Least favorite storytelling and writing tropes?

[Chronos314_XD]

(keep I mind I'm not a professional writer or anything but I just wanted to see others people's opinions)

1. Intentionally having a character do something out of character and horrible just to have a specific outcome in the story (example: finn messing up his relationship with flame princess in adventure time because of his weird dreams).

2. Punching bag characters, I think they can be funny but I feel like some writers go too far to the point where it makes me hate most of the characters for how they treat the punching bag.

That's just a couple of examples I have.

 

[Midoriya]

Meaningless deaths just for shock value. This is probably my #1 least favorite. I understand if the work is just trying to be action-filled and/or not take itself too seriously, but it gets a bit tiring seeing a character killed off just because the author wanted readers to be surprised or they didn't feel like continuing to write said character in story. I wish more authors would give more meaning to their character deaths so that it enhances the overall work, but sadly that doesn't happen a lot.

 

[Chronos314_XD]

Meaningless deaths just for shock value. This is probably my #1 least favorite. I understand if the work is just trying to be action-filled and/or not take itself too seriously, but it gets a bit tiring seeing a character killed off just because the author wanted readers to be surprised or they didn't feel like continuing to write said character in story. I wish more authors would give more meaning to their character deaths so that it enhances the overall work, but sadly that doesn't happen a lot.

Yeah, the worst thing is when you can tell by how it was written its obvious the writer just didn't like that character anymore by how they kill them and how characters react to it.

 

[AccfSally]

I usually read a lot of romance, not the ones that are very 'Hallmark-like' (even though they still have a wholesome vibe to it) or what most people think all romance books are about, things I'm probably not allow to say on here. The hammer is going to drop on me if I do lol.
There's plenty of times where my eyes almost got stuck in the back of my head because I'll rolled them too much at the most annoying things ever. It's worst when one of my favorite characters in TV shows fall under one of these tropes and I just want to slam my head into the nearest wall while wondering why the creators would do this.

1) This one I have only seen in TV shows so far, I don't know the name of it. But it goes like this. Character A and B are friends (or a couple). Character A is very passionate about becoming a chef someday, so they study hard and apply to this world-renowned school blah blah future is bright..blah blah. Character B is not any of these, just spend their time living. Then one day Character B realize or get this idea that they are slowing Character A down; while Character A is showing the opposite, enjoys whatever Character B brings in store. Cue the ignoring game. Character B goes on a internal rant about how selfish they're for not thinking about the other's feelings, WHILE IGNORING THEM.
Maybe I'm over reacting, but I really can't stand this one.

2) Situations that could have ended ages ago if the characters just sat down and had a heart-to-heart. Now that I'm writing this, I think this also applies to the example above too. But this also drives me to no end. Some romance love eating up this trope.

3) The guy is a jerk to the girl for no reason and the girl is madly in love with them. (This could be for any gender, but this one is most used).

This list isn't all of them, if I added more I'll be here for eternity.

 

[Chronos314_XD]

I usually read a lot of romance, not the ones that are very 'Hallmark-like' (even though they still have a wholesome vibe to it) or what most people think all romance books are about, things I'm probably not allow to say on here. The hammer is going to drop on me if I do lol.
There's plenty of times where my eyes almost got stuck in the back of my head because I'll rolled them too much at the most annoying things ever. It's worst when one of my favorite characters in TV shows fall under one of these tropes and I just want to slam my head into the nearest wall while wondering why the creators would do this.

1) This one I have only seen in TV shows so far, I don't know the name of it. But it goes like this. Character A and B are friends (or a couple). Character A is very passionate about becoming a chief someday, so they study hard and apply to this world-renowned school blah blah future is bright..blah blah. Character B is not any of these, just spend their time living. Then one day Character B realize or get this idea that they are slowing Character A down; while Character A is showing the opposite, enjoys whatever Character B brings in store. Cue the ignoring game. Character B goes on a internal rant about how selfish they're for not thinking about the other's feelings, WHILE IGNORING THEM.
Maybe I'm over reacting, but I really can't stand this one.

2) Situations that could have ended ages ago if the characters just sat down and had a heart-to-heart. Now that I'm writing this, I think this also applies to the example above too. But this also drives me to no end. Some romance love eating up this trope.

3) The guy is a jerk to the girl for no reason and the girl is madly in love with them. (This could be for any gender, but this one is most used).

This list isn't all of them, if I added more I'll be here for eternity.

I swear to god anything involving romance is on another level when it comes to bad writing tropes lmao

 

[rocketspruggs]

I'm not a writer, but I do know some tropes in TV shows I don't like.

