about tropes and clichés...

Also check what I say about romance and sex scenes…

trope: a significant or recurrent theme; a motif.

cliché: a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.

in Romance…

Romance literature—here always referring here about the cisHet kind, which is what I write—is riddled with tropes and clichés. Predictably of course. Also necessarily, because they are flagpoles of a sort. The problem is that their overuse makes a lot of indie lit outright tedious. However, they aren’t confined to authors ranging from my very modest level of…let me call it ‘popularity’…but range all the way to romance lit A-listers. Avoiding dropping names here intentionally.

At the lower- to mid-range levels even the more interesting and engaging stories—and there are a lot!—all-too-often have the shine taken off them because of the authors’ apparent belief that they have to whip out every trope and cliche they can think of in order to keep their readers purchasing more of the same. Maybe the saddest aspect about this is that a lot of my pet dislikes—listed below—are not actually necessary to make the affected novels exciting, engaging and…well, sexy; never mind where the stories fall on the sweet-to-racy spectrum.

Here’s just a few items on my list of why-oh-why-again? Not that there’s anything wrong with them being used sparingly and in the right way. They represent realities about human relationships. But writers can get very lazy and end up with cookie-cutter stories. It’s easy to get caught in that trap. Been there, succumbed to it and had to work hard on learning their judicious use.

Males:

  • Large. (Not just in body height.)

  • Powerful.

  • Six-pack abs.

  • Very handsome or attractively ugly/damaged/deformed/injured.

  • Ex-professional action guys, or else in law enforcement, private security, yada-yada.

  • Oversexed and over-testosteroned alphas.

  • Initially resistant to commitment or given up on love.

  • Rakes; usually conquered by the female, turning him magically monogamous.

  • Usually on the ‘mentally damaged’ side, with uncontrollable priapic tendencies and inability to control their sexual responses when exposed to female protagonist.

  • Lots of thinking with the little head; if ‘thinking’ it can be called.

  • Require emotional healing and adjustment.

  • Never have their ‘toes curling’.

  • Somehow will end up saving the female from some danger or some evildoer abducting and threatening to do terrible things to her.

  • Men are objectifiers; preoccupied with female physical features (see below) acting as initial attractors, as well as continuing through the story—rather than through secondary over other attractors. Eventually usually manage to turn in something resembling humans, instead of remaining half-apes.

Femaies:

  • Smaller than males.

  • Very rarely the kick-ass type.

  • More intellectually equipped than the male, often evidenced by having educational or professional evidence to back that up.

  • Beautiful, irresistibly attractive and sexy.

  • Inclined getting ‘curling toes’ syndrome when kissing alpha males.

  • Looking for Mr. he’s-got-to-be-somewhere.

  • Ability to reason seriously damaged when it comes to interacting with male protagonist.

  • Unable to resist rakes and, despite often superior intellects, unable to assess the risks regarding STD issues.

  • Somehow will end up in situations of danger or some evildoer abducting and threatening to do terrible things to her, requiring the male to come to her rescue, after often finally coming to his dulled interpersonal senses

  • Women are objectifiers; preoccupied with male physical features (see above) acting as initial attractors, as well as continuing through the story—rather than that being secondary over other attractors.

Story beats/sequence:

  • Romance first either resisted—or the enemies-to-friends variety—followed by romance eventually consummated—usually through sex about at mid story—followed by it being threatened by contingency/misunderstanings/villains/tragedy/whatever, followed by romance restored through actions/understanding/resumed sex and/or proposals, followed by a marriage and/or a we-now-have-kids etc epilogue and trite saccharine happily-ever-after. A version of compulsive three-act structure.

  • ‘Explosive chemistry’ in action.

  • Little heads and love buttons rule supreme.