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The enemies to lovers, the comic relief and the unsuspecting hero—we are no stranger to these plot elements, character classifications and exhausted themes peppered throughout works of fiction. They’re taken and rehashed only to be told from an author’s imagination, thinking it can play off last season’s argyle sweater with a cashmere scarf.

Books are filled with tropes and we devour it anyway.

But was it refreshing?
Did your stomach churn like butter?
Did you weep like an underpaid Applebee’s waitress saddled with student loan debt?
How about your nails? Did you chew them off after that hair-raising scare?

I like playing with tropes because they’re understood on a superficial level, yet still render a chance for authors to personally connect with a reader on a newfound degree. Here are a few I like to hang my hat on:

1. Hot-Mess-of-a-Protagonist Trope

She has a personality on her, cilantro between her teeth, is in between careers and says “Sorry” over a dozen times to a man she hit with her oversized carry-on. Sure, she’s that adorable younger cousin you’d prefer to leave at home instead of taking her out to meet your friends, but I cast her anyway because she offers a wealth of room for creativity.

2. Mysterious Character Trope

One of my favorite ingredients in the character development recipe. I feel like the sky’s the limit here. Mysterious characters are infectious and there is a gamut of ways in constructing them. From a troubled childhood to a relationship that spawned trust issues, we can’t help but ask, “WHO HURT YOU? WHO HURT YOU, ERWIN?!”

3. Friend Zone Trope

Ah, the sidelines where bench warmers unite. You don’t get to play, but you sure are the loudest cheerleader!

Everyone likes a nice girl. He is so quick to friend her, but she doesn’t mind as long as she can get five minutes of his time in between classes as he fills her head with his latest crush. (Sounds like a YA novel.) Because let’s be real, he can’t look past her obsolete tomboy days redolent of baseball tees and armpit farts and the girl he used to build forts with when they were seven.

4. Star-Crossed Lovers Trope

Think Pocahontas or Brokeback Mountain. No matter how hard characters try to make sense of a romance, they just can’t in reality even though it makes better sense up there.  Forbidden romances are tough pills to swallow, but there’s no better romance than one worth fighting and waiting for. Am I right?

5. Troubled Family Dynamic Trope

What do you remember from your childhood? Frederick Douglass once said,

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

It’s true that many capable and fully functional adults feel unfulfilled. Little do we realize that what did happen or what didn’t happen to us as children can greatly impact us later.

Characters are shaped by their upbringing. They don’t realize the weight of influence their youth has had on their adulthood. It goes without saying that family dynamics are complex in their nature and much more complex to flesh out in a novel, and by far, that has been one of the leading themes I struggle to tackle.

Top 7 Movies Writers Should Watch by Rina Pritchard

Films have a way of inspiring us. While books, people and nature can open the minds of creators, movies hold an untouched charm to them, from their cinematography and screenplay to their overall theme.

Here’s my list of movies I think every writer should watch.

1. The End of the Tour

In March 1996, Rolling Stone magazine writer, David Lipsky, sets out to interview Infinite Jest novelist, David Foster Wallace. Wallace, played by Jason Segel, who hunkers down in Bloomington, Ill., participates in the five-day-long interview conducted by the overdetermined Lipsky, played by Jesse Eisenberg.

What this movie lacks in plot, makes up in character exploration. The dynamic between David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky is unreal, forcing us to pause the movie and sit back and say, “Oh, shit.” In this film, where an emotional connection is certainly felt, an intellectual connection is chucked to the back seat. Egotism is apparent but not regarding the Oxford comma. Writers experiencing inferiority or constant unfulfillment will get it.

2. Nocturnal Animals

A successful art gallery owner receives a book, written by her ex-husband. She is consumed by the compelling novel, a piece of genius that causes her to reevaluate her life and face her inauspicious reality.

Another movie writers should watch is Nocturnal Animals. Nocturnal Animals is filled with suspense, something we gobble up. If you’re interested in personal progression and telling others, “Yeah, I made it,” then I suggest this one. Writers who’ve been doubted by their closest peers will take comfort in the revenge in this film when even their dearest ones failed to root for them in their darkest corners.

3. The Words

Bradley Cooper steals another writer’s work and publishes it as his own.

