Good Trope, Bad Trope
I know a lot of you guys are gearing up for NaNoWriMo, so here's an interesting piece of advice from founder Chris Baty via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about a good organizational/thinky strategy while you're still in the prep stages.
Quoth Baty: “Before you sit down to write a novel, you make a list of everything you love to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should put the stuff from your list in there. Then you should make a second list of everything you hate to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should make sure none of the stuff from that second list creeps in when you’re tired.”
Quoth me: "...ooh. You know, I've never thought about it from that angle before. And that applies to fanfic, too, not just to novels."
So here's
What I Love
* Redemption and/or recovery storylines that portray the aforementioned processes as paths rather than destinations. Taking characters who really fucked up (or are really fucked up) and making them work for a better way -- there will be stumbles, plenty of them, and the characters' actions now don't excuse what they've done in the past (or ameliorate the things that were done to them), and things might never really be all right, exactly, but they keep trying as best as they're able to.
* Romantic version of the above: one partner helps another recover, or they both help each other recover. It's cute! And fraught with tension!
* The reverse of -- above the above: when characters fall, and fall hard. Even better, and even more painful, when hamartia comes into play -- the characters do everything they can, but their best isn't enough. They aren't done in by hubris, they just miss the mark.
* Characters capable of great awesome who are also SEVERELY damaged on the inside, and watching them try to negotiate situations where their expertise doesn't come into play. And when they truly, devastatingly, terrifyingly lose it. Something in them breaks down, and they don't know how to fix it, and they start to realize how many things about them don't work.
* CONSEQUENCES directly stemming from the characters' choices and actions, and when the protagonists are allowed to fail. This isn't unearned suffering; this is stuff the characters bring on themselves, this is the stuff that's their own damn fault and that they can't blame anyone else for, and this is the stuff they have to live and grapple with.
* Characters get what they want only to lose everything else in the process, or realize that what they got isn't what they wanted, but they can't go back and undo what they did to get where they are now.
* Self-sacrifice where the characters are hated for it, know they will be, and do it anyway, because it's what has to be done. Their names might never be cleared, if they're going to be remembered at all they'll be remembered as monsters, but in damning themselves they're trying to achieve something greater.
* Strong female characters whose strength has nothing to do with the men in the story -- they don't have to emasculate or humiliate the men around them to prove that they're Just As Good, and they don't turn utterly incompetent once a) they fall in love or b) a Manly Man shows up to save them. They're strong and capable and competent on their own terms, and they don't really need men to affirm or deny the fact.
* Strength that doesn't come in the form of combat prowess. Shy characters find the courage to stand up for themselves. Characters go into a situation knowing they're hopelessly outclassed, but their loyalty or devotion outweighs the risk. Characters accustomed to one way of thinking or acting re-evaluate their beliefs and try to change.
* Psychological horror -- things that are terrifying because of what they reveal about us, our powerlessness in the face of incomprehensible forces, that fear of insignificance and the inability to comprehend (think Lovecraft), or the things that scare us because we understand them all too well, the monsters we create and need, the ones who appropriate what we think are our weapons and use them against us, the ones that spring from the impulses within ourselves that we don't like to acknowledge.
* The mundane intrudes on the fantastic, and the fantastic intrudes on the mundane. When skilled assassins contemplate how to get the blood out of their clothes after work, and when things as commonplace as pigeons hold power and mystery.
* Wit and wordplay -- characters who love language and know how to wield it. And as a corollary, when words are no longer enough.
* Dysfunctional relationships -- make 'em unhealthy, make 'em twisted, make 'em depraved as all hell, and as long as the text acknowledges them as such, I'm on board. Mmm. (Again, the weird corollary to this is that I also tend to get pinged by partnerships, where two more-or-less equals have a more-or-less functional relationship and mostly successfully overcome the obstacles in their way.)
* Thwarted and restrained desire, and what that does to the desire in question. Passion and its cousin, obsession, and what happens when the line between the two blurs. Again, mmm.
* AWKWARD FIGHTY SEX. A lot.
* Characters who really suck at articulating and identifying their emotions.
* Characters who are aware of how screwed up they are, but the knowledge isn't enough to prevent them from being constrained by their circumstances.
* Magnificent bastards. Mindfucks are sexy.
* Creepy little kids, at least when they're done well, because seriously, children are terrifying.
