Genres and Tropes: Horror

A “trope,” not to be confused with nor transformed into a cliché, is an element a reader expects as a characteristic of a genre (such as magical creatures or talismans in a fantasy story).  A cliché, on the other hand, occurs when you take a trope too far (rich-boy-loves-poor-girl romance, for example). The material difference between the two is what fresh, new characters, settings, or canon you bring to a familiar element.

So far, we’ve looked at science fiction and paranormal. This week: winner of the "ick factor" and most likely to be formulaic: Horror.


And the usual disclaimer: this is just to get you started and not intended to be an exhaustive list of all possibilities.

Possible tropes: Reclusive sociopathic character (think Jeffrey Dahmer).
OR
Sociopathic character who seems outgoing, articulate, charming, friendly, well-adjusted but is a cold-blooded serial killer. That's how Ted Bundy was able to get so many female victims to trust him.
OR
Can be a charismatic sociopathic cult leader with a God complex (think Charles Manson). You'll have to develop some extra characters as followers. A little research into cults is a good idea.

More commonly-confused words

Because I've hated everything I've tried to write or revise for this blog recently, I'm taking the easy way out and continuing the series on commonly-confused words. I'll be back with more tropes (I hope) next week.

hoard / horde:  Hoard is used mostly as a verb and means "to accumulate or stockpile and carefully guard" but can also be be used as a noun to denote your stash of Twinkies and pretzels or Six Million Dollar Man lunchboxes. Horde is a large group of people or mosquitoes. Contextually, we think of a marauding band of invaders, but for me, two spiders occupying the same square hectare qualifies.

loan / lend: It's easy if you know parts of speech, and when the words fit into only one category.Loan is a noun: "We can't get a loan to buy a car."  Lend is the verb: "Could you please lend me $35,000 so I can buy a car?"

farther / further:Usage dictionaries say these are interchangeable, but the Word Nerd won't let you get away without at least knowing that some of us prefer to make the distinction between the two.  Farther is generally used for literal distance:  "She walked one mile farther today than she did yesterday." Further is used figuratively:  "Since you're determined to see this your own way, I see no point for further argument on the subject."

rise / raise: Same as the difference between lay and lie as described in an earlier post.  Rise is intransitive and requires no direct object.  The sun rises; so does the bread dough. Questions can rise in your mind of their own accord, but you will need to raise them and give them voice. You raise your hand in class to ask a question or to take the oath on the witness' stand. You raise the window shade to let the sunlight into the room.  You raise a stink, an objection, a ruckus as well. (the words highlighted are direct objects, which receive the action of the verb),

stanch / staunch:  One's a verb, the other an adjective. "I applied several layers of gauze and deep pressure on his wound to stanch the flow of blood." "My family are staunch Catholics who attend Mass and Confession every week." I think the confusion comes from pronunciation.  Both are pronounced with an "ah" sound in the middle.

That's it for now. I'll be celebrating American Thanksgiving this week and slogging through the first wave of short stories submitted by my Creative Writing students.

Thanks for dropping by.

More genres and tropes: Paranormal

Last week it was science fiction. This week: the paranormal.

A “trope,” not to be confused with nor transformed into a cliché, is an element a reader expects as a characteristic of a genre (such as magical creatures or talismans in a fantasy story).  A cliché, on the other hand, occurs when you take a trope too far (rich-boy-loves-poor-girl romance, for example). The material difference is what fresh, new characters, settings, or magical canon you bring to a familiar element.
Tropes noted here are for reference and guidance only.  And the “possible conflicts” are just suggestions as well.

Paranormal: So much of the paranormal is rooted in mythology and folklore and varies from culture to culture and from one historic time period to another. You may need to do some research before attempting to write a story involving paranormal beings.

Possible tropes: Mundane setting with unusual beings such as ghosts, demons, shapeshifters, vampires, witches or wizards, werewolves.  The shapeshifter could be your kids' science teacher; your boss might have magical powers.

Getting started: some help with genres and tropes

My creative writing students have a short story project due in a couple of weeks.  I realize that creativity is not something you can turn on and off like a tap, but the class is only a semester in duration and there were certain benchmarks that were to be covered. I have to remind my students that published authors face deadlines all the time. 


My students are young--seventh and eighth-graders--and few of them have thought about genres and tropes as they relate to story structure. I began working on a cheat sheet to help them with story elements in the hopes of jump-starting their writing and thought maybe it would help the readers of this blog (all three of you, heh). The cheat sheet became a tome, so I will serialize it for you here, one genre at a time. Up first:  Science Fiction.

Had to share this

Being something of a fantasy newb, (see this post) and never having read the Lord of the Rings trilogy all the way through *dodges brickbats*, I'm not one of those fangirl types who knows which pipe tobacco Tolkien favored. However, I loved The Hobbit and read it at least twice in junior high.

Imagine my surprise and delight this morning when I signed in to my Google Reader RSS feed and one of the stories that showed up on Io9 was this --Tolkien's drawings for The Hobbit! The artwork was recently discovered among some of Tolkien's papers and has been digitized and put into a book to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the first release of the book.

There are links to the Guardian article, to at least one other blog, and to other sketchbooks by other authors which I don't have time to peruse right now, but if I find anything else awesome I'll come back and post later. Or spend your lunch time perusing them yourself.  You know you want to.