No, Tropes Are Not Destroying Literature

Responding to some alarmism I've been seeing regarding tropes and their impact on fiction

I think the essential difference between tropes and genres is the aspects of a story they hold static. What genres hold static tend to be the settings or subject matter (e.g. outer space in sci-fi, the west in westerns). What tropes hold static tend to be plot structures (e.g. love triangle, enemies to lovers). I think this a reasonable framework for understanding their essential difference. And, given this, I see no fundamental reason to hold one way of categorizing art over the other.

However, there have been a lot of strong reactions in recent years to the increasing tendency for both consumers and producers of fiction to speak in the language of popular tropes. Here I want to engage with what I think is the primary argument against “tropification.”

The argument goes something like this: If people engage through fiction only through the tropes they know they prefer, it will reduce their ability to engage with art that challenges them or expands their circle of appreciation.

I’d start with asking someone making this claim if they believe that the same argument can be levied against genres. Because it demonstrates how easily this argument can be flipped on its head. Science fiction, for example, is more likely to deals with questions about progress, the future, and its uncertainties. Westerns tend more to deal with the past and questioning historical narratives. Some genres are simply better geared to handle certain themes than others. I could make the argument then that people who engage primarily with a certain genre are isolating themselves to art that asks a limited set of questions. I can then say that the trope lover, however, is someone who can engage freely with all genres, as long as the plot stays true to their preferred trope. They’re therefore free to move between genres and absorb all the themes that different genres have to offer.

I think, from here, someone could make the leap to say that both, genres and tropes, dampen the dynamism we can find in art by limiting the content we engage with. And I would consider this a sound argument. Ideally, we would always and only ever engage with art that tries to expand our horizons and shows us ways of imagining beauty in ways we haven’t considered before. You could call this “high art” or “experimental art.” I think the category that corresponds to that in the fiction space would be “literary fiction.” This is my favorite kind of art, the kind of art that I try to engage with the most and which I attempt to create. This is art that tries to reset the boundaries of what art can be and continually expand the medium.

But in order for art to be effective, it also needs to be accessible. While novelty is essential to art, engaging with novelty continually is difficult. It’s why I consider literary fiction more rewarding than other forms of fiction but also the most demanding. And the reason tropes are popular now and why genres have been popular for so long is because it allows people a familiar stepping point to engage with novelty. With genres and with tropes, readers can expand their horizons to the extent that it’s pleasurable for them without having to toss themselves into a new world of meaning and questions with every new work. To take issue with this method of engaging with art, of expanding one’s horizons slowly, would be to take issue with how art has been practiced and consumed for, what I can discern to be, all of human history. And if that’s your mission, good luck.