This is number 106 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“…MAN DO I DISLIKE the tired ‘someone misinterprets something innocent and gets mad/heartbroken at the other person’ trope.” So, commented a reader of Soulmates recently.
I understand. It happens in almost every book and every movie, whether you are watching action and adventure, romance, or anime. Someone always gets misunderstood. Someone always misinterprets something. Even James Bond. It’s a staple of keeping a story tense and making interpersonal relationships real.
It’s a ‘trope’ I’ve used frequently. A trope, by the way, is a recurring character type or plot device that appears repeatedly in literature or art. The innocent misunderstanding is only one of many that recur. There are dozens that you would recognize in everything you read once they were pointed out.
The Chosen One. The Mistaken Identity. The Love Triangle. The MacGuffin (a thing that appears to push the plot forward, like a secret letter, an amulet, a key, a sacred book, etc.). Inconvenient Prophecies. Impending Apocalypse. Enemies to Lovers. Only One Space (one bed in a room, one elevator, one available rental car, etc.). The All-Night Diner. The Grizzled Detective. The Treasure Hunt. The Double Agent. Self-Sacrifice. The Underdog Hero.
One of the most fun books I’ve ever written was the three-volume set of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon. The idea came to me as I was driving north toward Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, supposedly thinking about the Team Manager series. Suddenly, I heard a voice in my head say, “Hello. My name’s Bob. I’ll be your demon tonight.”
I told my friend and story consultant, Doug, about the weird idea for a demon who was unattached to any person or purpose, but had merrily gone about his way for several thousand years. Doug nodded and said, “Bob is just a happy-go-lucky—mostly lucky—demon.”
But how did this demon get into the world?
By way of one of the oldest tropes in the book: The Drunken Summoning Spell.
Bob’s inept adept, Pinaruti, drunkenly thinks he is summoning Beelzebub, but slurs the words to Beetlebob. When Bob appears, Pinaruti is so surprised at the success of the spell that he dies of heart failure, forming a bridge out of the warded circle for Bob to cross into the real world.
Of course, Bob inherits his ability to cast spells from his would-be master, so even without being drunk, most of his spells go awry. It is the beginning of a 4,000-year adventure.
Why does the trope work? Because it has an unexpected outcome. The whole concept of ‘demon’ is rife with horror overtones, but Bob is a lovable and happy being who stumbles into the presence of Zeus, has a conflict with Poseidon, is Caesar’s sidekick, travels with Jesus, is the architect for Kubli Khan, combats piracy and slave trading across the Pacific, and ends up launching his own spaceship.
And, of course, his summoner imagined him as irresistible to females—some of whom ask him to possess them!
The entire three-volume set of Bob’s Memoir is available as individual eBooks or as a collection at Bookapy.
So, first of all, why are tropes so common? These things don’t come about out of the blue. I believe the reason the “someone misinterprets something innocent and gets a broken heart” trope referred to at the beginning of this post is so often included in works—especially of romance—is because it’s common in real life. I’ve personally been a victim of it on several occasions—some for which I wish I could go back and hit “undo.”
Sometimes these situations get cleared up, and sometimes they end up in divorce. That’s life.
In Soulmates, there is the unique solution in that the couple can communicate mentally and can share exactly what was going on with each other. It resolves the situation quickly, but it’s necessary to show a new level of growth and trust in the relationship.
An author can’t avoid every trope because tropes arise from common life events. What the author does with the trope will determine its success or failure. One thing is to avoid such overworked tropes that they have become clichés. A cliché is a trope that has been overused and trivialized to the point of being two-dimensional. The ditzy blonde and the dumb jock are two examples.
One way to make use of a trope is to subvert expectations. In Bob’s Memoir, the demon is not an embodiment of evil, but a happy and somewhat beneficent being. Perhaps the detective of a mystery actually is as incompetent as he appears and the mystery solves itself in spite of him. (The Pink Panther.) The blue-haired old lady solving a cozy mystery is actually a spy who has done her share of killing.
In my short story, “Before the Fire,” a man is reading in front the cozy fireplace in his sitting room when a ghostly woman substantiates in the chair next to him. They talk, he gives her a blanket, and eventually they make love. But then it is revealed that it is the man who is not real, but is merely a character in a book the woman is reading. That is a subverted trope.
One of the traps authors fall into is having two-dimensional characters. They depend on a trope to carry the story, but somehow it rings hollow, almost becoming a cliché. The remedy for this is to fully explore the character and fully develop it.
I have written characters that fell short of being fully developed, which irritates me because I pride myself in well-developed characters. It happens most often with the ‘occasional villain.’ This is a villain who only appears for a specific occasion. He’s there to pull the trigger and then disappear, so to speak. We don’t really know anything about him. We don’t know what motivates his action, what he believes, or often even what he looks like. Or that he’s a she.
When writing a limited viewpoint story, it’s difficult to fully develop characters other than the narrator. The hero’s only interaction with the villain is that villainous act that defines him in relationship to the hero. But that is never a complete view of the character.
In the Team Manager series, the bullies of the first book are slowly revealed through other interactions, their history with the hero, the police investigation, and the testimony of relatives—sisters, parents, business partners, and lovers. The action is consistent with how the characters develop.
Combining the character development with a surprising twist on the trope can also provide something fresh. Imagine, for example, a flamboyant gay hairdresser who turns out to be a family man who lives in the suburbs and only puts on the act for his clientele.
Keeping things new is always a challenge for the author—especially in erotica. It has been said that there are only so many ways for Tab A to fit in Slot B. It is only the depth of the characters, their relationship, and their emotions that set one act apart from another. Next week, “Too Much Information (TMI).”