Tag Archives: Tropes

Career and Lifestyle, Guest, Theory and Technique

17.43: Bodies. Why? (Depicting Disability)

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Your Hosts: Mary Robinette and Howard Tayler, with special guests Fran Wilde, C.L. Polk, and William Alexander

Whether or not you’re writing from your own experience, depicting disability in fiction is fraught. In this episode we’ll talk about some of the dos and don’ts in order to provide you with guidelines for disability depiction.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

 

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Write a scene with two characters – one abled, one disabled. Write two versions, each from the POV of a different character.

Air, by Monica Roe

Season 17, Theory and Technique

17.25: Archetypes, Ensembles, and Expectations

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Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Zoraida Cordova, Kaela Rivera, and Howard Tayler

We’ve talked about making every member of the ensemble meaningful. In this episode we’re discussing who, in archetype terms, everybody is. How can archetypes help us get started, how can they help us set reader expectations, and what are the archetype-related pitfalls we need to avoid? And finally, is ‘archetype’ even the correct term here?

Liner Notes: Here’s the “Black Superheroes with Electrical Powers” article.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Identify the archetypes of each character in your work-in-progress. Change that archetype or give them a sub-archetype, to try to branch out and create rounder, unexpected characters.

Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo

Season 16, Theory and Technique

16.50: Worldbuilding Finale: Making Deliberate Choices

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Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler

Here at the end of our 8-episode intensive series on Worldbuilding we discuss stepping away from the defaults, the clichés, and the tropes, and choosing every element deliberately. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the tropes. We’re just suggesting that they be included only after deciding we actually want them.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

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An essay question: What are your armored bears? What element of your work-in-progress makes you most excited about worldbuilding and why?

Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse

Archive Seasons 11-15, Season 13, Theory and Technique

13.35: Cliché vs. Archetype

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Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary, Dan, and Howard

Tropes, archetypes, and even cliches are tools in our toolboxes. There’s no avoiding them, but there are definitely ways to use them incorrectly. In this episode we’ll talk about how we shake off our fear of using tropes through understanding how they work.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Set a timer for 30 minutes.

SET THAT TIMER. 

With your life-jacket securely fastened, you may now go to tvtropes.com  and follow a trope like “boy meets girl” down the rabbit hole. Follow links. Dive deeply. When the timer goes off, close the page immediately. If you need a palate-cleanser, try watching “You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?“

About eight months after we recorded this episode, Brandon pulled The Apocalypse Guard back from the publisher. We’ll update this link with more recent information soon.

Archive Seasons 7-10, Season 09, Theory and Technique

Writing Excuses 9.50: Writing for the Enfranchised Reader

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Recorded live in front of the Out of Excuses students, a crowd of savvy readers if ever there was one, we talk about how to effectively write for readers who are familiar with the genre or story structure in which we’re writing. It’s a tricky problem, since genre fiction is supported in large part by the very tropes that prove problematic. Sometimes the solution is trope subversion, but that brings its own problems.

Dave Farland’s Writing Workshops sponsored us for this episode! Both Brandon and Dan have studied under Dave, and we’re all happy to wholeheartedly recommend his workshops to you. If you can’t fly to his place, well, visit MyStoryDoctor.com and take the online course. The coupon code for your Writing Excuses discount is EXCUSES, but don’t think that means you actually HAVE any of those…

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Take a mentor character, and outline a way for that character to NOT be killed off in order for them to not be more effective than the hero.