Using Tropes, Stereotypes and Generic Characters to Add Meaning


Before we begin, what are tropes, stereotypes, and generic characters?

Tropes: According to the Oxford Dictionary (of unquestionable propriety), tropes are “recurrent themes or motifs”. Derived from the Greek word ‘tropos’ meaning ‘direction’, tropes initially referred to the metaphorical usage of words and expressions, (i.e. hyperbole, metonymy, synecdoche, etc) but over time, they have come to mean something entirely different. Today, the word is used to describe familiar characters that confirm to pre-defined arcs and play set roles in a story. Often referred to as ‘stock characters’, examples of modern tropes include, the ‘chosen one’ who boldly defies evil, and is often significantly younger than the antagonist, the villain who is desirous of boundless power and/or immortality and is willing to go to great lengths in order to achieve either, and the gormless sidekick who doesn’t really have a major role to play but tags along anyway and serves as comic relief.

Stereotypes: Briefly , stereotypes are generalisations about a certain group of people. While the word per se has a negative connotation and while most stereotypes are centred around erroneous assumptions based on an individual’s gender, ethnicity or religion, not all stereotypes are bad. Stereotypes serve as double-edged swords in the literary world and can unite people, if used rightly, just as well as they can divide them—and this is one of the concepts we’re going to explore today.

Generic Characters: Wikipedia defines generic characters as “interchangeable characters, appearing mostly in animated shows or comic strips”, but seeing that my definition of the expression differs slightly, I’ll put it in my own words. Generic characters, or in other words, ‘flat characters’, are, quite simply, ‘every man and no man’ (to quote Portia from The Merchant of Venice). An amalgamation of the defining characteristics of humanity, with no trait being emphasized over the other, generic characters do not work well by themselves, but help accentuate a well-painted background, if used wisely. The Common Man, from R.K Laxman’s popular comic strip of the same name, is an example of a generic character.

How does one use tropes, stereotypes and generic characters and why are they important?

Tropes have existed since time immemorial and although some have faded with the ages, others have pervaded modern culture and remain in use today. Often confused with clichés, it is vital to understand that the two aren’t synonymous. Clichés are overused concepts whereas tropes are usually ideas readers love, even inadvertently. As human beings, we crave familiarity, and tropes help readers navigate the unfamiliar worlds that authors craft. Think of it like this. Would you rather explore the deep, dark woods with a flashlight handy, or entirely bereft of light? The flashlight might, for all you know, not just help you navigate the unknown, but also reveal wonders you might not have seen otherwise.

However, tropes are to be handled with caution—use too few and you’ll leave your reader grappling with the unknown; use too many and you’ll have an entirely unmagical piece of writing on your hands. The Harry Potter series, for instance, makes extensive use of tropes, from Voldemort, the power-thirsty antagonist, to Harry, the one destined to save the wizarding world. Furthermore, most part of the series revolves around a prophecy—a widely used concept in modern literature. The Percy Jackson books also rely on prophecies; as does The Lord of The Rings by J. R. R Tolkien. Each of the aforenamed books is unique in its own way, nonetheless. Tropes aren’t, even limited to contemporary literature! Baroness Emmuska Orczy popularized the trope of the ‘hero with a secret identity’ with her 1901 debut, The Scarlet Pimpernel, a swashbuckling story about an enigmatic figure who helps rescue doomed French nobles from the throes of the guillotine.

Stock characters serve as baselines for intriguing plots, just as mud and cement lay the foundations of buildings. Presented on their own, however, both tropes and bricks lack intrigue and appeal. In order to make one’s writing compelling, one must develop the tropes one uses. It would be best to craft characters unique backgrounds, motives and goals while retaining the core characteristics that appeal to the general audience.

