Dark and Stormy Nights

Dark and Stormy Nights - Something Something about Tropes

Courtesy of my friend Meow.

Bang! Lightning strikes! A gust of wind carries an ominous tune and tosses a volley of droplets against your bedroom window. You take the hint, but you still refuse to get up. You're just lying there with your eyes open "angrily", as they say. Bang! Another flash illuminates the darkness, closely followed by the sound of a snapped fuse. You reach for the nightstand and flick a switch. Nothing! You flick again. You realize your power has been cut gasp!

You start cursing and manage to swing yourself out of bed and start fumbling through a drawer. Bingo! Well, at least your flashlight seems to be working. Time to check the fuse box. Downstairs you jank a lid open and take a look. Mhm... one of those little levers has been triggered, as expected. Could be worse -click-. Either way, you've done the thing and close the lid again, but BOO! There's a guy standing there grinning at you, all manically. You flinch and instinctively raise you flashlight like a nightstick, but wait... He's pointing at a piece of paper and starts gesturing at you. Yes, you! An essay!? You start reading reluctantly.

And so it begins. I suppose most of the above could've been reduced to one magical sentence: "It was a dark and stormy night." A meme as old as time. A trope so epic it has been used across a million different stories. Books, movies, games, radio plays... You name it. Really, if you ever wrote anything at all, you probably used those seven words yourself. I don't blame you either, but then I reckon industry people might snicker at you for using it. Well, at least in terms of you using it unironically, without any varying attempts of obfuscation. You just spelled it out, man! Like it was the... mhm... equivalent to "once upon a time" at the beginning of a fairy tale. Simply put, the issue isn't really on principle, it's about the how. Contex matters.

First of all, do you really have to start your story like that? If so, maybe you could defuse the stereotype with some self-awarness. Instead of "it was dark and stormy night" one of the characters could notice the stereotypicalness(?) of the situation and point out its absurdity. Essentially it boils down to the same thing, but with some self-awareness sprinkled on top. Like, imagine you were unknowingly a funny dresser compared to a guy who knows and does it anyway. You're still wearing clown shoes, but somehow it loops back into high fashion! See that guy over there, the one snickering? He just doesn't get it. Eventually this too will become a stereotype, so why not embrace that as well!? Very meta, indeed. Ironically enough, at that point you might as well could just start using the original trope again and call it new sincerity.

Besides being meta you could obfuscate the stereotype using camouflage. What do I mean? Instead of "rain" it could be "fog", instead of night it was in the morning. Again, essentially the same but... with some variation. I guess in a sense this also signalfies some kind of self-awareness, although you're not using sarcasm/irony as your defense mechanism. Besides that, you could also move the trope across the timeline. Maybe to a place where it feels more organical and appropiate. The possibilites are endless.

Admittedly I don't know what I'm talking about. I never finished anything of worth and shouldn't give advice. I'm still going to, but I shouldn't (I have enough self-awareness to admit this freely). I think you shouldn't really bother with avoiding tropes and cliches, unless it's bothering you personally. Writing a shitty story is a million times better than writing nothing at all and driving yourself crazy with like a russian doll of... tropes, and self-awareness, story mechanics, and whatever the fuck. Just write, don't be afraid of hackery. If it's really that bad? Edit it later. Or toss it.

I kinda lost my point... Doesn't matter. So what do you think? Are you afraid of stereotypes? Are trying to avoid them altogether? What's your approach?