Imagine if Ana was the billionairess alpha dom in Fifty Shades of Grey, and Christian the poor virginal sub.
Tropes work best when you don’t notice them, or can subvert them in some way. What is most important in your story are your characters, the relationship between them, and the ‘journey’ they go on. Tropes should serve your story, not the other way around. I saw a scene I had imagined between Sam and Jamie in a whole new way, and as such have changed it. Just as I was in the planning stages of Musical Games, I read a fantastic blog entitled ‘ Ten romance tropes that need to die already’. However as we move (hopefully) forward, I still find myself accidentally handling a trope in a way that offends even my own sensibilities. In today’s society it’s okay to write a female heroine who initiates sex without her being viewed as some kind of unstable jezebel. Triggered? Moi? Mais oui.Īs sexual politics and society changes, so do tropes. This may float many people’s boats, but it makes my blood run cold when I accidentally read a well-reviewed book that has a female ‘liking’ pain and humiliation at the hands of some jealous misogynist who controls every aspect of her life. After Fifty Shades of Grey exploded into the houses of pretty much everyone on the planet, the market boomed with the Billionaire alpha male dom/virgin female sub-trope. Other issues surround the tropes themselves. Rest assured, nookie was brought forward considerably in subsequent drafts. At the time of writing, I was nervous about writing my first sex scene and felt that I had to fall in love with Rory before he could have sex with Zoe/me… My alpha reader was literally screaming at me down the phone to make things happen between them.
When I was writing Highland Games, the first sex scene didn’t happen until ninety percent through. If you have the trope of continual ‘will they, won’t they’ sexual tension between your characters, then the longer it is eked out, the more annoyed your reader is likely to be. They have to have more to their relationship than the one point connection of a trope. So, if we have the ‘friends to lovers’ trope with no explanation as to why they are friends and what makes their relationship a success, then simply calling them ‘friends’ then having them get drunk and make out isn’t going to cut it. The first issue with tropes is when they are used with a heavy hand.
Bear in mind some tropes are loved by some and loathed by others. Here are the twelve most popular tropes used in romance novels.
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