#73. The Story Trope Special: How to Make Your Short Stories and Novels Even More Original and Exciting by Using Tropes

Can tropes--story ideas which have been churned around and repeated for centuries, if not millennia--actually improve your stories and make them more original?
 
Join award-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in an exploration of story tropes, with tips, tricks and tools you can use to develop your writing in new, exciting ways. Naturally, there’s plenty of experimentation with ideas, as Anna uses the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas before testing out different tropes and seeing what happens next.
 
A fascinating exploration of writing craft. Ignite your imagination with these short story ideas for the ultimate writing prompt challenge.

​Your weekend is not weird enough (or creative enough) without Brainstoryum!

​Hello, imaginative people. I'm Anna Tizard, and this is episode 73 of Brainstoryum. Now, in the last couple of weeks, it seems I've become a little bit obsessed with tropes, or re-obsessed with tropes, I should say, as this is an aspect of my writing journey that I've explored before.
 
I just haven't yet shared it with you on Brainstoryum, or experimented with them on Brainstoryum, as this podcast isn't just about sharing my writing process and my story ideas, it's also my own imaginative playground for experimenting and, well, learning, I'm always learning. But it's funny because every introduction I've come across on the topic of tropes, either in a book or a podcast or a blog, begins by acknowledging that a lot of us writers think that tropes are a dirty word and they seem to represent at least at first glance the exact opposite of what we're gunning for as creative writers of fiction. And I really get this, you know, we want new ideas and as authors we want to be original and to stand up from the crowd, not churn out the same old storylines that have been written or filmed a thousand times before.
 
And yes, for me as a writer who especially loves the unexpected, as you well know, who complains about struggling to find stories that satisfy this desire for something with a special different something in it, tropes do seem like the very antithesis of what I'm interested in, but that's where my younger writing self was wrong. Tropes are part of the language of story. They embody concepts, themes and situations or character types, which we as readers and audiences expect to read or watch, though sometimes only intuitively without necessarily realizing that we're looking for these elements.
 
A lot of these expectations are bound up in particular genres. So, for example, in fantasy, common tropes include the journey and the quest. And part of the reason why we as fantasy readers read fantasy is to experience the vicarious excitement of the protagonist going on a journey into the unknown, having to face strange and dangerous obstacles, possibly even weird creatures, and also having a sense of purpose or mission that comes from a quest.
 
It's all part of the escape that fantasy promises us. So how do we as writers fulfil these expectations, or even needs, you might say, of our audience, while producing something that feels fresh and original and not cliched? The key to wielding the power of tropes is through unusual and unexpected combinations.
 
A bit like Exquisite Corpse, in a way. Switching and splicing tropes from across different genres has actually become very popular. And this is what a lot of the really big blockbuster books and movies manage to do.
 
I could wax a lyrical on this for a while, but the point of this podcast is to share with you the process of my experimental methods of generating story ideas. And what better way is there to really explore an idea than to actually test it out and witness what happens as you test it out? So today's show is going to involve even more experimentation than usual.
 
And as I'm brainstorming a story, I'm going to identify the tropes that are appearing, seemingly of their own accord, and also try drawing in different tropes to see what new directions these suggest. It's my hope that this will not only be entertaining for you, but it may also help you make up your mind about what you think about tropes and how you might use them, and whether you might apply the same kind of experimental thinking in your own writing when you're approaching a new story idea. In fact, sparked off by this show, I have now just created a free new resource on this topic online.
 
So keep listening to find out more, because I think this will be a very handy tool, especially if you are new to messing around with tropes. Because of course, all creativity begins with rolling up your sleeves and messing around. A playful attitude is what inspiration responds to.

But first, I have some story ideas shared by my very talented listeners, inspired by a writing prompt from the last show, the perceptive zephyr, a very curious word combination that came up in the last show. And actually, I didn't really perhaps do justice to the word zephyr, because I went off on one, interpreting the perceptive zephyr as a zeppelin. And that took me off in a very specific direction.
 
