FANTASTIC REALMS
A load of old trope
Alex Davis begins a series on tropes and how to use them – or avoid them – with a look at fantasy’s most common tropes
Every genre has its tropes, and fantasy is no different. We’ve explored archetypes in these pages before, which refer much more to recurring characters and character types. Tropes are more general themes and motifs that occur within an area of fiction – they might be particular story beats, common concepts, even settings or locations. Rest assured that when you go delving, you’ll find any number of these out there – and it can be argued that these are what make a genre distinct. The tropes within romance, crime, literary fiction, SF, horror, western etc are liable to be very different, although there may sometimes be crossing-over points. Whatever genre you like, you will have seen them, and it’s possible that you either love them as they are or have maybe grown a little tired of them and are looking for something new.
This article is the first in an extended look at tropes within the fantastic genres – fantasy, horror and science-fiction – and how they can be used well, or indeed how you might wish to put a new spin on some of these tried and true concepts. While of course I couldn’t possibly hope to cover every trope in these couple of pages, we’ll tackle some of fantasy’s main common threads here, with a look at how to do them well – and ways you might be able to duck them entirely.