History is brimming with stereotypes and while most have been used to oppress minorities, others, as stated before, can and have been used to unite people fighting for a noble cause. Either way, stereotypes are powerful persuasive tools. Hitler, for one, wrongly portrayed semitic people as evil and hook-nosed, as opposed to the “Aryan Ideal”. While his statements were wholly erroneous and only made fruitful by his carefully orchestrated speeches and mask of earnestness, his fallacious statements convinced hordes of people, earning him a massive following. Richmal Crompton, on the other hand, used (or seems to have used) stereotypes for a better cause. Her widely acclaimed series Just William, features original characters offset by stereotypes to make for an intriguing and thought-provoking plot. William’s family is one that belongs to the stereotypical upper class that cares more about appearances than it really should. Attempting (and failing) to imprison him within the confines of social expectations, they strive to turn their ruffian of a boy into a model of propriety. William, however, couldn’t care less about his family’s reputation and persists in making a nuisance of himself in every possible manner. Interestingly enough, his friends, Ginger, Henry and Douglas, are modeled in a similar manner and come from equally well-off families, defying social standards just as well as William does. In a particularly intriguing episode involving a trip to London, an Eton suit, a group of ‘street urchins’ and starring William, Richmal Crompton seems to draw a parallel between the poor boys on the streets and William, an offspring of rich parents. In the story, William’s Evening Out, William, upon deluding his parents into believing that he’s going out for a party, joins the outlaws on the streets, discarding the mask of propriety and childish naivete he put on for the benefit of his family, with gay abandon. The Just William series and this story in particular, can be interpreted as a bid for equality. “We’re all the same,” Crompton seems to say, “Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter if you’re born rich or poor; we’re all bound by human nature, and, on a deeper level, the human experience.” She may have referred to the books as ‘pot-boilers’, but the fact remains that they’re more meaningful than they seem.

According to comedian Deborah Kimmett, “In comedy, we say you punch up, not down.” The same applies with literature; it is essential to refrain from stereotyping the oppressed at all costs. P.G Wodehouse’s stories, for instance, genially poke fun at the superficiality of the bumbling upper class, thus lending balance to the system of wealth and power that is prominent even today.

Though used fairly often, generic characters can prove hard to spot. This is, more often than not, because most flat characters are distinguished by their choices rather than their emotions. If one dives deep into a piece featuring one or more generic characters, one might notice that although the characters in question always have a problem to deal with, their inner struggles are never depicted explicitly, while their backgrounds and backstories are left entirely to the imagination. In order to make the distinction between regular characters and flat characters clearer, let’s take the example of Victor Frankenstein (from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein) and Vladimir (from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot). In the first science fiction novel ever penned, Victor Frankenstein breathes life into the monster he created simply because he could. He spends the rest of the novel trying to set aright the damage it caused in its wake, and wrestles with his conscience as he lets others take the blame for his deeds. Victor Frankenstein dies eventually, trying in vain to find and destroy his creation. His character arc is intriguing, his goals and incentives apparent; in fact, one wouldn’t be too far off the mark to say that Mary Shelly’s book focuses more on its characters than anything else. Waiting for Godot, on the other hand, is more about a concept than it is about characterial development. Vladimir and Estragon are practically indistinguishable with no purpose but to convey a message. Their dialogues, though short, carry weight, but contain more insight into the human condition than they do into the characters themselves. While there is no hard and fast rule to identifying generic characters, bear in mind that when a concept is deemed more important than the characters who are used as tools to explain it, there is a chance of their being generic.

Generic characters can be thought of as broader versions of stereotypes. While stereotypes represent a specific group of people, flat characters represent the whole world—if not in their physicality or ethnicity, then in their choices (or, in the case of Waiting for Godot, their inability to make any).

Waiting for Godot opens with two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a mysterious figure named Godot. Nothing is revealed about Godot over the course of the play except the fact that Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for him and have been doing so for an undefined amount of time. While the play is entirely open to interpretation, it can be broadly understood as an allegory for the human experience. The reader suffers with Vladimir and Estragon, and waits in vain with them, but views Pozzo and Lucky through a social lens (Pozzo can be interpreted as a representation of authority/ the oppressor, and Lucky can be interpreted as a representation of the oppressed). However, Vladimir and Estragon lack defining traits, and, as the play progresses, one begins to relate to them—and that’s precisely why flat characters are used. A character lacking definitive ideas, traits and/or opinions serves as a blank slate, and as readers begin to fill in the blanks themselves, they begin to relate to the characters, and in doing so, view the concepts explored in said piece of literature from a different perspective.


