DISCUSSION: ATTENTION WRITERS! Your Favorite Tropes and Plot Devices?

[Ho-oh]

Title says it all.

 

[Akiyama]

I don't know what this "Trope" you speak of is. So I think a lot of others don't know what it is either, should explain that.

Plot Device: it's the characters man; everything they do, think, and say reacts with other characters and the setting at hand. Past, present and future events affect them. Those events can be the jounrey fic with a girl picking up a Torchic at the lab and going to be a Pokemon Master (I know it's been done).

Really, sometimes you just got to go back to the basics of plot. Start, middle and end. Don't make the start so long that it makes the other parts smaller, don't jump into the middle without a start--ensure the action here too, and the ends would be unexpected but then "oh wait, of course!".

I don't know the names of all those devices, but if someone talked about it I would remember.

 

[Every Breaking Wave]

Favourite plot devices? Foreshadowing is right at the top for me. I like trying to use all sorts of techniques though, and not just related to the plot.

 

[White Len]

Foreshadowing, Romance Arc (sue me.), the occasional Xanatos Gambit...Crowning Moment of Awesome, Parody Villain Sue (now now, we can't have a sue for our main character, can we?), Our Monsters Are Different, The Chosen One (Usually subverted or even averted), sometimes Identity Amnesia...the list goes on...

 

[Yoshi-san]

Crouching Moron Hidden Badass

 

[Aladar]

Trust me, the full fic would take me an eternity to write... I'll just list what tropes I use in my current fic, kay?

So, here we go...:

Foreshadowing... duh!
The Cloudkockoolander (I'm sure I'm writing it wrong...)
Melting Ice Queen
Badass Grandpa
I'm Proud Of You, Son Guy... very very very altered but important nonetheless
The Chosen One (ore more likely the self-chosen one)


And many others... let's not just list, let's discuss!


And here's a suggestion for a discussion:

Do you think the Chosen One trope at it's most fundamental is cliche?

 

[Blastoise]

I don't know what this "Trope" you speak of is. So I think a lot of others don't know what it is either, should explain that.

I have heard that using Google is a difficult endeavor

More specifically, TVTropes

That said, I think listing off "what are your favorite tropes" is kind of an "eh" subject to tackle, unless you're using your story to really mess with genre conventions (see: Discworld): most people use them unconsciously or play them straight because they saw it somewhere and decided it would work/be cool/why not?

Do you think the Chosen One trope at it's most fundamental is cliche?

In what "fundamental" sense: the sense that the hero is chosen by destiny et al to be the one that slays the dragon, or in the sense that the main character of a story is at the center of events that happen to them?

 

[woops]

Crouching Moron Hidden Badass

This, along with the following:
Foreshadowing (Everyone's doing it!)
Chosen One, though only subverted
Xanatos' Gambit
Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him
Chekov's Gun

 

[Akiyama]

Huh? That's all there is to Tropes? Well that's kinda boring to me, seriously what's so big about it?

"I have heard that using Google is a difficult endeavor"

I don't want to google it. When I get a topic that has only four words to its body, am I going to research that? No, maybe it's different for you, but that's me. Because I will not give that respect to bother searching for anything if I feel there's no respect towards me. And that's my input.

Edit: yes, I am obnoxious. When I feel instulted I do that, and I just don't fit into this community yet, you'll get that from me for a while.

 

[Blastoise]

Huh? That's all there is to Tropes? Well that's kinda boring to me, seriously what's so big about it?

Tropes are storytelling devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations.

The "I'm a X-year old kid getting my first Pokemon from Professor Y" opening that characterizes a lot of journey fics is a Pokemon fanfiction trope, for example. Tropes aren't necessarily bad, but sometimes it's worth taking a look and seeing if you're using them in an interesting way rather than copy-pasting a fic that reads like a rote repetition of 97% of every other Pokemon fic written.

But you're right, why would we want to talk about literary motifs and themes? On a fanfic subforum, no less?

"I have heard that using Google is a difficult endeavor"

I don't want to google it. When I get a topic that has only four words to its body, am I going to research that? No, maybe it's different for you, but that's me. Because I will not give that respect to bother searching for anything if I feel there's no respect towards me. And that's my input.

You could have spent one minute of your life using Google to look up the definition of a common literary term, or you could have spent that one minute typing up a post waxing obnoxious about how you don't know the term. Guess what you chose?

 

[Falconwing]

I have so many, but Xanatos Gambit and Ragtag Bunch of Misfits are my main ones.