Tropes – Jo Ann Schneider

18
Jul 18
0

To Trope or Not To Trope

I’m at the end of writing the third book in my New Sight trilogy, which gives me the opportunity to look toward my next series. It will by YA Space Opera, and I’m super excited about it!

In an attempt to see what readers want, I pulled up the worst YA tropes ever. I read through a few lists and agreed with most of them. Then I pulled up the best YA tropes ever. I read through a few lists and…well…just read on.

YA Tropes We Love

The Chosen One – Only this character can save the world!
Love Triangles – Because ever girl secretly wishes she had two hot guys after her..
Surprise, you have superpowers! – How else are they supposed to save the world?
The world is so broken – Hello Dystopian society. Why fight bad guys when you can fight an entire bad system of government?
The “Strong” female character – Because girls kick butt!
The Super Evil Bad Guy – Because…evil
The dysfunctional family – Don’t we all love to watch someone else’s train wreck?
The tall, dark, handsome love interest – who also has a tragic past!

YA Tropes We Hate

The plain and super boring main character – who is destined to save the world
Love Triangles – They’re both so wonderful, however can I choose?
Your super plain protagonist has super secret super powers – this sounds familiar
The Coming of Age story – Because some people hate adventure? So they set their story in a dystopian world and all is well.
#StrongFemaleCharacter – A dude in a girl’s body
Evil Villains – who are evil just because it’s hip
Parents who are actually children in big bodies
The tall, dark, handsome love interest – who is a jerk

Do you see what happened there? Apparently readers hate the same things they love. I can’t tell you how confusing that is.

Needless to say, this little exercise didn’t really help me much. Thanks a lot, internet.

14
Feb 18
0

Romance Shromance

Tags : romance Tropes

I may have mentioned my plan to resurrect my Babes in Spyland universe this year. I won’t take the time to tell you all about it, because it’s a big plan, but suffice it to say, that if you have a sense of humor, and love great characters and ridiculous super-secret-spy stories, that you’ll dig it.

This week I happened to be working on the romance stories for each of the characters. I didn’t even remember it was Valentine’s Day. Coincidence?

Probably.

If you know me at all, you know that I’m not a romance writer. Or a romance reader. As a matter of fact, the only romance books I’ve read in the past few years have been books that my friends have written that I have done a beta read for them.

Unless you count Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…I did read that one.

Anyway, I had to use my Google-Fu to find a list of commonly used romance plots. I tried TV Tropes, but had to run away, because it’s too much, and I could have gotten sucked in for at least two days. Maybe more. It’s dangerous there. Don’t do it. Trust me.

Once I got clear of TV Tropes, I started looking other places, and found a few lists that really helped.

So this is what you have to look forward to. The following plots will be utilized, and maybe twisted, in my Babes in Spyland universe: