can reset the stakes and change how readers see the story.

3. Do the expected, but not where it’s expected.

Sometimes seeing something familiar in an unexpected place is enough to spice it up. The monster you find in your bathroom is much scarier than the one you stumble across in the dark woods.

• Maybe the lovebirds meet in a place neither one of them would ever want to admit to later.
• Or the monster decides to attack the bright sunny hotel room before the heroes get a chance to go after it.
• Perhaps the evil wizard bent on enslaving the world is confronted in a cute two-bedroom cottage surrounded by flowers.

If crawling through air ducts to escape is a common trope in your genre, find a fresh, new way for your hero to make it to safety. Moving a trope to a different setting can shift the tone, the emotional stakes, and even the pacing of a scene. A moment that feels both familiar and surprising is a powerful combination that can keep readers guessing.

4. Borrow tropes from other genres.

Just because a trope is a little tired in one genre, doesn’t mean it can’t work wonders in a different genre. You’d hardly expect a “dark figure behind the shower curtain” moment in a romance, but what if that’s how your lovely couple meet? A different-genre trope brings its own set of emotions and expectations you could have fun playing with.

• Maybe the heroine and her friend “split up” while shopping, and she runs into the antagonist and bad things happen.
• A false scare in a horror novel could really be a meet-cute with the love interest for a subplot.
• Have the Chosen One die in the first few chapters as an unexpected sacrifice.

Mix it up and see what tropes might work in unexpected ways in your genre. An old trope from another genre feels fresh if your readers don’t read that genre. You might even discover new tonal layers, such as humor, tension, mystery, or romance, simply by letting a borrowed trope bring its emotional baggage into your world.

5. Consider what happens if you eliminate all the genre’s tropes.

This one’s a bit extreme, but what happens if you cut every common trope from your story? What new possibilities do you see?

• The Chosen One becomes a gal who happened to be nearby when crap went down and she stepped in to help.
• The two lovebirds have worked together for a long time, but sparks fly as they work on a strange project together.
• The campers at the haunted lake stay together and craft a smart, safe, well-considered plan of attack, but the bad guy is just smarter.

Looking beyond the obvious outcomes can reveal fresh and original scenes. Removing the “safety net” of familiar ideas forces you to explore your story’s unique conflicts and turning points that emerge naturally from your characters, not the tropes surrounding them. Even if you put some tropes back in later, it’ll be because they work for your story, not just any story in your genre.

Tropes can be comforting, but they can also cause a great story to sleepwalk its way through the novel.

Sure, the pieces are there, but without surprises or fresh angles, readers will forget the book minutes after finishing it. Strive for the unexpected, and your readers will remember your story long after the final page.

EXERCISE FOR YOU:

Pick one trope you know appears in your story. Now write down:

• The expected version of that trope.
• The opposite version of that trope.
• A sideways version—something surprising that isn’t opposite, just different.

Compare all three and consider how they change your story. Which one would make it stronger, more surprising, or more compelling?

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About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. and the chapter books Who's Haunting Who? and The Haunting of Cabin 13 for Lerner Publishing. For adults, she writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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