So I feel like I really wanted to know what you might make of this very strange word combination. Taken perhaps more literally. Nick Vrakar said:
 
“Gina was Hannah's soulmate. They had lived in the same town, took the same train to work. Hannah never noticed her. It was a western wind that sparked her attention, that unexpected zephyr that scattered dust and debris that turned her head at just the right moment.”
 
Lovely. It feels very atmospheric, sort of delicate, kind of like the zephyr, just a touch of romance that may blossom into something so much more, a bigger story. Just a gentle breeze is how it begins.
 
Thank you, Nick. I love it. And by the way, I hope you can't hear that, once again, it is raging with rain and wind. It's just lashing against the window. So once more, the software, the editing software I use to put this show together is being tested to its limits, I'd say.
 
Sean McGillis said, “I'm thinking about a main character who falls asleep with a gentle breeze blowing through their room and they wake up knowing things they shouldn't, putting them in great danger. Oh, secret information carried on a breeze.”
 
That's amazing. It makes me think about how with Wi-Fi and radio waves, we're technically surrounded by lots of information all the time.
 
It's just that we don't pick up those signals, except, you know, through, deliberately through phones and computers. This is a fascinating idea for the perceptive Zephyr. Thank you, Sean.
 
Patrick Towey said, “My first thought is a sailor finds an enchantment that gives him wind in whatever direction he wants to go. I like that. The zephyr is perceptive enough to help this sailor and push him in to the boards of the places he wants to go.”
 
I wonder where this would take him. It's a great foundation for a story, for a journey-based story, born on the winds of magic. Thank you, Patrick.
 
And finally, Village Idiot said, “Zephyr, God of the Winds, knew best when to blow. Perceived to be too strong for me, but I'm no god, what do I know?”
 
Very curious, this one. It feels like the beginning of something with a mythological backdrop, and there's something about rhyming couplets that always feels magical to me. Maybe like an incantation? Thank you, Village Idiot, for sharing your little rhyming couplet.
 
Well, it is time to begin our own new mythological journey into new story ideas and to test out the magic of tropes. It is time to reach into the Socks of Destiny.

*SOCKS OF DESTINY ORGAN JINGLE*

That's right, and for those who haven't played before or listened before, Exquisite Corpse mixes words and phrases from different players into a sentence that goes Describing Word Noun, Action, Describing Word Noun. And so, it is with a little trepidation, as ever, that I reach into the Describing Word Sock. And this first word is from Chris Machel: "obsequious".
 
Oh, so that's sort of, let me think, that's sort of subservient, sort of excessively obedient, like a servant. Hmm, who or what is obsequious today? So, our noun is from Rebecca Glaessner.
 
"Rogue", an "obsequious rogue". Well, there's a combination. It's almost like two opposites coming together, because a rogue is sort of like, well, actually, I've looked it up in the dictionary and jotted down some notes here.
 
It's a dishonest or unprincipled person, and can also be a mischievous but likable person, which makes me think of, I can't help but think of Indiana Jones. That smirk he has, a very rogue-ish smile.
 
So what's our action for this Exquisite Corpse, this obsequious rogue? This is from Alessandro Bozzo. This is very specific. It's actually quite Indiana Jones. “Traipsed through the cavernous mines towards….” Ooh.
 
Okay, we have an adventure. This is already, we have the fantasy trope of a journey. Possibly a quest as well.
 
There's a special reason why he's in these mines. So let's see if the rest of the Exquisite Corpse gives us a hint. The next word is from Paul Thomas: mournful.
 
Hmm. Okay, so someone or something that's grief-stricken or just very sad. And the final word is from anonymous.
 
How I've missed you, anonymous. It's been a while. “Walrus.” That is to say, anonymous is not a walrus. That is simply the word that this person has suggested. Okay, so the entire Exquisite Corpse is:
 
“The obsequious rogue traipsed through the cavernous mines towards the mournful walrus.”
 
