by Sacha Black
Tropes, however, are much more useful. They are the patterns and maps we must follow in a genre to please our readers. Examples include a maverick cop in a crime novel, boy meets girl in romance, and the chosen one in a fantasy book.
Some classic cliché examples:
The perfect hero with no faults, also known as Mary and Gary Stu. Nobody likes Mary and Gary. Don’t invite them to play.
Knights in shining armor are equally annoying.
And much as I hate to say it, the dashingly handsome, naturally muscled, ‘don’t have to work to look good’ type of hero is also clichéd.
Some classic trope examples:
Young Adult Tropes
Orphan protagonist or distant parents.
Love triangles.
A graduation ceremony.
Fantasy
The chosen one.
The one magical sword/potion/device that will save the world and is conveniently difficult to locate.
Prophecy.
Crime
A dead body discovered at the start of a novel.
A crime fighting detective overly dedicated to the job.
A maverick detective.
A murderer either arrested or killed at the end of the book.
Serial killers.
Romance Tropes
Boy meets girl.
Enemies to lovers.
Forbidden lovers.
Matchmaker.
Societal class divide between love interests.
Happy ever after endings.
There’s one particular occasion when clichés are actually needed: historical context. Take gangsters. Today, a gangster puffing a cigar with a whiskey tumbler in hand, sat by an open fire is a cliché, but back in the 1920s and 1940s it wasn’t. Clichés develop over time. If you’re writing a story set in a particular historical or societal context, there will inevitably be some clichés you need to use in order to keep your story realistic.
And realism is paramount, it’s what makes your heroes believable. It also helps dispel the non-historical clichés.
Top Tip: Avoid clichés by having realistic motives, reasons why characters do the things they do, and avoid black and white explanations of both good and evil.
Herosplaining: there’s a modern turn of phrase - ‘mansplaining’, which refers to the occasion when a man explains something to a woman in a condescending way. I’m fully coining the term ‘herosplaining’ as a new word because heroes don’t need to explain the following:
The book’s theme.
A metaphor within your book.
Their revelation or epiphany.
Their feelings.
The explanation for any of the above, should be inherent through the action, dialogue and descriptive thoughts and feelings the hero has.
DEVELOPING YOUR HERO EXERCISES
Q. List five clichés not already mentioned.
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Q. Identify any clichés you might have accidentally put into your novel.
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Q. Now outline the changes you need to make to remove them.
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Q. Practice writing a paragraph from your hero’s point of view where she expresses her feelings without naming that feeling.
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DEVELOPING YOUR MARKET KNOWLEDGE HERO EXERCISES
Q. Name three examples from your genre or related genres, where a historical or contextual cliché is used.
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Q. Identify three heroes from your genre who you think are cheesy or clichéd.
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Q. Now explain why you feel each hero is cheesy. What puts you off? What would make them more appealing?
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Q. Describe three hero tropes you see regularly in your genre.
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Q. Describe three other patterns or tropes (non-hero related) that you think are important to readers.
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Q. How can you incorporate those tropes into your story?
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Q. Next time you find an example of herosplaining in a book you’re reading, note down the passage in the space below as an example of what not to do.
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9
STEP 9 - Start With Bang, Bang, Kapow
Like first impressions, you don’t have long at the start of your novel to impress your reader. I often hear advice that tells writers to start with action. But starting with action doesn’t mean blowing shit up and launching into epic battle scenes with no explanation.
If we boil book beginnings down to their simplest parts, then you need to do three key things:
Establish your protagonist’s ‘normal world.’
Tell the reader what the hero wants.
Show (or imply) what the stakes are to the reader (which is, of course, predicated on what the hero wants).
Establishing the normal world has two aspects to it:
Establishing what the ‘world’ itself is like.
Establishing what the hero is like in it.
Let’s start with number 1: establishing the world itself. It’s easy to fall into the flow of vomiting words on the page when you’re writing a novel, but that leads to information dumping, and a swollen prose with information that bores your reader. To prevent that from happening, let your hero experience your world through the natural course of your story and interactions with other characters. Only give world building information when it’s relevant to the story. Doing that allows your reader to immerse themselves fully in your world.
Information dumps are bad because:
They take the reader out of the protagonist’s mind and out of the present action (that’s one easy way to identify them. They aren’t talking about the story’s present action).
They remind the reader they’re reading.
It strips your plot of emotion.
Establishing what the hero is like involves conveying his personality, goals, and the stakes he’s facing. But when we say tell the reader the hero’s goal, we don’t really mean tell the reader what the hero wants. After all, we’re not supposed to tell the reader anything. You need to imply the hero’s goal.
Your protagonist’s goal should be specific enough that the reader can easily identify it. Michael Hauge in Screenplays That Sell, argues that there are five types of specific goal:
Win: winning that horse race I mentioned earlier, capturing the heart of a lover, being the victor in a battle against the lord of darkness, or Rocky winning the fight against Apollo.
Stop: stop the bad guy! But it could be stopping a bomb from going off as in the Speed movies, or stopping the Terminator from killing John’s mother, Sarah Connor. Or every James Bond film ever!
Escape: of course, it doesn’t have to be a prison as in the case of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, it could be escaping a husband, a job, a room as in Jack and Ma, in Room by Emma Donoghue, or some big brother style reality like Truman in The Truman Show.
Deliver: this could be all manner of things from money in a gangster film, to the Bible in The Book of Eli, where Eli must traverse an apocalyptical world and deliver the only copy of the Bible left in existence.
Get: in the movie The Italian job, Charlie Croker wants to get gold bullion. Lara Croft wants to find Pandora’s box in Tomb Raider. ‘Get’ is often found in adventure stories as they are usually quests to find something.
