Tropes Gone Bad | When Cliches Become Rip-Offs

Let us all take a moment to reflect on certain, familiar storyline that I’m sure many of us will recognize without much prompting:

•    A young farm boy meets an old and wise mentor who hints at having a mystical past.

•    The mentor tells the farm boy that he too shares this mystical power.

•    The farm boy flees from pursuing forces with his mentor after his family is murdered.

•    The farm boy is trained in the ways of combat and mysticism by his mentor.

•    A scruffy, adventurous character is introduced who travels with them.

•    Together, they save a princess from a terrible prison, where the old mentor meets his fate.

•    The princess leads the remainder of the team (as well as the enemy) to a hidden location that houses a rebellious force that stands to challenge an oppressive and decidedly evil government entity ruled by a half-insane man that is out to corrupt or destroy the farm boy.

•    The farm boy is called to a mysterious forest psychically by the last of their ancient, knightly order.

•    The farm boy studies under the tutelage of the master as his friends proceed to have their own adventures.

Sound familiar?  Of course it does.  It’s the story line of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon – the first book of the Inheritance Cycle.

Why?  What did you think I was talking about?

While Paolini’s debut novel series certainly contained many, many, many tropes that I found myself very fond of, the story as a whole was a direct and none-too-subtle rip-off of Star Wars.  Many have said that Star Wars itself was a rip-off of classical Greek monomyth story structures – which may be true, but at least George Lucas had the courtesy to not entirely retell a story that already existed.

The fact of the matter is, reading Eragon and its sequel, Eldest, shows that the entire storyline was just ripped and reset into a medieval atmosphere.  Star Wars with metal swords, magic, demons, dragons, and demihumans.

I honestly did enjoy the Eragon and Eldest novels, but I have no intention of reading the third book and forward.  I figure that re-watching Return of the Jedi will pretty much fill the rest of the story out.

For these reasons, I was never able to fully respect Paolini as a serious writer.  This may be because he was very young when he began the series, and was only 19 when Eragon was published.

Interestingly enough, Christopher Paolini is almost exactly 1 month older than I am.  Looking back at some of the drivel I wrote in my teenage years makes it easy for me to relate to the guy on some fundamental level.  I might even be willing to give him a second chance if and when he moves on from Inheritance into a new series of novels.

But, for now, I will have to settle for the vague illusion of good storytelling by mixing in science fiction tropes with fantasy tropes.  Good luck on your future endeavors, Mr. Paolini.

What Is A Trope In The Science Fiction & Fantasy Genre?

The word “trope” literally refers to the use of figurative language in any media – be it literature, television, movies, or even real life.  Examples of tropes used in this fashion include:
•    Allegories
•    Ironies
•    Metaphors
•    Hyperboles
•    Oxymorons
•    And Puns

However, modern language has come to describe common literary devices as tropes – especially literary devices which are considered recurring, overused, and cliché.

The list of considered tropes in the science fiction and fantasy genre is already massive – and it continues to grow every day.  As the old saying goes, “there is nothing new under the sun.”  While that sentiment may be true – in some dubious and arguable manner – I would much prefer to ponder another term.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  There are quite literally hundreds-of-thousands of novels, movies, games, television shows, and short stories floating around that use familiar plot devices and character archetypes – and for good reason;  they work.

Or, at least they used to work.  Publishers today tend to frown upon such literary devices as:

•    Faster Than Light Travel – Warp speed, hyperdrives, and wormholes.  I love them all.  Faster than light travel is the perfect medium to open up a whole line of good, original sci-fi storylines.  Publishers, however, hate them.

•    Demi-Human Races – Elves, dwarves, goblins, and the like can add an air wonder and fascination to any high fantasy story.  Publishers hate these, too.

•    Cryogenic Suspension – Okay, so no warp drive.  Solve that by having a ship travel for centuries at a snail’s pace with its crew serenely frozen in cryo-tubes.  Sorry, cryogenics is a trope that will get your story in the slush pile for sure.

•    Deus-Ex Machina – This one is complicated.  Is it okay to end a story with “and the gods fixed it,” or “it was the gods all along?”  Maybe.  But using Deus-ex as an excuse to overcome a convoluted and contrived storyline should not be acceptable.

•    ET-Ex Machina – ET-ex machina is similar to Deus-ex machina… expect with more aliens.

•    Space Westerns – Cyborg sheriff keeps the peace on an alien planet full of downtrodden colonists.  Sound’s interesting right?  It was called “The Last Badge,” and it warranted one of my favorite rejection letters to date:  “Good story, but your themes are a little too cliché.  Not what we’re looking for at this time.”

•    Dark Vs. Light – Evil wizards and irreproachable paladins are out.  Gray characters that are simultaneously cooperating and stabbing each other in the back are in.  I personally love characters like this – but sometimes it’s nice to have the battle-lines drawn neatly in the sand, too.

There is host of other devices such as these that will get a would-be (and perhaps should-be) author laughed out of magazine submissions.

Publications today are looking for good, highly original, character-focused material.  And that’s fine – in fact that’s how it should be.  The coolest robot-armor doesn’t mean anything if you don’t care about the pilot in its head.

Unfortunately, many publications have expanded this criteria to such constraining extents that it stifles the creativity of many decent authors that have truly wonderful stories to tell.  Placing such constraints on the creative freedoms of authors forces them to write in realms that they never intended to – the first step to becoming a total hack.

If George Lucas had been focused on providing gray characters to please the critics at the time, the epic struggle of the Rebellion against the evil Emperor would have suffered – and Star Wars may well have fallen into obscurity.

Likewise, if Joss Whedon had made his main character seem too much like an established archetype, the genius of the Firefly series may have been canceled after only one season.  Wait a second… THERE!  YOU SEE!

Firefly really is the perfect example of a marketable trope.  Badass outlaw space-cowboys in a half-busted ship taking order from a Han Solo clone.  These overused plot and character devices not only earned Firefly a loyal fan base, but the single season that aired continues today to draw in new, die-hard fans.

The fact of the matter is this:  Sci-Fi and fantasy tropes are not only what drew us into those genres in the first place, they are still marketable to a whole new generation of geeks like us.

These are the reasons that I wanted to start Tropes of Sci-Fi & Fantasy – because I not only want to read and write new stories that involve tropes, I want to show the world that eliminating tropes does nothing more than hurt the genres that should still be displaying them proudly.