* Characters who kind of embody the id, because you never know what the hell they're going to do next. And when done well -- when the characters still have some kind of logic behind their actions, even if that logic makes no sense to anyone else -- it's the best kind of trainwreck.
* Devoted protectors. Bonus points if their devotion leads them to betray their honor, or vice versa.
* Masochists and the sadists who love them I mean hurt them I mean same difference.
* Deconstruction, be it tongue-in-cheek and playful or be it considerably more serious.
* Nods to meta in the text -- texts that on some level acknowledge what they are, basically.
* Magic that resembles neither DnD nor *game system of your choice* but is considerably fucking weirder. And cooler. And creepier.
* More fanfic-specific, but. Crossovers. Making two worlds collide and seeing what happens. And playing with the fallout. It's so fun.
What I Can't Stand
* "It's okay, it's the protagonist!"
There is a scene near Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where Harry, after watching a Death Eater spit at Professor McGonagall, casts the Cruciatus Curse on the Death Eater in question. Afterward, he says something to the effect of "Bellatrix was right, you have to really mean it." And he gets called gallant.
I almost stopped reading the book.
I am fine with heroes doing horrible things. In fact, I kind of like it when heroes do horrible things, or are forced to by horrible circumstances. But that doesn't make their actions right. If you've been spending four books telling me that torture is wrong, and telling me that the society in question pretty much unequivocally condemns anyone who resorts to such tactics, then don't portray your hero's decision to use those tactics as a gallant act. Push them to it, sure. Have them reflect on and realize what they're doing, and have them face the consequences of acting the way they did later, definitely. But a character's status as protagonist doesn't make everything that character does right, and a protagonist who is ALWAYS right, whose perceptions ALWAYS match objective reality, is a protagonist I will loathe. Good people shoot the dog sometimes. The author can explain their actions -- the author should certainly show the readers why their actions make sense, given what the characters in question have experienced and believe -- but if the author excuses, or worse yet, lauds their behavior, I'm out of there.
Long, but I really really hate that one.
* Having characters voice twenty-first century American values when the characters in question aren't twenty-first century Americans. Rebellious princesses who want to wed for love, I'm looking at you. (Also you, Mercedes Lackey.)
* Conflict that could easily be resolved if the characters stopped being idiots. You know how almost every romantic comedy ever features a Big Misunderstanding two-thirds of the way through, which could be easily resolved if the characters sat down and talked to each other? But instead, they go off and whinge about "Oh, s/he doesn't love me!" or "Oh, s/he was lying to me the whole time!" because the story needs an artificial climax? Yeah. That.
* Wangst, especially wangsty backstories. So your father raped you and your mother beat you and the other kids threw rocks at you and you had to live in the basement and eat stale bread and your hometown burned down and the bad guys kidnapped and tortured you and somebody shot your dog and OKAY, OKAY, WE GET IT, JUST STOP ALREADY. Listing the events doesn't elicit reader sympathy, showing how the events affect the character does.
* Flashbacks as vehicles for chunks of exposition.
* Love Conquers All. Gack. Love definitely gives you a good base of support, but you've got to do a lot of the legwork yourself. Love does not magically cause all the problems you ever had to go away. (Corollary: I don't care how good the sex is, there's no such thing as a Magical Healing Cock, and the Dripping Love Juices from the Magical Healing Cock cannot cure all that ails you.)
* Insufferably precocious children. Children as avatars of purity. Children as adorable impish sidekicks. Children with Mysterious Special Destinies.
...little bastards.
* "Spunky" heroines, because "spunky" usually translates to "shrill nitwit."
* Alpha heroes. I like my jerkasses to be canonically acknowledged as such, or for the macho bullshit to reach hilarious and/or dorky levels. Big rippling muscles and condescending attitudes do nothing for me, thanks.
...unless it's slash. Because then I'm subverting the social architecture such tropes rely on?
* Any kind of destined lovers. (Unless it's CLAMP, for some reason, probably because "destined lovers" in CLAMP means "you two are SO FUCKED.") There are far more compelling reasons for characters to get together.
* Romanticizing dark themes. Any time rape victims fall in love with their rapists, and it's not Stockholm's -- yeah. No.
* Slapstick and/or non-sequiturs as the primary source of humor. Good in small doses, but random =/= funny.
* Villains who are unashamedly evil but don't have the good grace to be entertaining about it.
* Codependency masquerading as True Love.
...and I could go on, but I'm getting really wordy. Ahem.
