You’ve written a book. You’ve written a book. That is huge all by itself!
But then comes marketing it. From those fun cover-plus-arrows graphics to perfecting your blurb to pitching your book as a potential podcast guest, it pays to know what exactly you’ve written. Literally—it pays because being able to market your book well means readers will be more likely to purchase!
And knowing what you wrote is easier said than done. When we’re in the thick of writing, we might feel that we have intimate knowledge of how and why every piece of the puzzle snaps together. But I’ve found that even after a few days, I’ve forgotten my main characters’ names, let alone what kinds of people they are.
And marketing is only one (huge) reason why deconstructing your book and knowing its tropes is so important. Ideally, you would know your tropes before, during, and after writing your book. Knowing your WIP’s tropes can also:
- Set your story up for success by taking them into consideration while outlining.
- Get you unstuck if you’re a pantser who isn’t sure what comes next (take a trope you were planning to hit and brainstorm how you can flip it on its head).
- Guide your decision-making in the middle of revisions.
- Help you narrow down what you like to write (and, therefore, what your ideal reader can’t get enough of).
So, whether you’re joining us with a project complete or already in progress, open or pull out your manuscript, break out your favorite note-taking instruments/app, and get ready to brainstorm! And be sure to keep this list you create handy!
Step One: Look at Your Main Characters
Let’s begin where so many writers start their planning: with the characters. Do they have an oft-depicted job or role in society? Would you call them a single parent, an orphan, or a cowboy?
And don’t just look at who your main characters are, but also how they relate to other characters. Does your book center around the arranged marriage between your hero and heroine, or the fact that your human characters are staking their claim on another inhabited planet? Is your heroine falling for her best friend’s brother?
Step Two: Look at Your Setting
Setting includes time and place, as you know. The time period—or time period you’re trying to evoke, like in Medieval fantasy—in particular usually has some typical personality traits, viewpoints, or even whole stock characters that you can pull from.
Step Three: Look at Your Subgenre
This was probably the first thought you had when you thought of how you would deconstruct your book to stuff your keywords on Amazon. You already know you’ve written a cozy mystery, a steamy romance, or a high fantasy book—or maybe some inconceivably cool combination of all three. And you probably know what tropes tend to fit snugly inside that subgenre. (For example, a steamy romance might employ the “only one bed” trope.)
But dig deeper. You did not just write a cozy mystery. There are paracozies, food cozies, animal cozies, historical cozies, and so on. And from there, you can go even deeper. Is your food cozy about a cutesy bakery or a diner in the Deep South? Is your historical cozy set in the 1920s or Victorian England?
Knowing these “subsubsubgenres” and reading within them will tell you what tropes are common and expected within that category.
Step Four: Look at Your Comp Titles & Inspirations
We do not create in vacuums. We have all been irrevocably influenced by the media we’ve consumed throughout our lives. Since there is nothing new under the sun, there is a big chance that someone has written something extremely similar to what you’ve written.
While that realization will hit differently for everyone, for now, put aside those feelings and acknowledge that this means that, if other writers have paved a road, you now have signposts to follow. Seek out your comp titles and look at how they describe themselves. Don’t plagiarize their copy, of course, but let yourself be open to all the possible ways your work could be similar to another’s without jealousy and without passing judgment on yourself (or the other author).
Do you know your WIP’s tropes?
Share a few of them in the comments below!