“Obsequious rogue”, I just can't get over that word combination. It has to be, it has to be an act. I mean, this sort of servile obedience or compliance with rules.
 
For a rogue to do that? Come on. I mean, I think rogue can also mean, it can be a describing word for an adjective for sort of deviating from the rules, which is kind of the opposite.
 
Hmm. I've also looked up walrus, because I do sometimes look up words that I know the meaning of, just in case there's something in there that gives me an extra clue. And this is from the internet. That crazy place. A walrus is, as we know, a large, gregarious marine mammal. Well, I didn't know they were gregarious.
 
Related to the eared seals, with two downward-pointing tusks, walruses appear in the folklore of arctic peoples. Well, I guess that's likely to happen. The myth of the raven is a myth where a raven recovers the sun and moon from an evil spirit who's stolen them by seducing his daughter.
 
But then the angry evil spirit, the father, throws his daughter from a high cliff, and as she drops into the water, she turns into a walrus. So it's one of those origin tales of, you know, how did this animal come to be? This strange looking animal of the walrus.
 
And the tasks are said to be formed by the trails of her tears, or in some versions, her long braids. Hmm. Does this give us any hint as to what to do with walrus in this bizarre sentence?
 
I'm not sure, but something, you never know something might crop up again. I'm wondering, could the mournful walrus be a painting? And I imagine it's weeping two stains.
 
On the other hand, I'm also thinking about haunted minds. Whether there's something in these cavernous minds, which resembles a walrus. So, just reading, reading it through again, the obsequious rogue traipsed through the cavernous minds towards the mournful walrus.
 
So, it does sound as if there's a walrus-like creature inside these minds. One scenario I'm thinking of is, you might excavate a mine and discover natural caves. And then, then the excavation, presuming this is for, you know, mining minerals or gold or something like that, the excavation will probably have to halt so that experts like archaeologists and historians can come in and take a look and assess whether this has real historical significance, these natural caves that the diggers have stumbled across.

Tunnel by TheDigitalArtist (Pete Linforth) on Pixabay

But something lurks in the caves, something monstrous. And the locals have their myths about a sleeping underground creature or maybe many creatures, beasts of nightmares. Superstitions abound about the possibility of waking these creatures, and they're very nervous about the minds being stirred or some of them.
 
I can't imagine that they're all superstitious. And then, among these myths, there's the Guardian of the Mountain. Legends couldn't agree on whether it was a vampire or a walrus.
 
Either fangs or tusks formed the two long frontal protrusions, which had become a local symbol you could find carved into the doorposts of the village pub, table legs sometimes, and even locally crafted picture frames. The sign of the Guardian was everywhere if you looked for it. Yet who knew if there were even stalactites in the mountain's caves that resembled such a thing?
 
Unstable and abandoned, the few old caves the locals were aware of had been closed up long ago. And this new discovery, found in the early stages of a new dig for a mine, was on the other side of the town. There were environmental reasons too why the mining excavation was tossed around a council meeting like a slippery ice cube.
 
No one wanted to give a firm yes or no, but eventually the argument dissolved when it was obvious how much money was at stake. They would continue to drill into the mountain for its rich minerals and put their traditions and mythology aside. I'm imagining an archaeologist sipping a drink in the local pub, keeping his eyes down as he waits for his colleague to turn up.
 
A woman, clearly a local by her long skirt and patterned wrap-around scarf, which he'd seen before, sweeps in front of him.
 
“The wrath of the mountain will find you.”
 
He jolts back in shock, spreads his hands. “I'm not the enemy here. I'm the one investigating the history of that cave.”
 
She says nothing, just stares at him.
 
Her eyes drill into his very soul.
 
“I'm not even going to touch anything,” he adds, scrambling for words to fill the silence. “I'm just going to go in there, take a look around, and see what historical significance this cave might have, whether the miners can drill around it, going in a slightly different direction to preserve it…”
 
But he doesn't bother finishing his sentence. The woman shakes her head hard. Now I'm jumping ahead in my mind to when he creeps into the cave.
 
