Create Ideas by Playing With Tropes

The most common question to writers is probably "Where do you get your ideas from?" I think this is a worthy question, especially for the writers. If we can discover how we come up with ideas, we can foster it to come up with ideas or try to create specific kinds (curing writer's block?).

I have a number of answers to this question. Sometimes ideas just strike me. Sometimes I hear a word or phrase and roll it around in my mind until it builds up into a full idea. Sometimes I think of a what-if situation and build up from there. The most common thing, though, is that I try to do the opposite if what everybody does.

"Ninjas are always portrayed as super soldiers or incompetent boobs," I say to myself. "Why isn't there a story about an average ninja?" Shortly after that (and I mean seconds), I started working on a comic series called Average Ninja.

Similar ideas have included "How come everybody with a superpower will eventually use it for good or evil? Does nobody simply think it's not worth it and either doesn't use it or just uses it to live a mostly average life?" Also, "Why does every bad guy either want to rule the world? What would happen if he actually did it?"

I usually call it screwing with standards. It can also be called playing with tropes. There are a number of ways to do it and this page has a bunch of them and convenient examples. I won't write them all here because the page is perfect as it is.

There are a lot of stories out there. Many of them use the same tricks and techniques over and over again. When it reaches the point that you can identify them, you should try to screw with them. Why is the damsel always in distress? Invert it and make the prince trapped in a tower and the princess have to rescue him. But whenever a woman isn't a princess, she's always a brutish amazon warrior; what if we subvert and make the woman who is going to fight the dragon fight her with words or diplomacy?

Whatever terms you use, the point for me is to do something different. Try to surprise the audience. If you can, try to surprise yourself. The sheer novelty of a new spin on an old classic (which is yet another term for it) can get you pretty far. It doesn't always guarantee a good story, but it is a fantastic way to create ideas.

Poetry Analysis: The Cherry Tree

I've been talking a lot about poetry in theory lately, so I wanted to put some of that theory to practice. So, I am putting my own work on display. The following is a poem I wrote in college called The Cherry Tree. I consider it my best poem for a few reasons: It has gotten more praise than any other poem I've written, it has never been rejected by a publisher, I have put in more work on this poem than any other and I am the most proud of the result.


In the heart of Tooms Field
A sole cherry tree blooms.

It marks the Great War of Haight
Where eight hundred opened bodies
Stained the white ground brown and red.

When winter falls
The horizon shines iridescent white
Save the human pink of the cherry blossoms.

No war deserves a monument
That makes its orphans smile.


Starting first with the story, there is one. We don't see action, but the story is told through a series of scenes. The first scene is a cherry tree, covered in flowers, surrounded by nature. The second scene jumps back in time and we see the remnants of a war. The green grass becomes covered in snow, which is stained red with blood and littered with mutilated corpses. The third scene, white snow covered in cherry blossoms, shows the same colors, but in a peaceful and attractive form, also bringing the scene back to the present. The fourth scene, admittedly, is weak. There is no concrete description. The closest we have is smiling orphans, which can imply little kids running and playing and climbing the tree while single mothers stand by watching, but such implications are more suited to lyrics than poetry.

Although the final stanza is the weakest visually, it is the strongest part of the poem. It is the point, the summary. It caps the story, which itself is very grave, and uses no flowery language. I spent the better part of a day trying to figure out the last stanza alone. I wrote and rewrote and struggled, racking my brain to come up with something that could do all of that. And when people read it, they always comment on those two lines. The last stanza gets more attention than anything else.

What gets the next amount of attention are the two names in the poem. People usually figure out that Tooms and Haight are homophones of 'tombs' and 'hate', respectively, and ask if that's the case. The only criticism this poem has gotten is the suggestion that the wordplay of those names can detract from the seriousness of the story. I kept them, though, because I believe that what they offer is worth the potential cost.

