Writing and Wattpadding (a guide)

Playing with Tropes

Genres come with common tropes or elements. They are things you see frequently in stories. Let's take the werewolf genre for example. When you read a werewolf story what are some common elements you see? The guy is usually an Alpha, Beta, someone with power for one. The girl is usually exiled, an outcast, someone that everyone hates, unseen, can't stand up for herself. Then you have the instalove. Boy and girl are typically mates, and they meet and boom instantly in love. Or maybe they fight a little bit, but they usually end up together. 

So what can you do to play with these common elements you see? 

I tried to play with them a bit in my story THE HUNTRESS. Electra is a girl that doesn't take crap from anyone. She's independent and doesn't need or want a guy to tell her what she's supposed to do. She's self sufficient. She takes down powerful paranormal creatures on a daily basis and she can hold her own against them. She knows what she wants and what she's doing. 

Enter Jared. He's not an Alpha. It was quite funny reading comments from people who all assumed he was going to be an Alpha. He's not even part of a pack, but he's also not classified as a rogue. I don't use those really in THE HUNTRESS. There are werewolves who are part of a pack, or on their own, but they aren't classified as rogues. He's not the bad guy, he's not the cheater. He's basically a regular guy...minus the werewolf thing. 

There is no instalove. Electra is guarded, yet she finds herself sharing more about her life with this guy than she's really ever told anyone else. Not even her best friend knows some of the things she says. But she doesn't want to fall into the love trap because she feels it's a weakness. 

Even after the mate part comes out, there still isn't the instant love. She's a huntress, she's supposed to kill things like him, not kiss them. She has a lot of things to work out, but being the independent person she is, she works them out on her own. She doesn't let someone else tell her what to think, she decides what she's going to believe on her own. 

Those are just a couple ways I played with the typical elements of a werewolf story. 

Why do you want to play with these things? Because it helps break your story from the mold. If you're going to write vampires or werewolves, you need to make them stand out. MERMAIDS AND THE VAMPIRES WHO LOVE THEM by BrittanieCharmintine is a great example of breaking those common tropes. She takes werewolves, vampires, fairies and breaks all the rules. 

Why does breaking the rules make a book good? 

Well that's not the case all the time. It works quite often because you surprise your reader. Keeping your readers on their toes keeps them engaged with the book. It keeps them coming back chapter after chapter to keep reading so they figure out what happens. It keeps them interested because though it's something they're familiar with, it's also something new. That is the place you want your reader to be. You want them to be comfortable with the base of your story, but you want to keep them engaged and guessing while they move throughout. 

Let's take my short story DON'T SET HIM FREE. It's your typical scary story like you'd see in a movie with poltergeist type activity where stuff starts flying. However, the ending surprised quite a few people. It threw them for a loop because they weren't expecting something like that to happen. (I'm not going to give it away in case some haven't read it yet and want to read it.) But there were quite a few comments from people, and they were shocked by the ending I'd written. That's what I want. I want people to be surprised. 

In THE HUNTRESS, everyone expected the werewolf to be an Alpha. Nope. They expected or were hoping that Electra would get bitten and turned into a werewolf or something else. Nope. Not going to happen. I'm not going to follow all those basics you see. I'm going to turn it and hopefully take it in a way that you weren't expecting to see. Doing that keeps the readers reading and that's what you want since you have to keep selling your story time and time again on this site. 

If you have anymore questions about this topic, or any other writing topic, ask it below and I'll try to make a section on it. Thank you!