Creeps, tip-toed, because it's that sort of a place, where you feel like even breathing is a kind of trespass. As he stepped deeper, his colleague fumbling with a second torch behind him, they both froze. The air, this cold breeze that flowed through the caves, as if from nowhere, carried a low moan. Mournful. Hearing it gave him the deepest ache, like pressing on a half-forgotten bruise.
 
They pressed on, deeper, until they reached the stalactites and a back wall, where two tusks, or were they giant fangs?
 
Sloped out of the wall. Pale crystal, like the slants of the two glittering eyes just above them. Impossible.
 
Burning white, then red. What next? Have they awakened the Guardian?
 
And how viciously will this creature or spirit defend the ancient caves?
 
Well, what tropes do we have here already?
 
There's the monster, mystery, magic, definitely quest, fish out of water, because this rogue, obsequious or not, is way out of his depth.
 
I think we have politics as well with the local council. Could we say that the rogue is actually a kind of protector, character, or playboy? Another trope or character type.
 
You get a lot of this in action movies where you have a character with swagger who then meets his match, something that shakes him to the core and has the potential to change him a little as a person, not just take him through a journey or an adventure.
Which brings us to the question, what is this rogue there for, really? I haven't really done anything with “obsequious” yet.
 
So far, he's just been polite and humble and maybe a little bit scared in front of the locals. But who knows what he's really up to if he is indeed an obsequious rogue, or someone playing a part, acting a part to try and sneak in. Maybe we could add the trope of magical object.
 
If there's more to this legend, in that the walrus or vampire spirit guards not just the mountain, but a precious jewel. And what if it's this, that the hero is after, if he is in fact a hero rather than an anti-hero, because so far I'm not really sure. Or what if it's part of a bet he's made with someone back home?
 
He owes someone money and he doesn't want to lose face. Or another trope you could sneak in here is blackmail. So he doesn't really feel he has a choice about going after this jewel.
 
There's no other way for him to get the kind of value that he needs to pay someone back. Or what about throwing in the scar trope? There's more than money at stake for him.
 
Something from his past has drawn him to this area, some past trauma. Does he have a personal connection to the place that he's not told anyone? Or is it that he's just getting back at his father for something that happened in their past?
 
Always, it enriches a story if there are personal stakes for the protagonist, as well as more generic stakes or bigger stakes like trying to survive the wrath of a monster and solving a mystery which affects more characters, maybe even every character in the story. It feels quite dizzying looking at all these possibilities, but in a way, there are all potential keys to developing our rogue character in his reasons for going into that cave, his real reasons, not just the official business of archaeological investigation, if in fact he is a real archaeologist. Oh, this is now making me think about the trope of mistaken identity or disguise, and I wonder where that would go.
 
But to me, the idea of who he really is and what he wants is fundamental to the story and to where it might go.
 
So if you do a brainstorm of several ideas for a story and just don't know what to pick or where to go with it, because right now I have so many ideas swimming around my head, I wouldn't have a hope of going anywhere with this unless I had a pen in my hand and press the pause button firmly. It's worth coming back to character, see which tropes spark you off in terms of the character, who they are and what they want, and then just try writing a scene about them with those particular ideas in mind as an experiment.
 
So, we're off to a very busy start, it seems, but let's see what other ideas await our discovery.
 
Right, the first word is from Paul Benfield, which is very crinkly, this one. It's been right at the bottom of the sock. “Aggressively eyebrowed.”
 
Well, there's a describing phrase, I'd say! Very curious. Let's try for a noun: who or what was aggressively eyebrowed?
 
This is from Mariah. “Ring.” So, maybe we have some kind of magic ring?
 
Very strange. Our action is from Paul Thomas. Oh “sang a mournful tune for”.
 
So we have a repetition of the word mournful. How very curious. And a singing ring.
 
