Books On Tropes: Personality, Plots. and Cliches

Here is a nice page from the TV Tropes Wiki.  I own several of the books mentioned here.  I'm particularly interested in theories about plot structure.

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Books On Trope

In case you didn't realize it: We here at TV Tropes are not the first to collect tropes and try to put them in some semblance of order. Of course, since few people would actually use the word trope to describe patterns in media, it may be difficult to find the various resources that exist. Therefore we now have this page. If you happen to run across a resource (a book, website, or other useful thing) that discusses a set of tropes, write up a summary page and stick the link on this index.

Personality Profiles

The most common trope collections are personality profiles. Many people have devised systems of sorting characters into a handful of pigeonholes (the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Enneagram, etc.). Of course, they tend to think this works well for sorting people, whereas we're going to take the more sensible view that it works well for sorting fictional characters who aren't nearly as complex as your average real human. They're useful systems for the writer as well as for the reader, so eventually we'll get them up here.

Basic Plots

People have also tried to condense the wide and varied world of plots into a small and succinct list of possible plots. The most basic system says that all plots are about one of two things, love and death, but the list can go up to fifty or even more. Joseph Campbell tried to pin it all down to a single heroic version in The Hero's Journey, and while that doesn't cover every story, it works with a lot of them (and George Lucas decided to base Star Wars all around Campbell's work). It's when people start claiming that Schlindler's List has the same plot as Alice In Wonderland that we start to wonder if their systems make any sense, but hey, maybe they had a flash of inspiration. At any rate, studying plot archetypes can help writers to straighten out the odd kinks that are throwing them for a loop, and maybe to introduce elements that strengthen the overall story and underscore its thematic meaning. As for the reader... well, it's always fun to realize, halfway into the new blockbuster, that you're really watching a postmodern sci-fi version of Beauty And The Beast.

Lists of Clichés

Dead Horse Tropes can be surprisingly stubborn beasts, refusing to leave the media well after they've been discredited, disbarred, and run out of the country for being So Last Century. The more that writers recognize the possible clichés that exist, the more they're able to avert, subvert, and even invert the critters, allowing for the possibility that their viewers are not morons and just might enjoy watching something written with a little connection to reality. Then again, it's just fun to review all the oddities that make up our collected media history (laser printers that still sound like a Dot Matrix?) and then play drinking games over recognizing when they show up in our favorite sitcoms.

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Personality Profiles

• Heroes And Heroines
  • Romance Genre Heroes
  • Romance Genre Heroines
• Master Characters
  • Master Character Heroes
  • Master Character Heroines
  • Master Support Characters

Basic Plots

• The Hero's Journey
• The Seven Basic Plots
• The Fifty-Five Dramatic Situations
• The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations

Lists of Clichés

• 100 Rules of Anime Physics
• Evil Overlord List and The Universal Genre Savvy Guide
• The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Cliches
• The Grand List Of Overused Science Fiction Cliches
• The RPG Cliches Game
• The Tough Guide To Fantasy Land

Resources That Don't Yet Have Their Own Pages

• Hero's Journey vs Heroine's Journey
• The Four Loves -- Never enter a Shipping debate without it.

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