Tooms and Haight set a tone. Even people who don't realize the wordplay will feel a certain gravity by saying them or hearing them in their head. The sounds are powerful, even if they are represented with different letters. They also connect with other words that make for a solid unit and smooth transition. 'Tooms' rhymes with 'blooms', though it doesn't sound childish because it is not end rhyming; it just connects them. 'Haight' similarly rhymes with 'eight' and they both have the ay sound which is found in 'stained'.

Within the whole of the poem, there are many r and s sounds, which roll esily off the tong, making the poem smooth. This keeps energy low because there is nothing to build it up or crash it down. It creates a reserved or relaxed mood. Combining that with the serious subject material makes for a somber tone, which is the point (juxtaposing beauty with tragedy).

The choice of words also aids in the telling of the story. To simply say that there is a cherry tree in a field is too vague. By saying that it was in the heart of a field creates a sense of being surrounded by grass. By saying that there is a sole cherry tree, it shows that it is alone. And since it is in a field and not a forest, we know that there is nothing else around. By saying that it marks the Great War, as opposed to commemorating it, it keeps the mental image in the same place, which allows for the change in colors and images to stay grounded. When the tree is referred to as a 'monument', it can be understood that it was planted to commemorate or honor the battle and all the people who lost their lives there and is not simply a location marker. Its significance is increased by connecting it with dead people, making the beauty tragic, and making the smiles that immediately follow it also tragic.


A good poem tells a story or shows a scene. It makes use of words, sounds, and imagery, weaving all of them into a dense piece of writing that tells the story or shows the scene. It should also make the reader think. The Cherry Tree does all of those things. That is why I think it is an example of good poetry. The difficulty of doing all that is also the reason I write so very little of it.

Writing Exercise: Write the Story that Lyrics Imply

I mentioned in my previous post that lyrics are the essence of writing. Lyrics imply a story, but they are incomplete. This provides an excellent exercise for writers. Take the lyrics of any song, hopefully one you enjoy. Study the lyrics and try to fill in the missing parts. Write the complete story that the lyrics imply.

As an example, I've chosen the song Flying by Neulander. The lyrics are as follows:

She was a lonely girl
Doesn’t have a lot of something to remind you
Lives in a lonely world
She’s always been there riding right behind you
She traveled around the world, going about it all the wrong way

She traveled alone until something comes up, but you know that it never will
Flying around the world
Oooohhhh, a lonely girl

She was a lonely girl
Grew up in her own society
It took a little piece of her
Like it took a little piece of you and me
She traveled around the world
In order to get away from her mother and…
Well, it was strange because, one thing never really led to another and…

Flying around the world
Oooohhh, a lonely girl

If you see her you should remind her of all the things she said
If you see her you should remind her she’s better off ‘cause she’s…
Not dead…

Flying around the world
Oooohhh, a lonely girl

I’ve lived in golden cities and I’ve lived in funeral towns
Went to the roof of the world and i didn’t ever want to come…
Down…

My mother is dead and my father is dead
And all my brothers and sisters are dead
And my heart goes boom, boom, boom

For the sake of not making this entry too long, my story will be on the short side:

A man sits in his seat, waiting for the jet to take off. He is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals. Everybody is glaring at him, partly for being an eyesore and partly for being obnoxious. In the seat behind him is a girl that nobody notices. She's dressed in a red t-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. She's been on more planes than any of the passengers, been in more countries than any of them, and has spoken the fewest words.

She would never start a conversation with any of them, but she desperately wishes they would start one with her. She wishes somebody would ask her about herself. She wishes she could tell her story, about her horrible, overbearing, slave driver of a mother, about how she left at age 16, about how she has been to over half the continents since then.

But nobody ever starts that conversation. That's the reason she has traveled so much. When she left the house for the last time, her mantra was "I'll travel until something comes up. Then one thing will lead to another and I'll be where I should be." But nothing did come up. One thing never really led to another. And so she continues to travel, but no longer does she have the hope. She simply has nothing else to do.

And although she wants somebody to ask her about herself, what she needs is something different. She needs somebody to remind her that she's better off because she's not dead. She needs to be told that, no matter where you go and what you do, being alive is the greatest part of being alive. She needs somebody to tell her about their life, somebody who will say "My mother is dead and my father is dead and all my brothers and sisters are dead. And my heart goes boom, boom, boom."