This is starting out as very bizarre, but we shall see what comes next. This is from Alessandro Bozzo. “Agitated.”
 
That can be either physically or psychologically agitated, can't it? Final word is from Paul Thomas. “Seahorse”?
 
An agitated seahorse? Okay, so the entire Exquisite Corpse is “The aggressively eyebrowed ring sang a mournful tune for the agitated seahorse.” Oh my goodness.
 
Okay, I think it's time for some green tea. It's been up here brewing for a little while. It may even be slightly over-brewed, but that's okay because it's going to inspire me, isn't it?
 
Yes. Let's give that a stir.

Gruner-tee-by Mirko Stödter on Pixabay

Right: “The aggressively eyebrowed ring sang a mournful tune for the agitated seahorse”. Of course it did. The only thing I can think of initially about this aggressively eyebrowed ring is that it somehow, this ring has taken on the characteristics of its owner, or its previous owner, and that's just how its bizarre magic works.
 
I wonder why. I find myself thinking more, wondering more about the person who created it or, or imbued it with this particular magic, than I am about its previous owner with these aggressive eyebrows. Maybe it's as simple as this witch or wizard felt they needed to show up.
 
The person who wore the ring to embarrass them, if that person might have a tendency to be pompous. The ring of shame, but someone's eyebrows, I mean, it seems a bit petty and childish as a kind of revenge, although revenge is a big trope. Hmm, but the ring doesn't just take on the characteristics of someone who's worn it.
 
It also sings a shanty for a seahorse that's missing its home from the inside of a treasure chest of a pirate. I think it's the seahorse and the fact that you have treasures together in one place that's making me think of a pirate's treasure chest. Does the chest lend life to these objects?
 
Presuming that the chest is kept on deck, so the seahorse would otherwise be dead without this magic. What about a situation where a pirate sells or trades magical items from inside this chest? He flips back the lid and presents the range of possibilities inside.
 
But soon after, the buyer strolls away with lighter pockets and a niggling sense of doubt about this outlandish purchase, the magic wears off. And so they're left with just a very weird looking ring, which no longer has big eyebrows, but a strange mop of hair matching their own. A ring that reflects yourself or something, some aspect of your appearance.
 
Or if they bought the seahorse, it would cry and beg to be thrown back into the sea, sustained only by the lingering traces of the magic, until it eventually begins to suffocate. The new owner sighs and tosses it back into the sea, but marches back to the ship to demand her money back. Only to find that the pirate is gone, long gone.
 
Well, it began with “the aggressively eyebrowed ring sang a mournful tune for the agitated seahorse”, but ended up with a magic chest, a cheat of a pirate. Well, what do you expect? But possibly something bigger than that.
 
Because, as this woman, this cheated buyer, rushes to the top of the hill to watch the ship tilt and sway into the distance, due north-northwest by her compass, she wonders what else might be possible with this magic. If you could bring something alive, what about a person? What about her fiance who died recently?
 
Her heart gives a lurch as she dares to imagine how that might work, and how that might change her life, not to mention his. But first, she has to hunt down that pirate, gather a crew and a ship. Luckily, she has a rich father who can't say no.
 
So what tropes have been invoked here so far? Other than pirates and treasure. I can see magical object, antagonist, journey and quest.
 
Definitely “revenge” coming up. Could we mix things up a bit using anything else? And I do have a list in my training pad.
 
I'm looking for some reason I'm looking at “domestic staff”. I had assumed our protagonist has some money and that's how she's going to go after the pirate. But would it be better if instead the character has very little money?
 
Is she some kind of servant already but tricks her way into getting a job on a ship? And now I'm looking at the disguised trope again. This would make the story just more exciting because it's more fun to watch someone snatch an opportunity to sneak on board, betray someone's trust, pretend to be someone they're not.
 
And as a reader, you're sort of, you're worrying about whether she's going to be found out. So this adds another dimension to what's happening in her journey and in her quest to steal, or just borrow, she tells herself at first, this magical chest to bring her lover alive again. Anything else?
 