Anyway! What things do you love in stories? What things do you hate? Do you write the kinds of plots you love to read or view? Talk to me, guys. :D
Quoth Baty: “Before you sit down to write a novel, you make a list of everything you love to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should put the stuff from your list in there. Then you should make a second list of everything you hate to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should make sure none of the stuff from that second list creeps in when you’re tired.”
Quoth me: "...ooh. You know, I've never thought about it from that angle before. And that applies to fanfic, too, not just to novels."
So here's
What I Love
* Redemption and/or recovery storylines that portray the aforementioned processes as paths rather than destinations. Taking characters who really fucked up (or are really fucked up) and making them work for a better way -- there will be stumbles, plenty of them, and the characters' actions now don't excuse what they've done in the past (or ameliorate the things that were done to them), and things might never really be all right, exactly, but they keep trying as best as they're able to.
* Romantic version of the above: one partner helps another recover, or they both help each other recover. It's cute! And fraught with tension!
* The reverse of -- above the above: when characters fall, and fall hard. Even better, and even more painful, when hamartia comes into play -- the characters do everything they can, but their best isn't enough. They aren't done in by hubris, they just miss the mark.
* Characters capable of great awesome who are also SEVERELY damaged on the inside, and watching them try to negotiate situations where their expertise doesn't come into play. And when they truly, devastatingly, terrifyingly lose it. Something in them breaks down, and they don't know how to fix it, and they start to realize how many things about them don't work.
* CONSEQUENCES directly stemming from the characters' choices and actions, and when the protagonists are allowed to fail. This isn't unearned suffering; this is stuff the characters bring on themselves, this is the stuff that's their own damn fault and that they can't blame anyone else for, and this is the stuff they have to live and grapple with.
* Characters get what they want only to lose everything else in the process, or realize that what they got isn't what they wanted, but they can't go back and undo what they did to get where they are now.
* Self-sacrifice where the characters are hated for it, know they will be, and do it anyway, because it's what has to be done. Their names might never be cleared, if they're going to be remembered at all they'll be remembered as monsters, but in damning themselves they're trying to achieve something greater.
* Strong female characters whose strength has nothing to do with the men in the story -- they don't have to emasculate or humiliate the men around them to prove that they're Just As Good, and they don't turn utterly incompetent once a) they fall in love or b) a Manly Man shows up to save them. They're strong and capable and competent on their own terms, and they don't really need men to affirm or deny the fact.
* Strength that doesn't come in the form of combat prowess. Shy characters find the courage to stand up for themselves. Characters go into a situation knowing they're hopelessly outclassed, but their loyalty or devotion outweighs the risk. Characters accustomed to one way of thinking or acting re-evaluate their beliefs and try to change.
* Psychological horror -- things that are terrifying because of what they reveal about us, our powerlessness in the face of incomprehensible forces, that fear of insignificance and the inability to comprehend (think Lovecraft), or the things that scare us because we understand them all too well, the monsters we create and need, the ones who appropriate what we think are our weapons and use them against us, the ones that spring from the impulses within ourselves that we don't like to acknowledge.
* The mundane intrudes on the fantastic, and the fantastic intrudes on the mundane. When skilled assassins contemplate how to get the blood out of their clothes after work, and when things as commonplace as pigeons hold power and mystery.
* Wit and wordplay -- characters who love language and know how to wield it. And as a corollary, when words are no longer enough.
* Dysfunctional relationships -- make 'em unhealthy, make 'em twisted, make 'em depraved as all hell, and as long as the text acknowledges them as such, I'm on board. Mmm. (Again, the weird corollary to this is that I also tend to get pinged by partnerships, where two more-or-less equals have a more-or-less functional relationship and mostly successfully overcome the obstacles in their way.)
* Thwarted and restrained desire, and what that does to the desire in question. Passion and its cousin, obsession, and what happens when the line between the two blurs. Again, mmm.
* AWKWARD FIGHTY SEX. A lot.
* Characters who really suck at articulating and identifying their emotions.
* Characters who are aware of how screwed up they are, but the knowledge isn't enough to prevent them from being constrained by their circumstances.
* Magnificent bastards. Mindfucks are sexy.
* Creepy little kids, at least when they're done well, because seriously, children are terrifying.
* Characters who kind of embody the id, because you never know what the hell they're going to do next. And when done well -- when the characters still have some kind of logic behind their actions, even if that logic makes no sense to anyone else -- it's the best kind of trainwreck.
