Tropes I Hate

Back when I was an acquisitions editor for a romance imprint, I used to get manuscripts that featured the secret baby trope. This is a somewhat popular romance trope – a woman gets pregnant and for some reason (usually puerile) she doesn’t tell the father.

Later, he finds out, so of course he’s angry (conflict!). And we’re supposed to believe that a wonderful love story will come out of this.

Now, I’m all in favor of a woman’s right to choose, and whether she chooses to have the baby or not is up to her. But once that baby is a living, breathing infant? A father is entitled to know he’s a father, unless

• the father is abusive or otherwise seriously incapable of parenting
• the father is killed before learning the news

Neither of those scenarios lends themselves to a romance, however, so I was never convinced that I could possibly want to root for the characters involved in such a scenario to get together. Either the woman or the man has a character flaw too significant to be overcome by the final chapter.

The only possible way such a scenario might work would be in, say, an historical where Joe ships off to war and his lover finds out she’s pregnant and there’s no way to share the news. And perhaps she’s told Joe is dead so she goes and marries the local blacksmith or something.

But for the most part this is a trope I abhor. I also hate the soul mates trope because I’m not a big fan of pretending people have no choice but to be together. I think it’s a very damaging idea that actually affects real relationships and I don’t support ideas that damage real people in the real world. (For the same reason I move quickly away from anyone who spouts simplistic nonsense like “everything happens for a reason.”)

The concept of choice is important to me, and it’s something I’m constantly exploring in my work – and that’s probably one reason why I hate the soul mates trope.

Choice is also a character test: if the choices are, say, a well-paying job that damages the environment or a lower-paying job that provides job coaching for people who need it, which one a character picks says a lot about them.

And that’s what I’m interested in doing: exploring choices and what they mean about the character choosing them.