the.com/trope
The plot device you've seen so often it now predicts itself.
means A recurring theme, motif, or device—especially in writing and storytelling—that gets reused so often it becomes a recognizable pattern.
from From Greek 'tropos,' meaning 'turn' or 'way,' via Latin 'tropus.' It originally belonged to rhetoric, naming a figure of speech that 'turns' a word from its literal meaning—like calling a brave man a 'lion.' The sense widened over centuries from a single rhetorical turn to any recurring literary or narrative convention, and more recently exploded in pop-culture criticism to cover everything from chosen-one heroes to the 'evil twin' subplot.
- origin
- Greek for turn, as in turn of phrase
- not a flaw
- cliches are tropes that got lazy
- storytelling tool
- writers lean on them, audiences lean back
- self-aware era
- naming the trope is now its own trope