The rise of book tropes: should authors be concerned?

Love them or hate them, the demand for tropes isn't going away, but should we embrace them as writers? Let's sort your enemies-to-lovers from your meet-cutes to help you decide.

The concept of tropes absolutely fascinates me. As someone who loves a cheeky Friday night organisation session, I’m no stranger to categorising something to the point of absurdity. I once tried to use coloured sticky tabs to make a note of all the sub-plots in my second book and the result was a three-hundred page stack of rainbow tabbed pages that I had organised out of being useful.

Book tropes, however, are live and kicking. I have written a list of tropes that I’ve seen pop up in social media posts over the past couple of years. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but does go some way to explain the specificity and breadth of the romance trope world:

• Grumpy vs sunshine

• Childhood friends to lovers

• Academic rivals who hate, then love each other

• Work romance

• ‘I don’t believe in love,’ then they fall in love

• STEM romance

• Fake dating

• Popular boy, quiet girl

• Rival families

Let’s take a look at some fantasy tropes as well:

• Good vs evil

• The chosen one

• The quest

• Ancient and powerful artifacts

• Antagonist turns ally

• Orphan hero

Arguably, I even see tropes in historical fiction:

• Wife locked in the attic/basement

• Red hair

• Big house set on fire

• Secret love child

• Governess turned lover

• Meddling mother, distant father

How are readers using tropes?

I’ve seen reviews where books are ‘trope checked’. Readers will tick off a list of tropes that feature in the book, like a game of bingo. Think of it like a sub-category of genre. To use but one example, readers who are really into romance will go on to read dozens of romance books a year. They might like spicy romance, but they really go wild for ‘only one bed’ and ‘grumpy/sunshine’ pairings. Thus, knowing which books fit that brief is useful.

I love people who are passionate, about anything. I especially love people who are passionate about reading. This isn’t a post that details what’s wrong with readers, because the issues never lie with readers, but with how a story is sold to them. Are readers more opiniated than before? No, I don’t think so, but access to a platform that allows the sharing of those opinions is far easier than before. The average 18 year old American spends 55 minutes on TikTok per day, but the quantity of content they consume there is huge. If a reader goes to TikTok for a book recommendation, they want to identify what they like almost immediately.

Is this an issue? Well, it depends how involved you want to be with self-promotion.

It’s true that everyone’s attention span is—essentially—broken

In her recent post on Book Publishing Predictions: 2024,

Kathleen Schmidt

writes about consumer attention spans. This relates to so many different areas, but especially reading. A lot of reading is done on devices now. The same place that we scroll through memes of the Golden Globes, read headlines, and pregnancy announcements from people at school who we once lent a pen to in 2005. Sure, everyone reads, but how long is an attention span nowadays? Of course, there will always be a place for big, weighty tomes. Fantasy writers, don’t worry. Your elf people are still there. But for writers of contemporary fiction (eek, that’s me), it’s worth considering the following:

Shorter books can have a lower price point. Consumers can also finish shorter books faster, which means the next title on their to-be-read pile is less likely to collect dust. If I had to choose a good length for a novel, I’d say 70-80K words.

- Book Publishing Predictions: 2024,

Kathleen Schmidt

Cue me, desperately trying to shave down a 95,000 word manuscript…

TikTok is going to publish books

Yeah, I know. What in the Gen Z is this?! I’m not going to pretend I understand how this works in reality, but at the same time, when Amazon announced it would publish books a couple of decades ago, people had the same reaction. How, and what, and why? It’s broadly understood that TikTok will amplify books that match trending interests on the platform. This is a model that moves very fast, so as authors, it’s very unlikely that what you write now will have much of a bearing on what that lady on the bus is viewing in her feed.

Authors can spend a lot of time thinking of ways to generate interest on TikTok, especially writers of YA, romance, fantasy, or—funnily enough—romantasy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you can be sure that sustaining effort on TikTok is Herculean. If you’ve tried it before, you’ll know how easy it is to make your head feel full of wasps. Author,

Laura Steven

, wrote exactingly about what happens when you try and push the needle and the toll this takes on writing:

This is not what I want my mind to be thinking about for hours every day. Lists of content ideas, posting schedules, trending audios, shit! I need to buy a ring light!, trope checklists, humblebrags, aesthetics, oh god I still haven’t posted about that influencer pack from that publisher.

- On social media, social media, and an act of blind faith,

Laura Steven

As writers, we so often try to act as reader and writer at the same time. We also try to be creator and consumer at the same time. Some can do this with ease, but I truly believe that these are also the people who studied medicine and play the jazz piano whilst simultaneously writing a seven-part space opera AND manage to call their mum on a Tuesday night.

Social media, and especially TikTok, love a trope. But let’s get to the person behind the platform. It’s easy to say ‘TikTok likes this’ and ‘Instagram likes that’, but behind each profile is a person and that person is a reader. Tropes feature heavily on TikTok because readers who like them want to know exactly where to go to find those particular books.

You are not your reader

By this, I mean that your reading habits are not necessarily those of your readers.

Personally, I like it when a book surprises me. I didn’t know that Dolly Alderton’s new novel, Good Material, was written from the perspective of a man. This was unexpected and I liked it. Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett, wasn’t the parochial tale of rural life that the cover promised. It was about motherhood and young lives, dreams and lived reality. I loved it. I didn’t feel angry that I went in expecting one thing and came out having experienced another.

Friends, not everyone thinks like this. Covers are chosen very consciously, as are blurbs, taglines, and the meta-data that feeds into online retailers. My third book went through a number of different cover designs based on early reader reviews, as some were a little annoyed that it promised a ‘straight down the line’ rom-com when in fact the themes are dark and the rom is minor character to the com. The new cover changed those early impressions entirely. (I also wrote about the importance of book titles here):

Do I choose my book titles?

So, is there anything to be gained from tropes?

Sure! If you’re going to write about two displaced characters who trek across a whole country only to find one bed left in the inn, you have two choices: lean in to it, or steer well away.

In my personal opinion, writing that suggests the presence of a trope (even if it’s unintentional) and then doesn’t follow through on it is a problem. It’s even more of a problem if this is used in the description of the book as a way to sell it. If ‘He’s the Professor, but she just shattered his theory on evolutionary astronomy,’ you better lean into the rival academics trope or those trope fans will hunt you down.

However, all tropes are not created equal. There are some that are less to do with plot points and more to do with character. If you’ve read my posts for a while now, you’ll know how much I harp on about returning to character as a way to solve pretty much any problem with your book. Themes that explore unlikely character combinations can be really fun to explore. I’m a sucker for an intergenerational pairing, which depending on who you ask, could be seen as an Up Lit trope.

Are you a trope hunter when it comes to reading? How do you feel about writing them yourself? There is absolutely no judgement from me! I’d love to discuss this in the comments, so I’ll see you there.

About the author:

Abigail Mann is an author, book coach, and writing mentor. She is currently writing her fourth novel for HarperCollins and has a thing for sharp contemporary literature with a comic edge. Abigail coaches with the London Writer’s Salon and privately mentors writers who need to cloud bust their plots, clean up their submissions, or reach a fiction milestone. Her other internet home is here.

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