the-green-reader

[the-green-reader]

Hello all, I’m the Green Reader!

I have a passion for books and writing, so I’ve decided to start this blog as a way to keep track of what I’m reading and to hopefully give me the motivation to get back into writing.

[the-green-reader]

[the-green-reader]

A super villain who runs a number of retail stores, not as a cover, but as a means of recruiting their staff as villainous side-kicks once they are inevitably filled with seething rage for customers and the general public.

[the-green-reader]

Hey Neil! Do you have any advice for aspiring authors around dealing with tropes? I'm writing something but at times it feels like everything is too trope-y. I don't want to go against the tropes though just for the sake of it! Cheers - A very self critical writer

I kind of wish that the whole "TV tropes" thing had never happened, to be honest. As far as I'm concerned it's like a website that analyses word use or letter of the alphabet use, with the additional function of making people self-conscious.

There aren't a lot of story shapes. In a love story, people get to meet. Either they meet dramatically or they meet in a way that is interesting by being undramatic. Either they fall for each other or they don't, or one falls but the other doesn't. Something had better prevent them from getting together, whether it's pride or a guard with a gun, because otherwise you don't have a plot, unless they get together and then something goes wrong... and on and on. Everything is going to be some kind of trope, and none of that actually matters. What matters is the story. Pretend you've never heard of tropes.

Tell your story. Tell it new, tell it freshly, have fun telling it. Make characters we care about, give them interesting problems to solve, sort it out in the end or at least make the ending, whether happy or sad, feel satisfying, and you'll be fine.