Like all other book lovers, the more books I read the more I notice tropes I can’t stand. Do you ever pick up a book, read the description, and immediately know it’s not for you? I find that happening a lot recently as I dip back into reading and browsing the shelves at my favorite bookstores more frequently. There are a few tropes I’m tired of either because they’re overused and have overstayed their welcome or I just don’t care for them when it comes to personal preference.
At one point, some of the tropes I’m talking about were fairly popular and you’d see them in a lot of highly spoken of books. I feel like maybe those once popular tropes were worn out in a short amount of time. Kind of like how too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Whatever reason, I think these can be left behind for good, or at least shelved for a little while.
The Misunderstood Genius
There’s something about reading a story written from the point of view of a highly intelligent character that comes across as pretentious. Yes, I’m even looking at you, Sherlock Holmes. Characters that fall under this category always feel as if they’re trying to prove a point, or the language is so far beyond the grasp of your average reader it feels like a chore getting through the story. No one likes spending time around a know-it-all who spends the entire social interaction proving how smart they are. Let the genius speak for itself and don’t be an insufferable dick.
When two best friends fall for each other…but it takes one of them getting into a relationship for the other to realize they’re in love
Yes, I know this is painfully specific. This particular flavor of “romance” makes me cringe for a lot of reasons.
- I don’t think the idea of someone ruining a relationship because they’ve suddenly realized their best friend is “the one”, when they’ve had years prior to come to that conclusion, is healthy.
- Realistically, would you want to date someone who actively, or even passively, tried to push you and your significant other apart?
Nothing about this screams love or romance. The characters always come across as bitter, as if their friend owes them something in return for their kindness–like the whole “friend zone” myth. Why would I like a character like this? I have no sympathy for anyone moping about because they didn’t have the balls to tell their friend how they actually feel about them. Two friends can simply fall in love without wrecking someone else’s emotional well-being in the process.
The unassuming chosen one who saves the world and suddenly becomes special
I guess the Harry Potter series does technically fall under this umbrella, but the way it’s executed works. Harry is everyone’s favorite savior, yet I can’t say the same for the characters who followed in his footsteps. This is one of those tropes I’m mostly tired of seeing. It’s not objectively bad, though it has been exhausted over the years by more than a few series. Some of our heroes never wanted to be heroes in the first place, embracing their so-called responsibility and becoming miserable people in the process. It’s also crazy to think one single person is responsible for saving humanity or even a large group of people. A task like that sounds more like a burden than anything.
The bad boy who turns good
It’s really the good boys who are a little bad, or very bad when they need to be, that are my favorite. They carry a complexity the truly bad boys generally don’t have in my opinion. The bad boys aren’t only getting into messes or breaking the rules; more often than not they end up being assholes who don’t care about anything. I don’t care for the idea of reforming a bad boy who lacks self-awareness. Being bad for the sake of being bad and treating people like shit isn’t cool or attractive; it ends up coming across as very one-dimensional. I want liking a bad boy character to feel risky without forgiving his missing sense of respect for other people.
Characters who are “different” posed as being superior to everyone else
I know I’m not the only one who is tired of supposedly oddball characters that go against the grain and are somehow better than everyone because of their differences. I don’t care for people like this in real life who find joy in pointing out all the ways they’re unlike general society, whether that means having obscure interests, not feeding into popular trends, or listening to musicians no one else has heard of before. This trope reminds me of being a teenage girl again and feeling pretty weird and awkward, not special, because I didn’t wear the same clothes as everyone else or understand how to do my makeup. Those things can be considered quirky and interesting now, but they haven’t always been. We’re all different, and there’s such a beauty in that, so let’s not attach some moral superiority to characters when they don’t follow social norms to make a point.
The point here isn’t to hate on books and writers that use these tropes and clichés. All of this is simply my opinion as a reader who has encountered these ideas so often in my reading experience over the years. As a writer, I know the imagination is quite literally an endless pool of ideas; I think we can at least try to break away from what we know to create something better for books in the future. Characters and storylines don’t have to fall into the same old clichés to be likable.
The Rummy Writer 