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.

Write your trope down, flip it and reverse it

And you thought you left the lyrics in May’s post. Tired of them yet? Good, because this post is the flip side of May’s post. In May you learned that it’s fine to use tropes, they’re important and useful and it’s ok to solve things the way someone else has.

This month we’re talking about worn-out tropes, ideas that submissions editors would be just as happy never to see again. Not because they’re offensive (necessarily – some are and some aren’t) but because they’re used so frequently that they evoke boredom instead of whatever it is you’re trying to do.

These tropes can be broken into three categories: phrases, structures, and patterns.

Before we dive in

Nothing we say here is an absolute ban on these tropes. But you should know what a reader is likely to think when they see this story, and know that you may be limiting your chances for publication unless you establish early on that you have a good grasp of the trope and are doing something innovative with it. To this end we cannot stress enough that you should be not only writing but reading in your genre. It’s so incredibly unlikely that you’re doing anything that someone hasn’t done before, so know before you submit who you’re about to be compared to, and be sure you’re doing it at least as well as they do.

Phrases

There are some phrases that seem brilliant. Evocative. They are memorable. Pithy. And that’s the problem with them: everyone uses them, and all that brilliance wears off. Want some examples?

• A single [crystalline] tear rolled down [possessive pronoun] cheek. First of all, nobody cries like that. Second of all, every Disney princess cries like that. It seems like a good shortcut to show devastated emotion, but it’s been done so many times that it’s going to drag the rest of your story down too.
• Smoldering eyes, plush (do you mean lush? plush is for furniture) lips, broad hands, etc. Unless you’re writing an ironic romance, and then go for it, good luck.
• Twee naming schemes for characters. Yes, you can make this work in a humor piece. But do you want to try? This doesn’t mean don’t have a naming scheme. In fact, you should. It should be a sensible one, like looking at common names for the location and time your story is set in, or giving consideration to how names are given and how meaningful they should be. (I make a lot of fun of Rowling, but she [mostly] nailed a naming scheme, giving each character a name that was a clue to their personality as is appropriate for fiction written for middle schoolers. Annnnnd then there’s Cho Chang.)
• This isn’t a specific phrase, but it’s a grouping: the way children talk and think. Spend some time around children of the appropriate age before you try to write a story including them, because it’s immediately obvious if you haven’t, and it’s almost always too much trouble to edit into a readable story. Ditto the elderly, who it may surprise you to learn are still people and still think and talk like people.
• Another non-phrase, what an author friend has called “dying wizard voice.” Please, for the love of all submissions editors, unless you are actually the reincarnation of Patricia McKillip, don’t try to write like someone threw Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay in a food processor and juiced whatever came out. It rarely sounds profound, it often sounds cumbersome, and it almost always sounds dated. That doesn’t mean you have to write present-tense fanfic, but do write in a way that’s natural to you rather than trying to force a fantasy voice when that’s not how you speak or think. 

Structures

These are plot points or story structures that have been done so many times that you’d have to be really innovative with how you use them to get a pass from a submissions editor.

• They’ll all be sorry! Whether it’s a revenge tale or someone showing their success while the people who mocked them fail, this story structure reads like a juvenile fantasy. If you’re writing a juvenile fantasy, go for it? There’s emotional catharsis available there. Just don’t count on publishing it.
• Violence for its own sake. Remember, what’s shocking to you isn’t going to be shocking to a submissions editor. No, not that either. Yes, they’ve seen that one too. Purposeful violence that furthers the plot is a different story… literally.
• Men who take the time to deeply consider how little they think of their partner’s thoughts or hobbies. We get it! You want to make the character unlikeable! But there’s a better way to do it than a long scene in which he ponders how frivolous whatever a woman is up to is. You’re wasting words that could be used to actually develop his character, and you’re risking the submissions editor just clicking out of your story right then.
• The love triangle. This is a tried and true structure, but it should be handled carefully. Two characters competing directly for a third, especially if they’re women backstabbing each other, can get you more eyerolls than eyes on your story.
• Sadness = eating disorder. Using disordered eating to show emotion isn’t actually that effective, especially when your character does it for every emotion. Can’t eat, picking at their food, vomiting, no appetite, eating an entire tub of ice cream… Imagine the number of times you’ve seen this trope used and then up it by an order or two of magnitude for a submissions editor or slush reader. Your story is now associated with the worst stories in that group. Don’t want that? Find another way to show emotion.

Patterns

These are the messes you make for yourself slowly, probably without noticing. But the submissions editor is going to notice.

• Your main character is never described, or is described with emotional adjectives rather than visual ones. Hey, we all love a good self-insert, and this seems like a great way to be more inclusive. But it’s not, and it wasn’t for the last 500 people who tried it either- if you want to be more inclusive in your writing, you have to affirmatively include, not leave everything out and hope the reader wants to project today.
• Female characters are described like meat, male characters are described like people. Sure, it may seem like your main character, the misogynist, would think this way. Maybe he even does! But that’s not particularly interesting to read, and certainly doesn’t add dimension to his character. And if you’re writing in third person, it comes across as the way you think. (See also: I can describe this character’s breasts but not the rest of her)
• Disability = villain. We’re moving away from the ‘deformed’ villain, although some of y’all are still using ugliness as a shortcut to show evil (and that’s a problematic trope, do not pass GO, go watch April’s video). But mental illness in every villain isn’t just stigmatizing (and lowering your chance to get published, do you know how many people in this industry have a mental illness) it’s unimaginative and limits their capacity for actual evil.
• I can’t handle this many characters, so it’s time for an extinction event. This almost always reads like you were too lazy to go through and edit, so you trimmed everything down to a manageable size along the way.
• I’m smarter than you. Whether it’s repeated in-jokes or smug phrasing, writing like you’re smarter than your intended audience rarely wins you repeat readers. And the fastest way to make sure you never publish with a market is to respond to feedback with “the editors were too stupid to get this story.”

In conclusion…

Because the best advice is advice that completely contradicts what came before it: It’s ok to solve your problems with tropes, but if the way you’re using your tropes replicates what a bunch of other people are doing without examination, you’re unlikely to squeak past that slush reader or submissions editor. If you take one thing away from this post, read your genre so you know whether you’re genuinely doing something interesting or if you’re just replicating tropes that are below the grade level of the market you’re submitting to. Respect your submissions editor’s intelligence – they want to find something to publish; they’re not looking for excuses to pass on your story. If you can avoid the common mistakes we’re discussing this month, you’ll have a much better chance of getting some of those coveted publication credits.

THIS MONTH’S SPECIAL GUEST

This month’s special guest brings a ton of experience to our round table. We’ll be hosting Genevra Hsu for a frank discussion on what she, as a submissions editor, hears in the field about stories that almost always bounce, plus some hot gossip about reprehensible writers and their bad habits. Genevra learned to read at three years old, and has had loud opinions about writing ever since. She’s a queer martial artist, gardener and baker who lives in a 140-year-old house in Southwestern Virginia with her husband and two peaceable housecats, and when she’s not reading, writing, cussing at bindweed or coming up with weird cupcakes, she can reliably be found watching Chinese dramas. She keeps an Instagram full of garden photos at www.instagram.com/foxwatchful and we’re so excited to welcome her to the channel.

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. This month’s meeting will take place on June 12 at 1pm US Eastern time.  Future dates and times TBD based on member and guest availability, but we’ll try to accommodate as many folks as possible. (Yeah. We know. It’s best to have a fixed time. But we think it’s even better than best to be able to accommodate a diverse slate of exciting and qualified panelists, and we hope you’ll agree.)

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.