I've written about stereotypes before and how my writing would benefit from using them. I came across this writing advice video about fantasy tropes and thought it deserved a response.
Many of the character stereotypes, or tropes, she hits on apply to Harry Potter. Let's say she's right on all of them. You'd think, if tropes were a bad thing, this would have held the Harry Potter series back.
Why didn't it? Because JK Rowling used these stereotypes to create an identifiable and memorable character. She didn't just use tropes to construct Harry. Hermione, Ron, Snape, Dumbledore, and others are etched into my generation's cultural memory in a way that Luke, Han, and Leia are etched into the cultural memory of my father's generation. It's an achievement that deserves in-depth analysis, not scorn.
The best advice with regard to tropes is to study them to understand how they work so you can create the effect you want for your readers. If you don't give readers something they recognize, they can get lost and confused, if not upset. Furtheremore, there's a ton of wiggle room to mold a stock character into a fully fleshed person. No one mistakes Harry Potter for Pip in Great Expectations because they're both orphans.
Funnily enough, the writer/former literary agent giving this advice admits at the 19-minute mark that a lot of readers like their expectations to be fulfilled (i.e., they like tropes), but you're not going to snag a agent unless you shun tropes in your writing. That's the failure of tradpub in a nutshell: middlemen refusing to give readers what they want.
In my last book, Seeds of Calamity, I brought more craft to my characters and plot. This included intentional use of tropes. My hero is, you guessed it, an orphan. He's also kind of a hothead. His older brother is more mature and deliberate, a point of tension between them. Their best friend is a sage/surrogate father type. The two main bad guys are an officious weasel and a cunning rogue. Someone the brothers are forced to work with is a driven career woman and love interest.
These tropes serve as markers for the reader, which I think is more important in fantasy and sci-fi than in other genres. I don't have to explain the character dynamics for you to understand them. The act of explaining would just dull the emotional edge. You can predict how the characters get along in the beginning, but you can't as easily predict how the plot will change those characters and their dynamics.
Read and see for yourself. I've made the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity available for free here. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!
As always, leave a comment below. I'll respond to you as soon as I can.
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