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, write, baby
Look, I promise this post won’t ENTIRELY be a series of completely dated song references but I do need to direct you to the words of the great bard Robert Matthew Van Winkle as we discuss tropes this month, because if you have a problem, yo, they’ll solve it; check out the hook as my DJ revolves it.
Now I don’t know if I should explain how turntables work and what DJing was like in the age of analog. Actually, yeah, you know what? Let’s do it that way. Because tropes are in many ways like samples: they’re comforting repetitive bits of familiar information that can be remixed into new stories. Just like taking part of Calabria for Anthem or borrowing Baby Got Back‘s Anaconda, when you use tropes you’re sampling ideas (not the actual words and characters, please, that’s plagiarism) to make new stories with them.
Last month we talked about tropes that create or amplify problems out in the meat world. This month we’re turning that page to see how tropes can solve common problems in the imaginary world – and who needs those problems solved. Our vocabulary for this month includes the idea of gaze – both from a writer and a reader standpoint. And to a smaller extent, from a character standpoint. Because which solution you choose – which sample you use – will have a lot to do with whose problem you’re solving, and for whose benefit. And ignoring gaze is how you get in trouble with these tropes, too, so we’ll talk a little bit about that.
So what’s your problem?
In Misery, which (along with Jenny Trout’s dissection of Fifty Shades) is one of the great hidden books about craft for writers, Stephen King’s protagonist Paul Sheldon has a problem. His audience of one has rejected the story he is beginning to write for her, complaining that in order for this story to exist, important parts of the prequel would have to be retconned. She wants the book’s protagonist to be alive, when she was very much obviously dead at the end of the last book. So Paul needs to start writing a book where the protagonist is alive… but how? Here’s what King has to say about it:
He understood what he was doing now as TRYING TO HAVE AN IDEA. TRYING TO HAVE AN IDEA wasn’t the same thing as GETTING AN IDEA. GETTING AN IDEA was a more humble way of saying I am inspired, or Eureka! My muse has spoken!
The idea for Fast Cars had come to him one day in New York City. … He had passed a parking lot and had seen an attendant trying to jimmy his way into a car. That was all. He had no idea if what he had seen was licit or illicit, and by the time he had walked another two or three blocks, he no longer cared. The attendant had become Tony Bonasaro. He knew everything about Tony but his name, which he later plucked from a telephone book. Half the story existed, full-blown, in his mind, and the rest was rapidly falling into place. He felt jivey, happy, almost drunk. … He had set out to get a video recorder and had gotten something much better instead. He had GOTTEN AN IDEA.
This other process – TRYING TO HAVE AN IDEA – was nowhere near as exalted or exalting, but it was every bit as mysterious… and every bit as necessary. Because when you were writing a novel you almost always got roadblocked somewhere, and there was no sense in trying to go on until you’d HAD AN IDEA.
His usual procedure when it was necessary to HAVE AN IDEA was to put on his coat and go for a walk. If he didn’t need to HAVE AN IDEA, he took a book when he went for a walk. He recognized walking as good exercise, but it was boring. If you didn’t have someone to talk to while you walked, a book was a necessity. But if you needed to HAVE AN IDEA, boredom could be to a roadblocked novel what chemotherapy was to a cancer patient.
Halfway through Fast Cars, Tony had killed Lieutenant Gray … in a Times Square movie theater. Paul wanted Tony to get away with the murder … [y]et Tony could not simply leave Gray sitting in the movie theater … because there were at least three people who knew Gray had gone to meet Tony.
Body disposal was the problem, and Paul didn’t know how to solve it. It was a roadblock. … There was no ten-second deadline, of course – he’d had no contract for the book, had written it on spec, and hence there was no delivery date to think about. Yet there was always a deadline, … and most writers knew it. If a book remained roadblocked long enough, it began to decay, to fall apart; all the little tricks and illusions started to show.
He had gone for a walk, thinking of nothing on top of his mind, the way he was thinking of nothing on top right now. He had walked three miles before someone sent up a flare from … down below: Suppose he starts a fire in the theater?
That looked like it might work. There was no sense of giddiness, no true feeling of inspiration; he felt like a carpenter looking at a piece of lumber that might do the job.
He could set a fire in the stuffing of the seat next to him, how’s that? Goddam seats in those theaters are always tom up. And there’d be smoke. Lots of it. He could hold off leaving as long as possible, then drag Gray out with him. He can pass Gray off as a smoke-inhalation victim. What do you think?
