Tropes get a bad rap—and it's not entirely unearned. When they're over-used, or used incorrectly, then they can make a story feel predictable and cliche, stealing the potential for surprise and discovery that pulls readers into a story and makes them eager to get to the end. Tropes can also end up being crutches for writers, preventing them from reaching for more imaginative and distinctive ideas. When archetypes are used in place of fully developed characters, those people in the story feel flat, lacking in the depth, personality, and realistic flaws that make a character feel like a real person the reader can relate to. There are also some tropes that perpetuate stereotypes when they're used uncritically. This can happen even when the trope or archetype isn't overtly negative—having a old, wise Asian sensei, for instance, both feels derivative and dehumanizes the character, reducing them to one-dimensional traits based on their demographic identity rather than allowing them to be unique, fully realized individuals. 

But while they have a lot of potential pitfalls, tropes aren't inherently bad. They're a tool in the writer's toolbox and, like any tool, whether they're effective depends on how you use them. Especially for writers in genres like romance, cozy mystery, fairy tales, or space opera, readers expect to see certain tropes employed in a story, and if they're not present at all that can leave those readers disappointed. Some genres are defined by their tropes and a story doesn't really qualify for that label unless it includes certain conventions. For something to qualify as “bad boy romance”, for example, it needs to have an innocent and rule-abiding protagonist, a rebellious and edgy love interest, and an ending where they're together and live HEA: happy ever after (or are at least HFN: happy for now).

I recently finished watching the Netflix miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher and thoroughly enjoyed it. It had everything I like in my horror: a dollop of creepiness, a dash of humor, and a high body count and gore quotient (also Mark Hamill as an evil lawyer).

While there’s a lot to discuss about Fall of the House of Usher—I may do a future blog post on the panoply of Poe references if the spirit so moves me—the thing that most impressed me was how well it pulled off two simultaneous and complementary tropes, what I’ll call “inevitable demise” and “cruel and unusual death.”

These are often found side-by-side in horror movies. Most frequently, at least in my experience, they show up in slasher films, usually ones that are either intentionally campy or are just plain not that good. This isn’t coincidence. These tropes are difficult to pull off with any kind of storytelling grace. When paired, they tend to end up in narratives where subtlety and depth weren’t ever on the menu.