If she meets others on the trip who discover her true identity and her mission, she might have to bargain with them, and even decide to work together with them as a team to steal that chest. For after hearing about its life-giving power, they each realize they have their own quite urgent reasons for wanting to use it, for desiring it. And this naturally expands the whole story idea into something bigger, because we've now got other characters with wants and desires and fears, other characters taking risks, that may clash with the protagonists' desires and wants and risks.
 
And in other cases, work in tandem with hers. It's funny, because even though I don't watch that many action movies, and I definitely don't see myself as primarily an action genre writer, there's so much you can borrow from different genres' tropes. And when it comes to action, I just love the whole team building or army building trope, especially if it's done on a small scale with mismatched characters who don't really get along, but decide they have to, or they just want the same thing, or share the same enemy, and so they have a go at it anyway.
 
And so you end up with all these tensions and conflicts, and it really brings out the different characters as to who's really trustworthy and who isn't. You don't have to be writing an action genre story to borrow tropes from the action genre. You too can enjoy building a fantasy team of characters, each with different strengths and weaknesses.
 
Or maybe their joined up purpose is their only strength. Then again, if you imagine these reluctant friends working together, keeping each other's secrets so they can sneak a chance at getting hold of this magic chest, can you sense a betrayal on its way? Another great trope that you can throw in just when the characters start to trust each other.
 
Is it weird that betrayal is a trope you can trust? Okay, I think one more Exquisite Corpse and this time I'm going to try and pull out some really unlikely tropes and see what they do and what they change about the original story idea as it emerges. If I haven't already done that a bit already, I think I have done a little bit.
 
Right, okay. So the first word is from Paul Thomas. “Fractured.”
 
Ooh, I like that. It's not necessarily completely broken. If something's fractured, it will just have cracks in it.
 
It makes me think of sort of lightning, the sort of the lightning pattern that you get in something that's cracked. Next word: who or what was fractured? This is from Alessandro Bozzo. “Android”. A “fractured android”.
 
This is a very strange combination. I suppose “fractured” could be psychologically fractured, if the android comes alive or something, or with thoughts of women to believe that it's conscious.
 
Our action is from Sophie Desaules: “defeated”. Now, there is a definitive action.
 
Who or what did the fractured android defeat? And was it the personal thing that caused it to be fractured?
 
Next word is from Alessandro Bozzo again: “Selfish”. A selfish character.
 
The final word is from Sean or Blue Wizard Fax. “Tailor.” A “selfish tailor”.
 
Ooh, so the entire Exquisite Corpse is, “The fractured android defeated the selfish tailor”.
 
I'm thinking about the verb to tailor is, is to make that thing especially suited to its needs or purpose or to a person's needs. So technically, a tailor could be interpreted as someone tailoring something other than clothes. It's possible.
 
With this in mind, I'm thinking about: what if the tailor has been working to make this android specially tailored to her needs? Maybe she's even made it to look like a loved one, which could be rather creepy. Then the android takes on a life of its own, a will of its own, and they end up in a deadly fight.
 
If the fractured android defeated the selfish tailor, then it doesn't look good for the tailor. And in a way, that is a selfish thing to do or sort of self-centered, in the broadest sense, thing to do, is to craft an android to look like a loved one, if you think about it. But initially, my gut instinct is, yeah, this is a very well-worn trope, isn't it?
 
That the idea of a robot coming alive, especially an android who's already a kind of robot, who's in human form, is it a bit overdone? This trope doesn't feel fresh to me at first glance. But I also realize this might be a bit to do with me being more of a fantasy writer than a sci-fi writer.
 
But there are plenty of crossovers, even when it comes to classic themes around robots and advanced science and technology. It's just a question of, between fantasy and sci-fi, it's just a question of could this conceivably ever happen with the right scientific advances or is it pure magic? That's really the sort of dividing line, I think, between fantasy and sci-fi.
 
