forum Things You Want LESS Of In Books

Started January 21, 2019 by @HighPockets group

tune

My newest projects breaks tropes all over the place and that makes me happy.

I like to play with the 'one person vs the world' trope.
One of my characters thinks he's the only one who can save everyone, and it will likely result in his death, or at least a very bad injury.

I like it.

One of my favorites is when my boy Josiah turns down the protag Daniella because he has his own life.
Also in that story the tough trainer Silas is an asshole and Daniella hates him. Also more than half of the cast are girls. Also the protag never has a romance that lasts. Most of the characters consider relationships as great things that they don't have time for at the moment. The vengeance-bent leader had her older sister killed which is a very rare dynamic. (Yeah I'm just bragging at this point. Idek.) Also the protagonist doesn't become leader because that's stupid and Rune is smart enough to have a chain of command in case of emergency. I love this project so much.

Anyone else want to brag of their trope breaking skills?

• Meg has had 2 love interests prior to the story and isn't viewed as a 'slut' for it
• When Lucas finds out his heritage, he's rightfully pissed off and upset at his father for forcing him to spend 17 years in the care of an abusive woman.
• Same with Iam, he's conflicted about how he doesn't find it morally right to be upset with his mom because she's dead, but still resents that she never told him that he wasn't fae.
• Ansel is only 12, and is traumatized by the war he fights in. After the first battle, he starts crying and breaks down in the arms of his mentor figure
• Therese and Nich, Leah and Stephen, Fern and Asher, Esther and Cedar, Jackson and Geneva, and Giana and Lucas all have strictly platonic relationships, because meeting a person doesn't mean you have to want to be with them romantically
• Oleander is dramatic, pretentious, and generally irritating and sleazy, and viewed like most people view that one really racist and homophobic family member they only see at Thanksgiving in a 'well, I have to see him, but then I won't need to be around him for a while'
• Lysander, an average size/slightly petite 16 year old, is an eager and intelligent farmboy turned royal guard, and duels a guy 6 years older than him and twice his size. He gets the everloving crap beaten out of him, breaking several ribs and getting fairly deep cuts across his body
• Huxley sees his father's execution, and has PTSD from it 10 years later, because trauma doesn't disappear. Even after he falls for Fern, he still doesn't magically heal from his trauma.
• Oliver is still pretty messed up from, y'know, seeing his fiancee arrested and executed for treason as he was forced to watch, and generally has a lot of issues that he tries to solve via showing no emotions and drinking too much. He's forced into a leadership role he's not nearly as prepared for as he should be, and in the current draft dies a fairly painful death at age 24.
• Giana wishes that she hadn't been forced to let Vivian risk her life throughout her teenage years, but also knows that she had to or her and Ophelia would have died. Instead of just dismissing that, she struggles a lot internally about the role she played/plays in the lives of her sisters.

My book isn't as exciting lol, but…

• My protag Quinn has an anxiety disorder, but she manages it well and it isn't the center of her personality.
• When she has a panic attack, not everyone handles it like a mental health professional, and some do things that make her feel worse.
• My love interest Compass is seen as a more sexually charged person, but she struggles with romantic relationships and NEVER pressures Quinn into anything.
• Quinn, similar to what you guys are saying, is very much not the leader of the friend group and needs a lot of help to get the main accomplishment of the story done.
• My antagonist Leah isn't just a bully with one dimension, and gradually through the story you begin to sympathize with her.

• While Leah does miss Jayson, she still feels betrayed by him for what he did, and while they do rekindle a friendship, neither one of them feels comfortable starting up a romance.
• Jayson's years of emotional abuse weigh down on him and he's straight-up traumatized by the end of the book, being one of the only surviving characters and having pretty bad injuries from his fight.

You know what I feel like we don't see?
Characters with facial scars. I feel like most characters with scars have them on everywhere but their faces, so I try to add in characters with facial scars. Ayla has a scar all the way down her left eye (a la Anakin), Jayson has a glasgow grin (can it technically be called that? The blade didn't enter his mouth, but was dragged across his face), and Jon has a pretty faint but still noticable scar on his cheek.

Facial scars are my favorite. Most of my characters have a ton of scars

A lot of mine has scars too, I'm fairly certain that everyone has at least one physical scar by the end of my Twyllo story, except for maybe Meg, by the virtue of her not being heavily involved in physical combat.

almost all of my characters from a certain species have facial scars as it is part of a tribal ritual.

I don't know what you're talking about, I see facial scars everywhere on every character ever… Usually to make them look "edgy", "mysterious", "cool", or used to show their unrealistically tragic backstory.

Is that just a PaigeeWorld thing?

No I see that

My guy Tano has scars on his arms from the work he does. Silas has a lot of small arm scars from cutting himself. (Not in a depressed way.)

my girl feraen has nicks all over her hands bc she nicks herself while skinning game

Joan has burn scars on her arms from the fire she was in.

Same with Rollan, except they're from his face, down his shoulders and to his wrists.
Also Chion would have some scarring from her persecution.

Jon later has a long scar down his lower leg from events later on.

(Sorry to be that person but this is a thread for saying what you want have less of in books not what you have in your books..) I want less, "good plot fights going good, we're about to kill the bad guy annnnd, WAIT WAIT" Author furiosly starts new chapter "lets changes the entire focus of the book to these two characters falling in love. yep- good job team."

(I personally find it fine as we're citing examples, and as the creator I officially decree that if you have a book/character/anything else from your story that subverts a trope mentioned on here, add it. Please. I want to be comforted in knowing these mistakes aren't being repeated lol)

Oh my gosh those are the literal worst!!! Like, I have romances, but they don't take over the plot most of the time, they act as motivation if anything.

My romances sucked. They were just so awful. Now I actually have decent characters instead of cardboard cutouts that kiss. retching noise At first it was the two nice people and then the jerk girl falling for the protag. Jeez.
Now my first couple actually are formed people that complement each other. Arenna is the one who is so genuinely kind to everyone and Falaun is just a friend to everyone so they work well together. Then they go through trauma and change but oh well. (Hey wait! Another cliche breaker. People actually change when they go through traumatic circumstance!)
Then Sarai literally is just a friend after the first book because she was a jerk to him. It isn't until the end of the second book that they are seriously in a relationship.

I have a lot of romances but I like them all so they're staying.

I have a lot of romances but I like them all so they're staying.

i feel that, a lot of my romantic pairings are comfort characters so

I'm debating whether or not to have one of my pairings together from the beginning. I don't really have time for a lot of romantic subplot between side characters, so I figure if they're already together, it would work out a lot better maybe. What do you guys think? I know a lot of you, including myself, said there need to be more pre-existing relationships in stories.

I mean, you lose out on the slow burn if they're together right away, but you also don't have to deal with the awkward set up and stuff for a relationship.

I have other relationships with more prevalent characters that are more slow burns, so I think I'm okay in that respect. Definitely less set up stuff I'll have to do though.