How does one incorporate tropes, stereotypes and generic characters into their writing?

While tropes, stereotypes and generic characters have the potential to add depth to one’s writing, just using them won’t serve any purpose. It is thus recommended to plan your story first. Figure out a premise and then take note of the message(s) you’d like to convey. If you’re planning to write—say, a story involving fantastical worlds and magical creatures and are more focused on the plot than the message, pick a couple of tropes to use and shy away from stereotypes and generic characters. Don’t make every character a trope, but using a few won’t hurt. Of course, you can avoid tropes altogether if you don’t feel like it, or if you think the plot could do without it—it’s entirely up to you. Space out the tropes you're using and pick them wisely; you'll need tropes that allow for character development.

If you’re writing to convey a message, need context to make it amply clear but don’t want to overburden the reader with details, use stereotypes. In Hart Leap Well, for instance, William Wordsworth uses a stereotypical knight to make an earnest plea against hunting. If you'd like to portray two different takes on an issue and talk about them in context, use stereotypes to highlight your points.

If your central message is broader in nature or if it’s more about circumstances than characters, feel free to use generic characters. Lowis Lowry does so in The Giver, a dystopian novel that speaks about the importance of individuality. While her protagonists are well-developed characters, not all of them start out that way and this adds to the intrigue of the story and reinforces the author’s message.

Sometimes, you can even use all three at once. The Perfect Match, a dystopian short story by Ken Liu, uses a combination of all three elements to deliver a stinging critique of consumerism and elaborate upon the ill-effects of technology. The main character, Sai is the stock ‘average person whose eyes are opened by his perceptive neighbour’, Tilly is the stereotypical voice AI, while the lady Sai meets up with is wholly generic. There are no hard and fast rules to the casting of generic or stock characters or the usage of tropes, so feel free to mix them up and experiment with your ideas!

Last thing—this goes without saying, but do refrain from using generalisations (for tropes, stereotypes and generic characters are indeed generalisations) targeted at a certain group of people, pulling them down because of their identities (i.e, do NOT, under any circumstances, mock, insult or in any way hurt people because of their ethnicity, religion, culture, language or gender, among others.) Why use literature to propagate prejudice, fear and hatred when the world is already in disarray?

However, it is vital to understand that tokenism isn’t a viable form of representation. In a literary context, tokenism is the act of including characters from marginalized communities, not out of genuine interest, but stemming from a desire to shield one’s piece(s) behind an illusion of diversity. This isn’t to say, of course, that representation is a bad thing—far from it. Rather, it’s important to do justice to one’s characters and refrain from reinforcing stereotypes. The appropriate way to incorporate characters from different cultures and backgrounds is to craft multidimensional characters that mirror the real-life experiences, thoughts, and values of people from around the globe, without pigeonholing anyone based on oversimplified stereotypes or bias.

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Bibliography + cool articles that elaborate on some of the ideas I've touched upon :> (apart from the textual works I've mentioned):

- Reader's Digest (India), June 2021 Edition (Interview with Deborah Kimmett)
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_character_(fiction)
-https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-use-tropes-in-writing#8-examples-of-tropes
-https://medium.com/blankpage/why-tropes-can-be-good-actually-c2cbfea77ff3
-https://www.britannica.com/art/commedia-dellarte#ref1434 (stock characters from commedia dell'arte; while the article doesn't say much on the subject of tropes and stock characters in general, it gives you a really good idea of how stock characters/ tropes can be used. I know I haven't mentioned the subject in the workshop, but the article is worth reading and the subject worth researching)
-https://blog.advancementcourses.com/articles/literary-tokenism-teachers-guide

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Last but in no way the least, I'd like to thank Dhriti and Fenn for their immensely helpful critiques. I owe you both a million :}

Ahh!

Great Workshop