* Devoted protectors. Bonus points if their devotion leads them to betray their honor, or vice versa.
* Masochists and the sadists who love them I mean hurt them I mean same difference.
* Deconstruction, be it tongue-in-cheek and playful or be it considerably more serious.
* Nods to meta in the text -- texts that on some level acknowledge what they are, basically.
* Magic that resembles neither DnD nor *game system of your choice* but is considerably fucking weirder. And cooler. And creepier.
* More fanfic-specific, but. Crossovers. Making two worlds collide and seeing what happens. And playing with the fallout. It's so fun.
What I Can't Stand
* "It's okay, it's the protagonist!"
There is a scene near Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where Harry, after watching a Death Eater spit at Professor McGonagall, casts the Cruciatus Curse on the Death Eater in question. Afterward, he says something to the effect of "Bellatrix was right, you have to really mean it." And he gets called gallant.
I almost stopped reading the book.
I am fine with heroes doing horrible things. In fact, I kind of like it when heroes do horrible things, or are forced to by horrible circumstances. But that doesn't make their actions right. If you've been spending four books telling me that torture is wrong, and telling me that the society in question pretty much unequivocally condemns anyone who resorts to such tactics, then don't portray your hero's decision to use those tactics as a gallant act. Push them to it, sure. Have them reflect on and realize what they're doing, and have them face the consequences of acting the way they did later, definitely. But a character's status as protagonist doesn't make everything that character does right, and a protagonist who is ALWAYS right, whose perceptions ALWAYS match objective reality, is a protagonist I will loathe. Good people shoot the dog sometimes. The author can explain their actions -- the author should certainly show the readers why their actions make sense, given what the characters in question have experienced and believe -- but if the author excuses, or worse yet, lauds their behavior, I'm out of there.
Long, but I really really hate that one.
* Having characters voice twenty-first century American values when the characters in question aren't twenty-first century Americans. Rebellious princesses who want to wed for love, I'm looking at you. (Also you, Mercedes Lackey.)
* Conflict that could easily be resolved if the characters stopped being idiots. You know how almost every romantic comedy ever features a Big Misunderstanding two-thirds of the way through, which could be easily resolved if the characters sat down and talked to each other? But instead, they go off and whinge about "Oh, s/he doesn't love me!" or "Oh, s/he was lying to me the whole time!" because the story needs an artificial climax? Yeah. That.
* Wangst, especially wangsty backstories. So your father raped you and your mother beat you and the other kids threw rocks at you and you had to live in the basement and eat stale bread and your hometown burned down and the bad guys kidnapped and tortured you and somebody shot your dog and OKAY, OKAY, WE GET IT, JUST STOP ALREADY. Listing the events doesn't elicit reader sympathy, showing how the events affect the character does.
* Flashbacks as vehicles for chunks of exposition.
* Love Conquers All. Gack. Love definitely gives you a good base of support, but you've got to do a lot of the legwork yourself. Love does not magically cause all the problems you ever had to go away. (Corollary: I don't care how good the sex is, there's no such thing as a Magical Healing Cock, and the Dripping Love Juices from the Magical Healing Cock cannot cure all that ails you.)
* Insufferably precocious children. Children as avatars of purity. Children as adorable impish sidekicks. Children with Mysterious Special Destinies.
...little bastards.
* "Spunky" heroines, because "spunky" usually translates to "shrill nitwit."
* Alpha heroes. I like my jerkasses to be canonically acknowledged as such, or for the macho bullshit to reach hilarious and/or dorky levels. Big rippling muscles and condescending attitudes do nothing for me, thanks.
...unless it's slash. Because then I'm subverting the social architecture such tropes rely on?
* Any kind of destined lovers. (Unless it's CLAMP, for some reason, probably because "destined lovers" in CLAMP means "you two are SO FUCKED.") There are far more compelling reasons for characters to get together.
* Romanticizing dark themes. Any time rape victims fall in love with their rapists, and it's not Stockholm's -- yeah. No.
* Slapstick and/or non-sequiturs as the primary source of humor. Good in small doses, but random =/= funny.
* Villains who are unashamedly evil but don't have the good grace to be entertaining about it.
* Codependency masquerading as True Love.
...and I could go on, but I'm getting really wordy. Ahem.
Anyway! What things do you love in stories? What things do you hate? Do you write the kinds of plots you love to read or view? Talk to me, guys. :D