When you walk into a Barnes & Nobles, through their big double doors that seem like the entrance to a grand palace, you’ll find stacks of books scattered across tables. Upon closer inspection, each of these tables are labeled with little sign cards that read the name of a trope.
A trope, as it pertains to stories, is a plot structure, theme, storyline, character arc, etc. They are commonly defined with a few easy words, and more recently, have become something to seek out as an author. There are many, but a few of the most common ones are: enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, or even specific scenes like the “Who hurt you?” or an angry love confession.
Originally, a trope was the use of figurative language to achieve a purpose. As media evolved and trends grew among the media industry, TV tropes began to form what we commonly define as tropes. These tropes were used by many media companies to grab onto current consumers’ interests – creating the cycle of tropes and trends we see today.
However, with books, the proliferation of tropes came from booktok (book tiktok). Of course, tropes existed in literature well before social media and tiktok, however it was tiktok that spread it at a greater speed than ever before. People’s restlessness during the pandemic led many to find comfort in reading and in booktok. There, books were marketed as achieving a certain checklist of tropes. Tropes became the main source of advertisement for these novels that otherwise lacked any depth.
Rather than creating a well thought-out and crafted story, authors seemingly pander to their audiences by putting together as many tropes as they can, even if they don’t make sense (like an enemies-to-lovers story that takes place in a high school). This forces the next wave of books to all adhere to the same repetitive scenes and themes – all lacking the uniqueness that makes novels memorable. When defined by the newest trends, these books refuse to be timeless, instead relics of their time – which goes quickly out of style as the next trends filter through.
While many novels aren’t wholly original, they each have a certain charm, or spin, or twist that makes them worthwhile compared to all the other novels on the market. However, when you outline your novel using only tropes, and how you jump from one to the next, your novel lacks the charm that makes it differentiable to everything else on the market. Novels have become diminished and reduced to their barebones, and they now lack the creativity that makes them meaningful.
Tropes have also diminished media literacy, that fated trait we’re all supposed to have. But yes, media literacy is important, especially now when media is taking over so much of our lives. When readers choose to read something solely for the tropes they receive out of the novel – a novel poorly crafted in the first place – they forsake a genuine, interesting story for something material and surface-level. This has made many readers ask if a novel has certain tropes: when encountering a romance, they ask “is it enemies-to-lovers,” “is it fake dating,” instead of “is it a good story?”