Ah, but maybe it's telling that I just used the word classic there. Because one person's worn-out trope is another person's classic story elements that they crave to see again and again. But the vital point here is that you bring something fresh to the trope, or you combine it with other unexpected tropes.
 
Hmm, so this is when, I'm just going to mention here, there is going to be some crinkling of pages. Because not only is this the Trope Special, it's kind of the Back Pain Special as well. Welcome to the Back Pain Special.
 
Now, all it is, is that about a week ago, I hurt my back, I have no idea how I did it, and I couldn't sit down for long periods. So all my notes that I would normally type up on the laptop, well, some of these notes I've had to write in a pad because I couldn't sit down in front of the laptop to do that. So you're now going to be treated to the extra crinkly sounds of a writing pad.
 
But there's no harm, you know, I do like writing from hand sometimes. It somehow draws out your thinking sometimes in different directions. But I can no longer handwrite as fast as I can type.
 
Or I should say, I can now type faster than I handwrite. So it was a bit frustrating. But anyway, back to this trope about robots and androids coming alive. Bear with me with the crinkly noises of me turning the page. There it is. It so often comes back, this whole, you know, how do you manage to make tropes work for you in producing something that is truly original?
 
And it comes back, in my opinion, to the unexpected. It's like what I say about my personal publishing policy. I never publish anything that doesn't surprise me at least twice.
 
Although, I may need to change that slightly, I reduce it to once for fiction that's under a thousand words, because this isn't necessarily possible to achieve two surprises in a small space like that. But anyway, let's think about some really unexpected elements that we could throw in here to this fractured android defeating a selfish tailor. Hmm, so its android developer is attacked by her own creation. That's the basic idea we're working with. So I'm going to pick some really unlikely tropes from this long list that I've developed. Some of this list, by the way, if you want to look into this more, is from a book called The Trope Thesaurus by Jennifer Hilt.
 
It's a rather cunning book, I recommend. And let's see what happens when we try combining these with Android Developer is attacked by her own creation. This is just so Exquisite Corpse.
 
How about “Forbidden Love”? Just because I would not automatically think of that, and I'm not a romance writer. Let's just see if this does anything for us or for this story.
 
So, Forbidden Love, so it could be. Okay, so this tailor of androids falls in love with the Android because she finds herself adapting it, tailoring it, tailoring his looks to be like her ex-boyfriend. And maybe the Forbidden Love bit tells us that actually she's meant to be tailoring this android to spec for a customer.
 
And she doesn't mean to make it look like her ex, but she's in a bit of a low place and she's selfish, as the Exquisite Corpse tells us. And she can't stop thinking about him. So she finds herself moulding a face that she loves.
 
But something goes horribly wrong and the android attacks her. How about “Revenge”? Now, there is a well-worn trope, but for good reason.
 
It makes for great storylines, any of which can be utterly original and different, despite having that overarching theme in common. For Revenge here, might the tailor be making an Android to spec for a customer, but sneaking in some programming that will make it attack its owner? So, in this story, I think our tailor is quite evil, or just has a vendetta against someone.
 
And when she ends up being attacked by her own creation, because the Exquisite Corpse says that she is defeated by her fractured Android, then we have some sense of justice about this as readers. But who is her intended victim and why? Do we go back to the ex-boyfriend idea?
 
Or someone who hurt or kills someone she loved? Or could this be a political story? She wants to assassinate someone, and so she's planning to tailor an Android so that it lashes out at the first person who, I don't know, utters a certain phrase that they are bound to say.
 
But it all goes horribly wrong during the testing and she ends up the victim. Another weird trope. What to do?
 
Amnesia. Now that is a trope that can be wielded in many different ways. Again, it doesn't root itself in any specific setting or scenario.
 
So, like revenge, it's something you can use as quite a broad sweep and then you can just tailor it. Tailor it to what you need. So how could we adapt that here?
 
