
Taproots: Trot Past Tropes – Najiyah Maxfield
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about tropes. If you read enough or watch enough films, you will begin to feel allergic to them. There’s the “Rebellious Teenager” trope. The “Nerdy Misfit” trope. The “Feminist Learns to be Soft” trope, the “Non-Feminist Grows a Spine” trope, and the “Man Learns that Women are a Thing” trope. Shallowness as far as the eye can see. How do we wrap our characters in so much meaningful writing that their situations don’t come across as tropes? First of all, we can be aware of the clichés and actively avoid them. I’m particularly