>>18557If you don't already know of this, you may be interested in the Aarne-Thompson classification system, it's specifically for folktales and groups them together in stuff they have in common. I think you're onto something, folklorists and other areas of study might already do this, without the tropey autism and rambling. Yeah, I personally 'wrote by tropes' myself once and nothing came of it because it didn't magically gel into a plot like I was expecting. What I ended up having was a genre written down, character -designs- (not even characters) and a shitload of tabs open on tropes I wanted to include or 'subvert'. Didn't even have a synopsis from start to end, any chapter summaries or even a single event down. I genuinely thought what I was doing was part of the process of writing but it was procrastinating at best, delaying the birth of whatever trope-infested spawn I envisioned at the time.
>good artists borrow, and great artists stealFunny you mention that, I was going to say something like that in the post you replied to but I wasn't sure how it went. I thought it was like "good artists steal, great artists get away with it" but maybe that's a tongue-in-cheek warped version picked up from somewhere.
>I feel like only people who use tvtropes would do that. Competent authors actually put effort into writing their cast.Definitely. Well, I would've said I was trying as a troper but it's seriously misguided effort.