A few notes on this example of what I've done. This is not an entirely faithful representation. Certain details I have added to it. I took the role of a narrator, but not necessarily the same narrator as the one in the song. I made up most of the story, but I did borrow certain lyrics directly.

There are no rules in how to do this. You can try to be so faithful to the lyrics that you just retell them as prose. You can try to fill in the gaps by adding a little of your own ideas. You could retell the story through the eyes of a different person (e.g. I could have told the story as the girl, as the mother, as the obnoxious passenger). You could also use the lyrics as a base and totally make up your own story (this is a great technique for especially vague lyrics). Whatever gets you writing is good. If you need some restrictions to get you started, then stick with the faithful-but-filling-the-gaps version.

Poetry vs. Lyrics

On their face, poetry and lyrics seem to be the same thing. They both use fractured English to convey a feeling, tell a story, or show a scene. They both can rhyme (though lyrics tend to do that far more). It seems the only difference is that lyrics have music as a background.

In reality, lyrics and poetry are different from each other down to their core. As I mentioned when I first started this foray into poetry, lyrics are the essence of writing and poetry is condensed writing.

Lyrics can tell a story, but it will be in the sparsest words possible. Lyrics would be like "She flew around the world/Looked for something pure/She came home with an answer/But she was never sure." This is the beginning of a story. It contains all the necessary parts: character, setting, action, plot. It just doesn't have a whole lot of it. There also isn't much to grab on to, either. No matter how much you study those words, you can never know what the full story is because there just isn't enough material. That is why they are the essence of writing.

Now, if lyrics were written alone, they would just be crappy poetry. It's weak writing with lots of repetition and not a whole lot going on (the standard song has about 12 unique lines in it). What makes lyrics acceptable is that they are not alone. They come with music, which is just as integral to the writing as the words.

Music is also meant to be performed. In this aspect, lyrics are similar to spoken poetry, where the aural experience takes precedence and can allow for less-than-stellar meaning.

On a final note, I want to say that there are several definitions of lyrics. One definition is that lyrics are any words that are spoken with music. Another definition is that lyrics are a specific form of writing (the essence of writing). I have been using the latter definition. As a result, that means that a song could have words accompanying it that are incredibly deep and dense. Such an example would be more akin to poetry than lyrics.

Poetry to be Heard

As I said yesterday, there are two kinds of poetry: that which is meant to be read and that which is meant to be heard. The two are so different from each other that they need to be discussed separately. So, that's what I'm doing.

Poetry that is meant to be heard is more akin to music than it is to the other form of poetry. However, it is still very distinct from music/lyrics (more on that tomorrow). This poetry should be experienced more than studied.

Spoken poetry (as I will now call it) is performance art by its nature. The key qualities are its sounds. The same things that you practice in all writing (ease of pronunciation, soft sounds for calm situations and hard sounds for emphasis, etc.) now become more important than ever. People won't just be hearing your work in their head as they read; they'll be hearing it in their ears as you speak it out loud. Writing must be entertaining and the most entertaining part will be the aural experience, so make sure it is top notch.

As I said earlier, this is poetry, not music. As such, it should still be treated as poetry. It should be dense. It should tell a story or show a scene. You just need to make sure that people will pay attention. Execution is always important and that includes the performing of the poetry. If you really want to make sure that people pay attention to the words and what they mean, you need to speak slowly enough for people to hear and to process them. You also need to force them to listen by using the tools of the trade (speed up, slow down, louder and softer, eye contact, etc.).

Of course, the natural fear of public speaking makes many people speak fast and either very loud or very quiet (usually very quiet). In that case, the best thing to do is get over your fears, but the next best thing to do is write poetry whose words matter less and whose sounds matter more.

