Welcome (back) to the Scarlet Quill Society!
In 2023 YeahWrite’s free workshop is going back to the basics with a focus on tropes, the sometimes imperceptible and often underrated building blocks of writing. Check out the bottom of this post (and every post) for a roadmap to the year. We’ll be updating it with links each month as the posts go live, so that you can navigate through easily. And don’t forget to check out the Writing Resources tab up **gestures vaguely upwards** there to find our previous workshop series on prompts and editing (not at the same time).
The biggest bonus of the Scarlet Quill Society is that there are actual club meetings. That’s right! Once a month we’ll get together with you and talk about that month’s subject, answer questions, and record the chat for posterity. So if you have an easier time taking in information that way, or if you’re left with lingering questions after a monthly topical post, you’ve got a chance to get the full picture! Check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.
So I’ve got all these tropes… do I have a story?
Now that we know what tropes are and how they work – remember, for our purposes, a trope is a building block of storytelling, a device or pattern of events that is used to solve problems or communicate meaning efficiently and effectively – it’s time to see how they fit into stories. This month we’ll be looking at how to turn those building blocks into bridges, spanning the gaps between the parts of the story you know and want to write.
Ultimately, tropes can be a sort of “step 2” for the classic formula:
- Step 1: get idea
- Step 2: ??
- Step 3: profit
That’s actually a list I’ve called a microstory before, and I stand by what I said. But there’s a little problem. What’s step 2? Similarly, how do you get from “characters exist” to “and they’re gonna do a thing together” or from “Here’s a person living their life” to “Oz!” Well hang in there because that’s what we’re talking about this month, bridge-building tropes that can move your characters from where they are to where they need to be.
Spoiler Alert
Let’s call this episode of the SQS “I watched it so you don’t have to.” No, kidding, because it’s one of my favorite shows. And at 30 years old (exactly, as of January, happy belated birthday) it’s well past the statute of spoliation. Plus, bonus, it features one of the most awesome Black characters on mainstream (read: white-centering) TV in my lifetime, so it’s a good fit for Black History Month. (The Innocence Project suggests this list of books for readers looking to become more educated during February. I’d like to note that for some readers the whole list is retraumatizing, and offer this list instead, which centers Black excellence and joy through Afrofuturism.)
ANYWAY what were we talking about? Oh yeah. My deep and abiding love for Benjamin Sisko and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Honestly, Trek is fertile ground for a discussion of tropes, and we might as well dive in. [theme music plays].
As a recurring show with an overarching plot that is told via complete self-contained episodes, Trek and tropes are made for each other. In each 45-minute block we need a complete plot that engages at least three major characters, introduces or furthers an idea that is going to be part of the Main Plot ™, and resolves satisfactorily. We should learn a few things about each character, and we should engage on both a happy and sad level with the plot. As you can see, there are a TON of options for how to do that, but there are also a few things that are NOT going to be resolved with tropes. For ease of discussion I’ll call those gems.
I’m a pretty visual person, but I know not everyone is so there’s a handy visual aid. See the lanterns? Those are the really critical and unique bits of the episode. The rest of the blocks are there to make sure the lanterns have a place to sit. In your work, lanterns might be a specific scene between two characters, such as Sam telling Frodo “I can’t carry the ring, Mr. Frodo, but I can carry YOU.” Or maybe it’s your Council of Elrond moment, a fundamental piece of worldbuilding that explains a whole lot about the unique politics of this specific world and how they affect each other. But why am I talking about Lord of the Rings when Trek is here for me?
In this month’s “Rowan Rewatches Things” (that’s not real but leave a comment if you wish it was and I’ll consider it) I watched, um. A lot of DS9, but the episode I picked was Season 1, Episode 3: Past Prologue. I chose it because it doesn’t have a lot of spoilers, the show was still in heavy worldbuilding mode, and because the pilot two-parter, Emissary, was frankly giving me Too Many Feelings, and screaming “why aren’t you watching this show it’s so great” wasn’t a productive way to teach.
I’ll start by picking out the gems, then we’ll look at how they’re connected and introduced with tropes and what other tropes might have been used instead. (Quick worldbuilding primer: the show takes place on a space station, Deep Space Nine, whose nearest planet is Bajor. Bajor has just been liberated from a half century of occupation by the Cardassians, and is debating whether to join the United Federation of Planets. Because this show was filmed in the 1990s, you could definitely map “Poland, Russia, the EU” from that timeframe onto these points politically, if that makes it easier to think about—if the EU had a military force called Starfleet and Poland had access to a magic space tunnel that could revolutionize travel and exploration instead of a couple ports that are frozen solid half the year.)
So, the gems:
- Garak, a simple tailor. Definitely not a spy left on the station when the Cardassians left and Starfleet and the provisional Bajoran government took over.
- Major Kira’s personal loyalty conflicts as a Bajoran officer in a Starfleet chain of command.
- the Kohn-Ma, a small group that was active in the Bajoran resistance. Continues to commit acts of violence involving Cardassia, Cardassians, and Bajorans they feel are not hard-line enough against Cardassia and for Bajoran isolation.
These are the things the writers really REALLY need to tell us about. Everything else in the episode is a building block that supports that. This doesn’t mean the rest of the episode is disposable, of course! It needs to hang together and be entertaining and suspenseful and it really does manage that. Let’s see how the tropes fall. I’ll boldface the gems as we come to them.
Each episode opens with a “teaser” – a slice of life moment for the main characters that gives us some information about them and how they interact. It also often sets up something that will happen later in the story. The teaser is itself a structural trope. It can look like this, or it can look like a “here’s the story, no wait, it’s actually the epilogue! TEN YEARS EARLIER…..” moment. It might be a poem, or a letter between two characters. Can you think of some other examples of isolating a piece of information that will be important later, that isn’t precisely foreshadowing the event it’s needed for?