He had thought it was okay. Not great, and there were plenty of details still to be worked out, but it looked okay. He’d HAD AN IDEA. The work could proceed.
When you, like Paul, need to have an idea, tropes are your friend. There’s nothing innovative about a fire in a movie theater; in fact, it’s one of the classic examples that gets dragged out in discussions of free speech in the USA, so it’s fairly close to everyone’s mind. But it works. And in this case it was the character-appropriate solution that presented itself. You might be able to think of a number of other ways to solve the problem, but this one worked and it was fine. In the same way, you can solve a number of common writers’ problems by looking through your mental library of tropes and seeing which ones might fit, with a little tweaking. The benefit is that you don’t have to come up with all the ideas for yourself, just sort of gently tailor them to fit your scenario.
If you think this sounds a lot like February’s post? You’re absolutely right! But instead of talking about what’s unique to your story, we’re talking about what your story has in common with other stories, and how looking at the ways other writers have solved those problems (especially if it’s a lot of other writers) can help you deliver the same outcome. As an aside, if you haven’t watched last month’s video, this is a great time to do that, because one of the things that makes this technique work is something TC discussed: the repetition of ideas can affect how plausible we find them.
My problem is…
I need Person A, who has no reason to trust Person B, to give them an item or piece of information.
Ask the tropes?
- You could make Person B the only one available to Person A
- Person A is dying
- in The Spy Who Loved Me, the ship’s captain is the only one who knows the timeline. Mortally wounded, he gasps out “You’re too late, Bond. Our submarines are already on station. In four minutes the missiles will be launched.”
- in Willow, Elora Danaan’s dying mother gives her baby to the midwife – who is ostensibly working for evil Queen Bavmorda.
- Person A is being captured
- in Casablanca, Ugarte hands off a packet of letters…
- They are literally the last people alive
- Or maybe just the last two people with something in common
- Advantages/pitfalls: this will depend on the nature of the secret or object, the difficulty of transferring it, and whether you need Person A again in your story.
- Person A is dying
- You could give Person A a reason to trust Person B
- Person B saves Person A
- Person B demonstrates trustworthiness via small consistent acts
- Off the top of my head in current media, Our Flag Means Death, The Last of Us, The Mandalorian.
- Literally so many other examples that I’ll just direct you to this index
- Advantages/pitfalls: these take more time, so consider whether your story is on a timeline
- You could let the object choose
- See also: MacGuffin Escort Mission
- Debatably used in Lord of the Rings, definitely used in The Hobbit
My problem is…
I need Person A, who has no reason to know Person B, to meet them and become friends.
Ask the tropes?
- Some settings are classic meeting tropes for a reason
- coffee shops (or anywhere you go regularly, like a library or lunch spot or bar)
- school (you’re required to be there, not to know or have anything in common with anyone else)
- work (same as school but for adults with slightly more in common)
- The meet cute!
- So many meet cutes! Check them out? remember that this usually sets up a romance, so use with caution.
- And the flip side, the meet ugly.
- The Wand of PC Detection
- The object of the quest chooses its bearers (see MacGuffin Escort Mission) or an object “lights up” every time it encounters a character you want in your story
- A powerful outsider (looking at you, Gandalf and Elrond) chooses who will go on the quest whether they know each other or not.
- The story is set up in such a way that everyone in a specific area is affected
- You still have to get your characters to this area plausibly for their persona //though.
- Examples: The Mist, Under the Dome.
My problem is…
I need Person A, who has no reason to go to Location X, to be there.
Ask the tropes?
- Give them a reason
- put something they need at that location
- Or don’t, but tell them it’s there, which is the plot of Wizard of Oz
- have a trusted friend call and tell them to go there
- have a mysterious call or note or clue lead there
- put something they need at that location
- Don’t give them a choice
- Car breaks down
- Rocky Horror Picture Show, is that you?
- Forced to go there
- Doesn’t have to be a kidnapping, it could just as easily be a family lunch
- Let them try to go somewhere adjacent and meet with a string of redirecting disasters that end up with them going to Location X
- Car breaks down
In conclusion…
Don’t worry too much about solving your problems with tropes. Or rather, worry about the right things. Worry about whether the tropes you’ve chosen have hidden baggage that will make your story unpalatable, not about originality. After all, you don’t worry about originality when you’re solving a math problem either. You just need to know the steps to get from the original problem to the solution.
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 May 23 at 2pm 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.