That is the main difference between spoken and written poetry. Spoken poetry demands impeccable sounds and word choice but can let the meaning suffer for it. Written poetry demands impeccable meaning, but can let the musical qualities suffer to do so. Aside from that, they are remarkably similar (which is probably why they're both called poetry).

Poetry to be Read

I have a complicated relationship with poetry. I do love good poetry, but I write very little. And of all the poetry that exists in the world, I hate the massive majority of it. I can't even stand most of the classics or greats. The problem is that I have very strict beliefs when it comes to poetry.

First of all, there are two kinds of poetry: poetry meant to be read and poetry meant to be heard. They have very different characteristics, so each one will get its own entry. Today, as you may have guessed, is poetry meant to be read.

Before we get into the specifics, I think it is important to remember that all poetry is writing and should cover the universal characteristics of writing. It needs to tell a story or show a scene. Characters should be interesting, relatable, believable. The world needs to be concrete. It needs to be entertaining and satisfying on a first read and also on subsequent readings. It should provoke thought in readers.

Most of the reason I hate so much poetry is that it does the exact opposite of good writing. It is incredibly vague. It tells instead of shows. It beats around the bush and never gets to the point. Instead of showing a scene of two people in love, doing something that expresses that love, they simply talk about the concept of love itself. And not only that, but they never even use the word love. God forbid you call a spade a spade.

Poetry is the densest form of writing.

I often hear poetry called the essence writing. I disagree. Lyrics are the essence of writing (more on that in a couple days). The essence is the core, the simplest, smallest part that makes it what it is. Poetry is not that. Poetry is condensing a short story into a paragraph (or stanza) or a novel into a page. You haven't stripped anything out of it; you have crunched it all into a tight, tiny space (like when a star goes nova and collapses into a neutron star or like when you take a handful of fluffy snow and mash it into a snowball).

Dense writing means every level is doing as much as it can. The sounds, words, phrases, and sentences are all providing as much meaning as possible. They set the mood, the scene, characterize people, describe action. They show the the set-up, point of tension, climax, and resolution of a story. Poetry uses groupings that prose doesn't use, namely line breaks and stanzas (though stanzas function similarly to paragraphs), which allows it to drop the fluff in prose (like grammar and transition words), leaving only the densest words.

I have been told that poetry should be experimental. I think poetry can be experimental. I also think that most of those experiments fail miserably. Most "experimental" poetry is either weird or confusing. Like I said earlier, poetry is still a form of writing. If it doesn't entertain, it has failed because nobody will want to read it, let alone think about or study it.

'Poetry' is one of those terms that has no solid definition. It seems that just about anything under the sun can be called poetry. While people may not agree on a definition, I do have one. Poetry is dense writing. If you want to know how to write poetry, the first step is to write a story. Then all you have to do is make it more efficient.

Surprise Yourself

It is useful in your writing to be able to surprise your audience. It is useful for your sanity to be able to surprise yourself. If you aren't getting excited, anxious, or curious about what you're writing, it may be time for a change.

What gets me the most excited to write a story is to find out what happens next. I have a scene or a character or a situation and I want to know what came before what happens, and what comes after.

Eventually, though, there reaches a point where I have figured it all out. I get writing and I work on the story and the actions and there comes a point where everything falls in place and I know what will happen from there to the end of the story. That is the exact moment where I have the greatest difficulty finishing the story. It is no longer an adventure or a mystery. It's just work. I have to sit down, put one word down after another, and reach the end.

If you ever find yourself in such a rut, throw a monkey wrench into the machine. You're the author. You're God. You can do whatever you want. Even if you can't make your characters do what you want (because of taking n a life and personality of their own), you can still create obstacles, twists and turns at every corner. Try to make up a situation that you yourself didn't see coming.

I will warn that it is possible to hurt your story in this way. Obstacles for the sake of putting in obstacles can be a drag; they can put off the main story while not adding anything. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't make extra twists happen; you may need them to keep yourself interested enough to finish the story. Just be able to make them significant or useful, to show something we hadn't seen before. And if not, just be willing to chop it out in editing. As long as it does what you need, it has served its purpose.