Site Showcase: Tropes Galore. And then some more tropes.

I found the best writing site ever.

I don’t say that lightly. Have you ever read anything like that here before? Probably not.

This is one of those “how the hell did I not stumble across this site years ago?” sites. And I have only run across one site like that ever. This one.

How useful is this site? I have been browsing it nightly for two weeks.

Two weeks.

This site bills itself as “catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction.” And they’re not bragging. It’s been so useful that I joined the site. I don’t think I joined a site since I joined AbsoluteWrite about six or seven years ago. (At least, I have not joined any sites that I stuck with.)

So without further ado, I would like to introduce you to this awesome site:

tvtropes.org, to be exact.

Yes, it is a very unlikely name. It is so much more than TV Tropes. It’s a collection of tropes found in every imaginable type of fiction. If the trope has been used in fiction, on tv, in film, in comic books, in RPG games, in wrestling, and even in advertising, it will be here. Described in glorious, wiki-comprehensive detail. And often funny, too.

What can you use it for? Well, I vetted the site by reading all the articles on time travel. I had never seen my particular ideas for time travel in fiction or at the movies before, so I started looking for them. Three or four nights later, I was satisfied that my time travel ideas are pretty damned original.

Some of my ideas do come close to the tropes, such as the Stable Time Loop. Except my characters did not cause their own trouble in the past. Someone else did. And I admit to using a dash of Applied Phlebotinum. I try to keep the fantasy elements understated. My characters do not fit any of the character tropes I have seen so far, but Brad is a bit of a Jerk Ass–not  totally. He does grow as a character.

I found a trope from my warrior woman trunk novel–the Amazonian Beauty. Except Abriel wasn’t much of a beauty (she was charismatic instead). Other than that, this trope is pretty much dead-on.

Hmm. Maybe that’s why it’s a trunk novel.

Talia is kind of like the Hooker with the Heart of Gold, except she was never actually a hooker. She was just … easy.

I can’t find any tropes for Gretchen, or for Mike and Adele from East of Yesterday. Some of my side characters are tropish, however, so I need to work on those.

Some of my favorite books have extensive write-ups, such as The Deed of Paksenarrion and Dragonlance.

So why don’t you head over there, check out your favorite tropes, and report back on what you found? You could look me up while you are there; my handle is lostintime. (At the moment, I have done nothing with this handle except create it.)

Of course, if you’re like me, you may get lost in that site and I may never see you again.