Trope Maps: Moonlady Falls

Again, in line with what I've seen from other indie fantasy authors, I'm creating trope maps for my Stones of the Kingdom fantasy book series. I've now created one for Moonlady Falls, the second book in this high fantasy series.

Creating a trope map is, in theory, quite simple. One takes the cover image, pops it onto a background with a suitable colour, add a few wiggly arrows then add the tropes that the novel contains. So yes, the mechanics of creating a trope map for a fantasy book is straightforward and sounds easy.

However, the hard part is deciding which tropes to list. After all, what does and doesn't count as a trope? If – as happens in Moonlady Falls – you don't have the traditional trope of a damsel in distress but a gender-flipped version. What do you call that? "Dude in distress" keeps the alliteration but has the wrong tone. "Dude" seems completely out of keeping with the writing style I prefer to use for prose in my novels, and I think it's fair to the reader (that's you) to keep the tone and style of the trope map consistent with the book it's a map of. Is "wilderness survival" a trope? What about "evil moon goddess"? It's one thing if your fantasy novel fits into some neat and popular category (e.g. "low-spice romantasy", "enemies to lovers", "Chosen One", "magic academy", "dragon riders" etc.) but if the book wasn't written with one of these tropes in mind (and it wasn't), then picking what suits is a bit harder. One could, of course, visit lists of tropes such as TV Tropes, but this site is not just a rabbit hole but an entire warren of rabbit holes from which one may never return... One could give a list of tropes that it doesn’t have (e.g. no cliffhangers), but the idea of a trope map is to give an idea of what the novel actually has, rather than what it doesn’t.  After all, when I open up a map when heading out with my husband on a 4×4 adventure, I expect the map to tell me about turnoffs, lakes and rivers, not “this route does not go past an active volcano”.

I also don't want to give any spoilers in the trope map. The trick is to select tropes that will let the reader decide if this book is the sort of thing they like – their catnip, to use the bookish jargon – but without giving any spoilers.  It’s a teaser for the book, not a Cliff’s Notes version or a Too Long, Didn’t Read summary. 

Anyway, the image accompanying this post is what I came up with.  Was I successful?  You be the judge.

"...the idea of a trope map is to give an idea of what the novel actually has, rather than what it doesn’t.  After all, when I open up a map when heading out with my husband on a 4×4 adventure, I expect the map to tell me about turnoffs, lakes and rivers, not 'this route does not go past an active volcano'."