What if the android-tailor has lost some memories, but she's not aware of this? First, we see her living quite an isolated life in a small flat. This is a futuristic world and androids are common housekeepers for rich families.
 
So her profession to adapt and make fine adjustments to the basic models after their original manufacture is always in demand. But lately, she's been having nightmares. Flashes of a face, somehow familiar, mouthing words to her urgently, but she just can't hear.
 
And she wakes up in a sweat, but it all fades too fast. (Turning the page here.) And one day in her workshop, she receives a delivery of an android, separate to the batch that she had ordered from the factory.
 
Inside the box, there's a cryptic message on a tag next to the androids. And it just says, Look Inside. She doesn't know who it's from, and it hasn't come from the usual delivery company she uses.
 
At first, she'll tentatively take the Android apart in pieces, remove the metal breastplate, the forehead, but the chips and the motherboard and all she finds inside, there's nothing odd or extra that she can find among the usual bits and pieces. She starts to think it might be some weird joke gone wrong, and the look inside is more of a poke at her own inner life or mental health. It doesn't really make any sense. But what if this droid contains the key to these forgotten memories? Or does it actually have those stolen memories programmed into it? Maybe it's the increasing nightmares that prompt her to actually try wiring herself up to this android.
 
And what are these memories? And who's stolen them from her? Is this some kind of political dystopian story?
 
And in what way is she defeated by the android? So looking back at all these different possibilities, do I still feel like an android potentially coming to life is a worn-out trope that I'd rather not read about or write? I don't think so.
 
I think it's all about finding your own unexpected twist on something. And a great way to discover that is to hunt around for tropes that you could combine it with. Another way is delving in to the character of your protagonists, especially if you've started off with like a character trope, like: playboy, protector, hero, anti-hero, antagonist, anything like that.
 
Those are very broad sweeps and in themselves are cliches, potentially, if you don't develop the characters. But then again, you can spark off ideas about who they are, what they want and their own personal gripes, fears, desires and so on by exploring these different story ideas through the experimental combinations of tropes, especially ones that you wouldn't necessarily reach for initially. So, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, this whole exercise, these experiments in thinking about tropes and how to use them, has inspired me to go that little bit further and to give you an extra resource that you can use to develop your own story ideas in a similar way.
 
I have created a new page at annatizard.com where I've listed a lot of tropes. I don't think there's quite a hundred in there, but there's definitely at least 50 I haven't counted. And I might actually add to the list in time when I come across more or think of more.
 
So I don't know how many. Maybe there will be a hundred quite soon. On my website, if you see the tab on the right that says more, beneath that, there is the Storytropes page.
 
I hope you'll find this page to be a useful resource for your own creative writing and to help you brainstorm possible new directions for a story that you might be writing.
 
Because if you've begun something and you have an inkling of a new story and you're not quite sure where you want to take it, now there's a feeling I get very often as a writer of short stories and longer pieces, there is no harm in having a scroll through a nice fat list of themes and situations and seeing if one or two of them, maybe even more, might spark you off in an exciting new direction. And of course, this way you know that you'll be ticking boxes for readers who might come across your story in future when you publish it. So please do have a nose around the list at annatizard.com/tropes and see where that takes you.
 
In the meantime, what have we had today? An android turning on its creator or tailor. A roguish archaeologist who's not quite what he seems.
 
Coming face to face with an ancient underground monster. And a pirate's chest that can make objects come alive. But perhaps what's more intriguing about this story is the journey the protagonist goes on to find it and steal it.
 
And the, maybe, the unlikely team she'll have to build from her fellow shipmates when they find out what she's up to and threaten to reveal her secret. So what word combination shall I prompt you to brainstorm for the next show if you fancy having a go?
 
Maybe it has to be “the fractured android”, because that's such a great word combination. How did it come to be fractured? And why?
 
You know what to do. Drop me a line at annatizard.com and hit the contact button on the page footer.
 
Until next time, go forth and be inspired.