The first impulse of many creators is to unconsciously go with the obvious trope or cliche, which one sees when reading fan fiction or far-too-many pop corn films and Television shows created by people who should have known better.
The second stage is when a creator uses a cliche but points out that they are, in fact, using a cliche. They often don’t give us anything new. That alone is reason to want to avoid them.
The third level is when the creator uses a cliche or trope, but subverts it in some clever, unexpected way. The trick here is to be actually clever and unexpected, and far too often it’s just a variation of paragraph two above.
The fourth concept is for the creator to consciously avoid using cliches or tropes, and try to developing something new, or at least newish. This is nice when it works, but like the third level, only works when the selected option actually works, which isn’t guaranteed.
The fifth achievement is for creators to simply create to the best of their ability without regard to tropes or cliches. If all the various elements within a story are of high enough quality and invested with creativity, whether something is a cliche or a trope doesn’t matter, because typically people only notice or care about these issues when a story isn’t actually working. Noticing tropes and cliches is pretty much what people do when they’re bored with whatever they’re reading or watching.
It isn’t so much that we have seen something before that bothers us, it is that there is the (perceived at least) tendency to simple take a storyline and plug in the characters of a show/movie/story and call it a day. Where the problem arises is that it 1) doesn’t feel truthful 2) doesn’t explore new ground for the plot/characters/theme.
We don’t demand or need an entirely new plot or plot device or story arc, but we do demand that there is a reason for us to go down the same path, some stone that had previously been unturned, a small path that leads us to a slightly different area or perhaps a new and engaging way in which to travel the same road to the same destination
Cliches don’t bother me – they’re cliches for a reason. But when it feels like the writer is just stringing a bunch of cliches together and can’t present them in an original way, that’s lazy writing and that’s annoying.
But think about it, some of the tropes are good. They give you an even greater sense of what’s going on because you know the language. For example, Chekhov’s Gun. The rule is about set up and pay off and it’s done right most of the time, even if it is a trope. It isn’t a bad thing at all unless it’s handled in a clumsy way. But take something like Hot Fuzz, which TV Tropes points out is just one long example of Chekhov’s Gun because EVERYTHING that is planted in the first half becomes important to the way the story plays out in the second half, even the swan. That means they did WELL, not that they did something incorrect. And yet we call it a “trope” instead of good storytelling, because it happens a lot. Story isn’t the beginning or end but all the interesting places you can take it along the way.
-Dagobot
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