I hate how writers make a character to serve as a love interest in only one episode and just never be seen again later on.

I don't like it when a character that's meant to be hated appears in an episode or two or more, and there's never any character development whatsoever, and they never even bother explaining why that character is hated to begin with.

I also don't like it when they suddenly make a bad episode of an otherwise great series, a lot of my favorite shows have already fallen victim to this mess.

And don't even get me started with the clichéd popular mean girl stereotype, don't we have too much of that already?

 

[Yanrima~]

Are abruptly happy endings considered a trope?

Because, I do admit that I enjoy bittersweet or "bad" endings sometimes and it teaches us that not everything is going to be magically solved in one go.

And don't even get me started with the clichéd popular mean girl stereotype, don't we have too much of that already?

Honestly, it would be a great idea to flesh out characters like that. Or make the popular mean girl herself as a protagonist.

For example: the mean girl has a not-so-great life, so she uses her peers in school as a form of escapism from her personal problems and takes everyone for granted by being generally nasty. Only for the course of the story, she suffers the consequences of her actions and slowly realizes that she has to grow up and accept that she needs to treat others as proper humans rather than treating them as tools for her escape. And that she has to learn how to enjoy life in it's base form. With her true friend (an "outcast" in school) acting as some guidance.

(granted, I used to read classical stories that actually punished the protagonist for bad behavior and teaches them like "The Adventures of Pinocchio" or "The Christmas Carol". Honestly, I didn't see much stories or media these days that basically punishes these types of behavior or basically make these characters actual villains unlike the stories of old.)

 

[Giddy]

New kid - aka main character moves to the city/town and then suddenly the weird stuff happens.
Like the stuff/plot/exciting incident only happens because new kid is there.
It would be fine is some stuff has happened before they came or like if we had knowledge that the new kid has been there a few days before things happened.

Not saying it's like Gravity falls, we;re shown they were there for a few days before Dipper found anything. (And the weird stuff was already there before they got there so)

I hate the trope where group of characters are talking about Character A, Character A overhears but leaves before they hear the whole bloody thing. Cuasing stupid problems that only the viewer/reader knows. Ive never seen them use this idea in a different way like, make it so the readers/viewers don;t hear all the conversation either! Leave us in the dark and use the future stupid argument that comes after this to see whose side we're really on.
Puss in boots, make a wish did this much better. Kitty overhears everything, but also makes out she never actually heard them. Shes heard all she needs, getting to see him in a light he probably couldn't express properly.

When a writer sees how their fans enjoy two characters and fans want them to be togther, and just do it to please the fans.
No, don't do that. If that wasn't part of the plan, don't ruin your structure just to please fans. Because when you change things you remove the passion from the actual story plot to try and get these two together. Or worse, if the two never had much on site interaction it will feel too forced.
Like how could you take a creation you love, took years to develop, and the moment someone wants a ship to happen, you let it happen? Fanfiction is there for them. Don't ruin a story over this.
(More bais since I have two - well now its' three series(Umbrella Academy how could you) that have made a ship into love. Though star vs the forces of evil is different since the creator also wanted starco; which is weird since marco had a crush on Jackie since he was a ickly bickle toddler. Not to say he could catch a crush on Star throughout the show, but you really stabbed the continuity in the gut with a specific line of dialogue Marco said near the end of the show)

 

[SkyKnight03]

Tossing together a romantic trope for absolutely no reason. Characters with no prior chemistry or with little interaction for an entire movie are kissing at the end or developed feelings in the last few minutes.

I think I'm just exhausted from everything needing to have a romantic angle tied into it. I'm even more tired of oversexualization.

Even without mainstream hollywood movies, it's getting tougher to escape from it.

 

[QueenCobra]

There’s a lot, but some I don’t like are enemies to lovers (Sorry! I know a lot of people like that one!) or the “I can fix him” one.

What I mean by the latter is like, (this will sound very heteronormative, bc it is) a girl falls in love with a guy who treats her badly, but he’s had a traumatic past so it’s OK. Usually the author will try to make this guy seem “cool” in other ways to make him more appealing— but it never does, really. At least not to me.

Also :

—Everything just being a dream at the end and/or imagined. (Think Tommy Westphall imagining the hospital in the snow globe was St. Elsewhere.)

—Major conflicts that could be solved easily if people just talked to each other.

—Also…a very specific and personal one. Lateness stresses me out. Whenever someone is talking to someone else in a movie or show, and tardy bells keep ringing, and or, someone keeps interrupting it saying, “Katie! It’s time to go!” “Katie! Hurry UP!” Etc. I find it stressful to watch, personally.

