09. Tropes with Jennifer Hilt

Using Tropes as Story-Building Blocks: Jennifer Hilt

In this episode, Beth Barany interviews Jennifer Hilt, author of several books on tropes for fiction writers, to explain what tropes are, why they matter, and how writers can use them.

Hilt describes discovering tropes while teaching story development and realizing they form a common storytelling language across genres, including in her favorite books.

She defines tropes as commonly understood meanings that function as neutral story building blocks, distinct from clichés and stereotypes, which carry negative connotations and are often underdeveloped.

Hilt explains how tropes can provide a framework for outlining, deepen character development through prompts like family dynamics and secrets, and support revision by revealing fuller character lives.

She also notes action tropes like road trip and journey can help with plotting and emotional arcs.

00:00 Meet Jennifer Hilt
 00:45 How Tropes Sparked Research
 01:44 Tropes vs Cliches
 02:56 Why Writers Need Tropes
 03:54 Secrets as Story Fuel
 05:08 Action Tropes for Plotting
 05:21 Road Trips and Journeys
 05:43 Wrap Up and Next Episode

Resource:

“Tropes for Fiction Writing with Jennifer Hilt – How To Write the Future podcast, episode 94” Episode 94: https://writersfunzone.com/blog/2024/04/01/tropes-for-fiction-writing-with-jennifer-hilt/

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Transcript

BETH BARANY 0:00

In this episode, I have a special guest, Jennifer Hilt, who has written several books on tropes for fiction writers. I'm having her explain what tropes are, what they're good for, how she got started, and a little bit about how you can think of tropes. There are tons of resources online regarding tropes, so I'm gonna just keep today's episode short, and if more questions arise, please let me know. Come to the Edit Lab, ask your questions, and I can create a new premium episode just for you all on tropes. So I'm gonna let Jennifer explain, and enjoy

JENNIFER HILT 0:45

when I started this project, I started it because I was doing a lot of teaching with writing and I discovered by accident that when I was talking with a student about story development, we would. struggle for common ideas. and I discovered, Oh, those common ideas that we're talking about, those are actually tropes. and when I mentioned it, a student would be like, Oh, but I don't, I want to write a good story. I'm trying to be creative and original and all that. and so I was like, thinking, yes, but how come we need to have these words in common in order to build a story? So that kind of set me on this very long multi year project of basically, reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on and watching all kinds of things and thinking about what is our common storytelling language across pretty much All genres. And that was when I started to see, in, my all time favorite books, there were tropes in them. And this was, like, completely shocking to me, because I also thought, tropes were, like, oh, we shouldn't. This was probably, five years ago. And at that time, it's like we hear the word trope like all the time. It's really popular for us to be talking about it. But at the time it wasn't so much that way. I started to think okay, what is a trope and is a trope the same thing as a cliche or stereotype? And As I started working on these things, I nailed down the ideas that a trope is a commonly understood, definition, meaning. So if I say orphan, everybody knows what that is. And so these are actually story building blocks because we have them all over. then, I thought about, there's different kinds of tropes. The other thing I understood about tropes besides them being, commonly understood is that I liked that they didn't have any kind of, positive or negative connotation. They just were a word. when I started to think about how's that different than a cliche. Cliches would have like negative meaning to it, like a dumb jock or dumb blonde or gold digger. And, So that was how I was in the process of okay, you can just have these words that are commonly understood that we can use to immediately communicate with the reader, as like story stepping stones and then go on to how our story is different, unique, specific, et cetera. And, really trying to stay away from the cliches and stereotypes, which I really just think are not well developed.

BETH BARANY 2:49

Oh, I like that. And I really like what you said about story building blocks. I think that is a very helpful concept. Can you dig into a little bit more how it's helpful to writers who are maybe at the beginning stages of writing, maybe they're planning, maybe they're writing their first draft, or even when they're editing in whatever stage of revision they're at, what is useful about knowing, oh, that's a trope, or oh, the orphan, or oh, the red herring, or oh, the faster than light travel? How can it be helpful at those different stages?

JENNIFER HILT 3:19

I think tropes can do a lot of helpful things for us. And I think in building a story, they can give us like a solid story structure, almost like a frame, a framework or a skeleton. and so we can use tropes to to develop our characters. one reason I've started using them, in that way is that it was always hard for me when the people would say what's your character wearing? Or what's in your character's refrigerator? I needed to be like deeper than that. To understand, like I needed to really know, okay, so what's the deal with their family? do they have a family? Do they not have a family? who's speaking to who, just all these kinds of things and tropes have helped me do that. Because it gives me like specific things to think of. For example, like secrets, I'm a huge fan of the whole trope secret storyline. I think trope, secrets are really like a superpower in storytelling. they give so much motivation. They can be used in all, not just the main characters, but side characters. They can appear later in the story. there's all this stuff we can do with them. And, it was just a revelation to realize, Oh, that's a trope. so what's this character secret. it takes me some thought to dig around to come around to those things. then I'm better able to understand them and I'm better able to be like, okay, this is coming to be a real person, not just a flatter character, which is how in the beginning things are until we keep growing, developing our characters. So I think that it can be really helpful when you're first starting out in terms of just outlining. tropes can be helpful later when you're looking at it thinking, how else can I show this character better, you know what other things are going on for them, because the important thing to remember with our characters is, they have full lives like we do. And so there'll be things happening with them that we might not see on the page, or you know in the movie or whatever but we can. Communicate some of that through their conversations with friends or secrets or, different kind of flashbacks, things like that. So all those tropes can help us do all those things. And particularly there's a lot of, action tropes that can be helpful with plotting because. A lot of times the beginning seems to go well for most of us, but then we're like, the middle,

BETH BARANY 5:18

What kind of, give me some examples of some action tropes? so

JENNIFER HILT 5:21

There's like things like road trip and journey and those kind of things. Like road trip, I tend to think of as physically like the characters are, on an actual, some type of conveyance getting somewhere and then journey. It can be that, but I also think of it as what's their emotional arc? How is that working for them and we need to have that in all our characters, but we also need to be able to show it?

BETH BARANY 5:44

I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jennifer Hilt. If you would like to listen to the full interview, go ahead and check out episode 94, uh, where I talk with Jennifer about tropes in depth Write long and prosper