The hero should be driving the plot, even when they’re not actively engaged in the story.
DEVELOPING YOUR HERO EXERCISES
Q. What type of goal does your hero have? Circle the right answer.
A.1. Stop.
A.2. Get.
A.3. Deliver.
A.4. Win.
A.5. Escape.
Q. Describe your hero’s goal.
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Q. Write a scene where your hero conveys his goal to the reader without ever explicitly saying it.
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Q. What barrier will your villain put in your hero’s way to prevent him from achieving his goal?
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Q. Write a paragraph where your hero explores your world. Describe the world to your reader through the hero’s experience without information dumping.
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Q. If your hero could choose their entrance, what would it be? Write their perfect entrance scene.
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Q. Now write a scene set after your story ends and he’s achieved his goal. How is your hero different? How does that impact the way he moves, feels and thinks?
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DEVELOPING YOUR MARKET KNOWLEDGE HERO EXERCISES
Q. Thinking about your genre, name three heroes with each type of goal.
Hero 1
A.1. Stop.
A.2. Get.
A.3. Deliver.
A.4. Win.
A.5. Escape.
Hero 2
A.1. Stop.
A.2. Get.
A.3. Deliver.
A.4. Win.
A.5. Escape.
Hero 3
A.1. Stop.
A.2. Get.
A.3. Deliver.
A.4. Win.
A.5. Escape.
Q. What type of goal do you see most often in your genre? And what tropes work with it?
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Q. Taking your favorite hero from your genre, note down the elements you like most from their introduction.
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Q. What techniques does the author use to convey the hero’s goal without explicitly saying? And how can you implement those techniques in your own writing?
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10
STEP 10 - Sprinkling The Unicorn Dust — AKA The Hero Lens
Everything the hero does, sees, feels and thinks encloses your reader into a tiny literary lens. Nothing happens in your book unless your protagonist experiences it. Everything is channeled through her. I like to call this the ‘hero lens.’ And that lens is what your reader looks through when reading your story.
The lens is made up of four parts:
Actions.
Thoughts.
Dialogue.
Feelings.
The way your protagonist describes her experiences – the metaphors and descriptor choices – tells the reader about their personality. For example, an angry hero might see a town parade like this:
The villagers weave through the street brandishing placards like rifles. They’re soldiers marching into their last battle. The war-drum beat of their feet grinds into my ears, rattling my teeth and making my blood boil.
But a depressed hero might see the same town parade like this:
They move like a current, each person flowing past the next. Supposedly united in their cause, but as they chant and sing for solidarity, it sounds like the melody of mourners. I see the tiny fractures, the gaps they leave between each other, the scattered looks, the fear of isolation. Each of them is drowning in a swelling crowd, and yet, despite the mass of bodies, they’re all fighting alone.
In both of those examples, I haven’t used either the word ‘angry’ or ‘depressed’, and yet those emotions are implicit in the paragraphs. Why? Because of the hero lens. Each protagonist experiences the same event. Yet they feel, hear and see different things.
Humans are complex and often feel multiple emotions at the same time. When a loved one dies, mostly we’re sad. But if they’ve suffered a long illness, we can also feel relief.
To create depth, layer your characters’ emotions in scenes:
For example, the more explosive ‘outer’ emotions like anger, sadness or hate should be shown through the action and dialogue.
The inner emotions like regret or relief should be shown through thoughts and body language.
Habits and quirks are good ways of bringing your hero to life, but there’s a difference between them.
A habit is a routine movement, action or behavior often done in a repeated pattern. Usually, it’s automatic. It’s something that a reader would deem normal.
A quirk is more unique and idiosyncratic to your character, it’s a deliberate behavior. Usually, it will stick out to your reader or other characters.
Quirks typically help:
Define your character by distinguishing them from other characters.
Show the reader a character’s uniqueness rather than telling them.
Create tension.
Create conflict.
Create a barrier or flaw for the hero to overcome.
But that said, it’s not loud garish characters we remember. Usually, it’s the ones that have the largest impact on us, for example a character who:
Changed us in some way – making us think differently, or by giving us a personal realization.
Made us feel something.
Surprised us.
We related to because we saw part of ourselves in them.
Top Tip: using the element of surprise or ‘the unexpected’ is one of the greatest tools a writer has. Surprising a reader will grab their attention and make them remember your character.
Top Tip: use juxtapositions in your description. The reason juxtapositions are so effective at describing people is because they evoke such strong imagery.
You’ll need additional pens and paper for this section. Or open a fresh Scrivener or Microsoft Word document, whatever you prefer.
DEVELOPING YOUR HERO EXERCISES
Q. Thinking about your hero’s traits, what conflicting emotions is she most likely to feel?
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Q. How can you use those conflicting emotions to create barriers for your hero?
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Q. How can your villain take advantage of your hero’s conflicting emotions?
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Q. Write a scene where you predominantly use action to convey your hero’s true feelings.
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Q. Write a scene where you predominantly use thought to convey your hero’s true feelings.
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Q. Write a scene where you predominantly use dialogue to convey your hero’s true feelings.
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Q. Write a scene where you predominantly use feelings to convey your hero’s true feelings.
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Q. Write a scene where your hero feels an emotion strongly.
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Q. Now write the same scene and layer a conflicting emotion underneath it.
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Q. Rewrite the same scene again, only this time, write it with the complete opposite reaction.
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Q. Think about your friends, family, colleagues at work, cousin’s sister’s friend’s dog walker. Anyone and everyone you know. Note down three odd quirks or traits they have that would suit a character in a book.
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