In this case it’s a conversation in a bar between the hapless but well meaning Doctor Bashir, who supposedly gave up a brilliant career to come out and “prove himself on the frontier.” (<– This character is a trope. If you don’t believe me, watch Firefly.) Anyway, a conversation between Bashir and Garak, a simple tailor. The conversation sets up that Bashir is still acting like he’s living in a spy novel, whereas Garak is probably actually a spy who is doing his best with the material he’s been given but is just about as tired of this feckless fool as the viewer is at this point. Oh well. Bromance incoming!
Right. The plot. First, the disposable named character (DNC) for the episode is introduced. These types of characters are necessary to plot, and important enough to have names, personalities, and fully developed backstories. They have fanfiction written about them. They’re not interchangeable, but they’re often archetypes. This DNC, Tahna Los (Bajorans use a family name first naming structure, so Los is his personal name), is introduced as he is being pursued by Cardassians. He is clearly injured and struggling, in a small ship that cannot possibly stand up to the warship chasing it. This introduction establishes that at a minimum Tahna shares an enemy with our protagonists, the crew of DS9. The impression is strengthened when he recognizes Major Kira. The viewer is then given the infodump on the Kohn-Ma, which will be information it’s useful to have much later in the series.
What other stack of tropes can you think of that would accomplish: set this character up as “on the same side as our protagonist”?
To build a bridge to the next gem, Major Kira’s divided loyalties, the writers needed to set up what those loyalties are and to whom and why. They did this through a series of conversations, where Kira’s interactions with other characters show her feelings about the loyalties those characters owe. She snaps at Starfleet, argues passionately with Tahna about what’s best for Bajor, pleads with the provisional government, and eventually has a discussion with Odo, the security officer, that’s deeply expressive of personal loyalty.
Meanwhile, of course, Tahna is bargaining with some disaffected Klingons to get the material for a bomb. Shockingly, he’s been lying to Kira about his intentions. Garak FINALLY and heavyhandedly manages to get Bashir to overhear some of the negotiations. A plan is struck, and we’re in the tropiest part of the plot, the bit that we have to get through in order to resolve the divided loyalty question that’s really at the heart of what this episode wants to communicate.
Some places this could have gone:
- Tahna builds a bomb with Kira’s help, but she changes her mind at the last minute, warning the crew before the bomb can go off.
- Tahna builds a bomb in secret. Kira finds it and confronts him, and he tells her that she’ll have to choose between Bajor and Starfleet.
- Tahna builds a bomb in secret. Kira finds it and confronts him, and he takes her hostage, forcing the crew to rescue her and showing her that Starfleet can be trusted and Bajorans don’t always have solidarity.
- Tahna wasn’t building a bomb after all, and when Sisko forces Kira to be the one to confront him, she injures or kills him. (I leave as a thought exercise for the viewer which “him” that is.)
- Kira confronts Tahna and talks him out of building the bomb.
None of these are how the episode gets to the final scene, where the viewer is handed the impression that Kira has done the “right thing” and saved lives but at personal cost. Her final interaction with Tahna is fraught, as he vocally tells her what a traitor she is. Since that is the payoff for this episode, I’ll leave you to watch it and find out which tropes the writers used to get you there.
TL;dr
Phew. Still with me? That was a lot. But if you’ve ever wondered why you can summarize the really important bits of a book in a few paragraphs but are still engaged by all 500 or so pages? That’s how. The journey from gem to gem is kept entertaining and engaging for the reader at a lower effort cost for the writer by using familiar plot devices and mapping the unique parts of the story onto them in the way only that particular author would write them. Even if a story is “predictable” the “how exactly will we get to the next point I can see coming” can be just as exciting as the points themselves.
Hope this practical exercise helped make sense of what we talked about in last month’s workshop!
In conclusion…
Many writers begin a book with a couple ideas or scenes that they want to write in their heads, but not a clear idea of how to get between them. Tropes can help! In this month’s meeting we’ll talk about how the unique parts of the story shape the expression of those tropes, and some ways that you can swap out one trope for another to get one that feels right for your story.
Your turn!
Got questions? Let’s continue this conversation in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord. And keep an eye out for the next face-to-face (face-to-Zoom?) meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society.
Join the Scarlet Quill Society!
Live Scarlet Quill Society meetings take place once a month. The February meeting will take place on Thursday, February 23 at 8:00 pm US Eastern time! Future dates and times TBD based on member availability, but we’ll try to accommodate as many folks as possible.
You can also sign up for a monthly membership! Each month, paid Society members will receive an email with a link to the Zoom meeting. If not every topic interests you, you can also purchase one-time access passes to each month’s meeting via Ko-Fi. If you can’t make it to the meeting, or you don’t like to speak on camera, you are welcome to submit questions before the meeting that our editors will answer in the meeting.
- $5 one-time access to this month’s Zoom session. (The January meeting is free, but please use this link to RSVP!)
- $5 monthly subscription (Pen level): Access to all the live meetings and recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where we can discuss tropes in more detail, and your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors! Pen level members can also suggest tropes for future live discussions – our goal is to give you what you want and need!
- $3 monthly subscription (Pencil level): Access to the meeting recordings as soon as they’re uploaded and to the private Discord channel!
A week after the meeting, recordings will become available to all at no cost, but if you find them useful we encourage you to leave a tip in our tip jar—it helps keep the lights on over here and allows us to keep bringing you the high-quality workshop content you’ve come to expect from us, as well as acquire some exciting guest panelists. You can also sign up for a $1/month Paper level membership just to show us you love us.
