Bob Schroeck Wrote:No, you're right, we need this. I know there's a passage somewhere where we actually say something like "hack writers use tropes like legos, thinking they're complete elements in and of themselves, but they're really just starting points". We need to find that and expand it.
It's on the main http://allthetropes.org/wiki/Category: ... of_Writing]Mechanics of Writing page:
Quote:The first thing that must be understood is that in the process of creating a story—a good story, at least—a trope such as The Hero or Celebrity Lie is, by itself, not a complete element. It is a beginning—a bare-bones outline that is little more than a placeholder. A hack writer might take this placeholder, drop it into his story as-is, and think his work with it is done, but that's one of the things that makes him a hack. The good storyteller starts with a trope and then customizes it—expanding, refining, even subverting it—whatever is required by his vision and his story. The end result will always be an example in some way of the trope, but is never exactly and only the trope. The Hero is not Luke Skywalker, but Luke is recognizably The Hero.
RE-EDIT: ninja'd by Bob!
EDIT: Oh, and an out-of-context quote:
{{quote|If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.|Douglas Adams, ''The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time''}}
Re-Re-Edit: How's this for the page image?
%[link=http://www.timeslikethis.com/comic/625]http://www.timeslikethis.com/comic/625]
Caption: This isn't the way to do it
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012