 

[Snowesque]

The "damaged" pretty person that just needs someone to save them. More like everyone needs to just stop sucking.

 

[Corrie]

Love triangles. We all know the third character is never ending up with the MC so why waste our time.

 

[AccfSally]

I forgot about this one, but it's a thing in anime. I mentioned it on another thread somewhere on this site a while back. But it has something to do with a older guy adopting a young girl and treats her like his daughter. And then when she's like in high school, she developed feelings for her father basically! They start dating and even getting married and having kids of their own.

 

[Chronos314_XD]

I forgot about this one, but it's a thing in anime. I mentioned it on another thread somewhere on this site a while back. But it has something to do with a older guy adopting a young girl and treats her like his daughter. And then when she's like in high school, she developed feelings for her father basically! They start dating and even getting married and having kids of their own.

EWWW WHAT

 

[Kitsuragi]

fridging. it's overused, tired, and lazy.

what that means is that a character of some sort of importance is killed or hurt severely so that another character, usually the main person, has some sort of motivation for doing what they do. it's really, REALLY common to do for female characters so that a male character has some sort of motivation to do something, either for justice or vengeance.

WiR - Fan Gail Simone responds

 

[SkyKnight03]

I forgot about this one, but it's a thing in anime. I mentioned it on another thread somewhere on this site a while back. But it has something to do with a older guy adopting a young girl and treats her like his daughter. And then when she's like in high school, she developed feelings for her father basically! They start dating and even getting married and having kids of their own.

Leon The Professional is a movie that almost follows the same concept but puts a spin on it.

Older man 'adopts' a younger girl. (she's more so grade school age). She develops feelings for him, but he quickly puts an end to that as it starts.

The original script was...much more ambiguous about the relationship. Natalie Portmans parents didn't approve of it so the movie was changed (thankfully).

 

[Giddy]

fridging. it's overused, tired, and lazy.

what that means is that a character of some sort of importance is killed or hurt severely so that another character, usually the main person, has some sort of motivation for doing what they do. it's really, REALLY common to do for female characters so that a male character has some sort of motivation to do something, either for justice or vengeance.

WiR - Fan Gail Simone responds

THIS.
They usually do thus to characters that have a well rounded relationship with main character, but we don't see this because they kill them too early, so we aren't so connected to them dying.

Of they're killed off because they would easily fixed solutions that take the main character more time to do.

Or get rid of a character so the main character chooses another character as their friend/lover etc. (Voltron??)

 

[Xara]

"It was all just a dream" trope my absolute behated.... I don't mind when it's used for a small part of a story so long as it doesn't erase anything that happened prior to it, but when a story ends with it..... and it turns out the entire story was just a dream..... pisses me off so bad.

I don't care how much I was into a story up until that point, as soon as they hit me with the "it was all just a dream", the story is immediately ruined for me. Ending a story like that always feels like a cop-out.

 

[Yanrima~]

You know, subversion itself (especially subversion of expectations) has become a tiring storytelling trope in recent years. It used to be a niche thing that will get people hooked to the story, but it has become an excuse to not plan a story properly or try to retcon an already established canon or just make up things on the fly without any established groundwork.

 

[BetsySundrop]

As mentioned by others, the miscommunication or partially overhead conversation that turns into 300+ pages of pure frustration for the reader -ugh.

A really wise/smart character who is extremely competent, capable, successful, blah blah blah - oh but wait, the plot needs to move along, so they make a really stupid stupid stupid decision that has completely predictable consequences.

Whatever the gender of participants, I absolutely cannot stand when character A (supposed to be the love interest or whatever) treats character B like crap. For. The. Whole. Book. And i mean really, really awful. For hundreds of pages. Then all of a sudden it's all ok in the end because twoo wuv? No! That's an awful person. They didn't magically change. You need to plot revenge, not plan a wedding!

Introducing a puppy or some other cute baby animal in the beginning, only to immediately off it for dramatic effect by chapter 2. Lazy way to quickly tug at heartstrings.

There’s so many to choose from! But this last one isn't a trope, just a personal opinion. Use a thesauras! I recently read (some of, DNF) a book series wherein all of the characters smirked. They smirked when happy, they smirked when sad, they smirked when nervous, they smirked when the whole world was in danger, they smirked all the time. Apparently, it was the only facial expression that existed in that world. It got so irritating I found myself cringing in anticipation and counting the smirks. Finally had to scrap that series because i couldn't take it anymore.