![]() ![]() When it comes to female representation in film and television, a lot of the tropes have become bad cliches. One of the things about trope is that they can become cliche when they're done over and over again with no innovation. You can subvert these and write better female characters though. Femme fatales like Brigid O'Shaughnessy from The Maltese Falcon or Selina Kyle from various iterations of Batman are there to tempt our detective only to stab her in the back. You see that in almost every noir.Īside from occupations, there are also people you can count on, like the femme fatale. One thing they both have in common is the idea that private investigators or detectives are involved. It's used elegantly in Veronica Mars, but it was removed from Blade Runner. If you take something like the voiceover, it's a hotly contested trope in the genre. I wanted to look at a subgenre like noir because I think we forget that tropes exist in everything. It refers to the last woman standing in a slasher film, like your Sidney Prescotts and your Laurie from Halloween. The final girl is a horror movie character trope that we see often. What twists can you put on the story?Īnd again, it's not just the story, it's also the characters. You can use these tropes for your horror story but try to find abandoned things that are scarier than just old homes. Many times we see things like abandoned places or haunted houses. ![]() Jump scares really build the world out and are why we go to see those movies in the theater. Inside horror movies, there are lots of things you can expect to see, but the most popular one is jump scares. We went over a couple of trope examples earlier, but I wanted to use our time here to really look at a few across different genres. Thus making it not feel cliche and still embracing what we expect in a horror. They killed off the blonde in the opening scene in an interesting way. So how did Scream subvert the cliche but embrace the trope? That cliche is tired and everyone has done it, but it's also a trope that people expect within the horror genre. For example, the idea of the buxom blonde being stabbed to death is a boring cliche in a slasher film. But the trope in war movie that Maximus is involved in is that he's a commander beloved by his soldiers.Ī cliche is a way you'd describe a trope that has been seen so many times that it feels tired or worn out. So an archetype might be something like a warrior character. Whereas a trope is a general term that, when you get specific with the kinds of tropes, usually only belongs to a certain genre.Īn easier way to look at it is that when you're writing the archetypes to help you build a character, a trope help you lean into the specific plot and expectations of what you're writing. An archetype refers to a kind character that transcends genre. Here's where things get a little tricky and come down to semantics. When we define trope meaning, we also need to define the genre of the story. The word has come to be used for common recurring rhetorical devices, motifs or even clichés within creative works. What is a trope? And what's the meaning of "trope"?Ī film or TV trope is the consistent or expected use of certain characters, situations, settings, and time periods across a specific genre. They were fine-tuned as things started getting written down and stories started to evolve. Genres date back to the ancient Greek and African legends. It's been in our literature and storytelling for thousands of years. I'm so happy you could join me on my exploration. How to use movie tropes and TV tropes in your writing So let's get ready for a lively discussion and see what we can dig up as we examine the deepest and darkest secrets in storytelling. Turns out, it's not just a figure of speech. How to use them, their meaning, and examples used in film and TV. Don't worry, we'll get into a more complicated one later - we'll also talk about common tropes you might see in film and TV. ![]() Well, in a way, that's a simple definition of the word trope. It often feels like we see the same beats, twists, and turns. ![]() If you love watching movies and TV, you probably get used to some of the things that seem to happen in similar stories. But I also can figure out the identifying characteristics that define a certain type of story. In this way, I can learn lessons and try to avoid the pitfalls of a certain genre. I do this to absorb what works and what didn't work for the people who tried it before. When I sit down to write a film or television show I try to watch as many shows or movies in a similar genre. ![]()
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