The line separating fantasy tropes, fantasy clichés and archetypes is a fine one. One person’s beloved trope may be someone else’s hated cliché. A plot or character element that one person considers to be hopelessly cliché and overdone might be what someone else considers to be an archetype with deep psychological resonance. Debating which is which could take forever. Anyway, a trope is a theme or device that occurs frequently in a particular genre. If it’s used too often, it becomes a cliché.
I like the line taken by the website TV Tropes (be warned: this site is hilarious, thought-provoking, full of rabbit trails and will waste tons of your time if you’re not careful), namely that tropes are tools. There is, as the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes, nothing new under the sun. Whatever you write, whether you’re a beginner or a published author, will contain a trope. It may possibly contain a cliché or two. If you’re starting out as a writer, beware of the fear of avoiding clichés, as this may paralyze you into not writing anything.
If you’re starting out as a writer, beware of the fear of avoiding clichés, as this may paralyze you into not writing anything.
All the same, there are some tropes that are better than others. There are tons of posts out there online on sites with writing advice and tips on how to write a novel that will tell you about the fantasy fiction clichés that are overused or getting boring. But why be negative? There are some tropes that we love, even if they border on the cliché some of the time.
Here’s a handful of my seven favourite fantasy fiction tropes that I’m a sucker for, whether I use them when writing fantasy fiction or not. I know I love to read them!
1. Medieval/Renaissance European Setting
Sure, there are other possible settings out there and they’re every bit as fun to read. However, there’s nothing wrong with the Medieval/Renaissance European setting that we all know from childhood memories of fairy tales and the first fantasy fiction we ever read. Swords, castles, horses, monarchies… The whole process of researching, using and presenting elements of the actual past is part of the charm of classic fantasy and is one way that we can stay in touch with our history. Naturally, if your history doesn’t involve Europe, by all means base your fantasy world on it and I’ll be keen to read it. However, I, for one, won’t get tired of fantasy stories with a pre-Industrial Revolution setting.
2. Shapeshifters
One of the delights of speculative fiction is that writers (and therefore the readers) get to imagine what it might be like to be an animal, or to have the abilities of an animal. Who wouldn’t want to be able to experience the world through smell like my dog can? To fly like a hawk? To run with the speed of a horse? To have the strength of a bear? Shapeshifter fiction has become insanely popular lately, especially in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance subgenres. The possibilities when it comes to the animal shapes involved, the mechanics (what happens to your clothes?), the abilities and the liabilities are numerous.
3. Quests
Plots require the characters to have a clear goal and to face obstacles on the way to achieving that goal. A quest will take your hero or heroine out of their everyday life and off on a journey to find that object, rescue that person (however, can we please vary this person from being a princess?) and/or defeat the threat to the nation or the world. A quest may the structure of the Hero’s Journey, but it certainly doesn’t have to!
4. Good Versus Evil
I’m going to get all psychological on you and speculate that this is why we read fantasy fiction. Somewhere, deep down, we know that good and evil are objective realities and that the two are at war against each other. We also know that good will win in the end, in what Tolkien called the eucatastrophe. When you pick up a fantasy fiction novel, you know that in the end, the good guys will win and the villains will lose. From the perspective of faith-based fantasy, this is the heart of the matter and when we write fantasy, we remind readers of this truth, and this gives others hope to carry on, no matter what.
5. Romance
This is another plot point that resonates deep inside us and having a good old-fashioned romance as part of a fantasy fiction plot gets me every time. For a much better exploration of the importance of romance (and quests and the good versus evil tropes) than I’ve got space for here, let me recommend the work of John & Stasi Eldredge and Wild At Heart.
6. Plots From Fairy Tale And Legend
Sometimes, we want to read something that’s the literary equivalent of a traditional Sunday roast dinner: wholesome, satisfying and predictable. Borrowing a plot from a traditional tale, whether it’s a fairy tale or a legend from a larger mythology (which, as Tolkien pointed out in On Fairy Tales, aren’t separate). The trick here, of course, is to take the familiar characters and plots and to make them yours. Mercedes Lackey has some excellent examples of how it can be done, both in the Elemental Masters series (I read the first one, The Serpent’s Shadow, right through before I realised “Oh, this is the story of Snow White!”) and in the Five Hundred Kingdoms series.
Sometimes, we want to read something that’s the literary equivalent of a traditional Sunday roast dinner: wholesome, satisfying and predictable.
7. Special Powers
One of the distinctive features of fantasy fiction that sets it apart from other types of fiction is that the plot takes place in a world where magic happens. This means that some characters will have special powers that may not be shared by other characters. In some stories, the protagonist has to learn how to control and use these powers. These powers frequently, but not always, manifest when the main character hits his or her teens – and there’s probably something deep and psychological in that. Adolescence is a time when everything changes and you find out what your talents are. Suddenly discovering that you’re better than your mum at maths feels as odd as if you had discovered you could manipulate the weather or talk to animals. However, adolescence doesn’t have to be the trigger for developing special powers so feel free to invent your own. How about a system where women manifest supernatural powers when they hit menopause because their energies are redirected into new areas (*hastily grabs plot bunny and corrals it for potential future use*).
There are also, of course, the tropes that I’m not so keen on. But that is another story for another day.