It’s a good film to sit back and watch after pumping out 5,000 words from your last chapter. It has it all: writer’s block, literary plagiarism and inferiority. The Words is paramount to the world we live in today: how we can lose our voice for the sake of becoming someone idolized and esteemed in an era saturated with others like us.

4. Ruby Sparks

A character from Calvin Weir-Fields’ latest work comes alive. He soon learns that her feelings and actions are dictated by the words he writes on his typewriter.

Writers are everyone in their book—of course, we created them. We don’t have to find them in our kitchen making dinner for us to understand how real they are. Ruby Sparks is a delightful treat for authors who’ve ever wanted to meet their protagonist in the flesh.

5. Misery

Paul Sheldon gets into a car crash one winter day and is rescued by a crazed fan of his work. As she shapes him back to wellness (or not) her obsession escalates.

We mustn’t forget how influential our ideas and words are. In Misery, we get a fun, comical way of seeing how our books can greatly dominate our readers.

6. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Rick Dalton and his stunt double Cliff Booth try and make it in a Hollywood industry that’s ever-evolving.

Although an extremely random selection, I’d be remiss in not sharing this movie that writers should watch. In light of a period when cults and drugs ran rife in 1969, we find that Quentin Tarantino isn’t afraid to play with history. He’s got a far-fetched imagination and writers who mirror his outlandish vision will entertain the idea of unabashedly applying the same singular approach to their work.

7. The Wife

A husband is about to receive the Nobel Prize for literature as his wife tags-along and returns to a past that often catches up with her.

It’d be a sucker punch move for me to say that The Wife demonstrates patriarchy. Really, it’s more than that and frankly, that wasn’t on the forefront of my mind. I grew acquainted with three different writers in this movie: the empath with unmarred diplomacy, a hungry wandering-eyed narcissist, and a relentless writer with a role to fill who I’d say mediates the two. In The Wife, writers will reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and be reminded of their vulnerabilities and the people they love despite their dear one’s futile delivery.

I had no expectations upon watching the movie, The Kindergarten Teacher. Let me preface this by saying how could any writer – novelist, poet or artist – not value the message demonstrated here? I won’t give too much about the movie, but I advise any creator of words or pictures to see this independent drama.

Gyllenhaal plays the kindergarten teacher, named Lisa Spinelli, who we immediately understand is isolated and worlds away from a seemingly satisfying life she leads. She is then engrossed in one of her students, a precocious boy whose poetic talent is way beyond his years. We then find Mrs. Spinelli becoming strangely attached to his elusive gift, driving herself to preserve it. Okay… *exhales* I will stop there.

Mrs. Spinelli – You’re something else

Throughout the film, you’re left with this unsettling feeling, nestled in the pit of your stomach, aching to see how the plot will unfold. The Kindergarten Teacher was pleasantly uncomfortable to watch. I felt like some rag doll being fought between two 7-year-old girls – pulled one way and then the other – eager to know what will happen next. I couldn’t decide on how to feel about Mrs. Spinelli who, you’ll realize, remains frustratingly incomprehensible, even to the very end. Some might relate to her – the mid-life crisis complex, the crossroad or dead-end after fulfilling the quintessential adulthood prophecy, or the mere painful realization that you never truly attained your dream. You then want to feel sorry for her yet scorn her for her wildly inappropriate behavior. All in all, you might find yourself renouncing her unusual and unforgivable tendencies, thinking, “uh-huh, uh-huh, sure, sure,” and crossing your legs and rubbing your chin whilst thinking she’s mental.

In the last ten minutes of the film, the viewer then realizes Gyllenhaal’s impetus all along, which was said several times in the film. Then, it wasn’t, however, quite believable given her capricious disposition. Only at the end did I sympathize with her more, appreciating (yet not entirely agreeing) with her dire (and obsessive) efforts to protecting this character – this boy – or to some, this abstraction. It left me slapping my knee, in deep thought, and applauding her for her purpose all along, in spite of her aberrant conduct.

The Kindergarten Teacher’s bottom line

Like most indie dramas, there is some nebulous message waiting to be revealed, which with this movie, I won’t say. The message at the end of The Kindergarten Teacher, I feel, artists should invariably remember. Keep it and store it away, somewhere encased, locked away and behind a velvet rope. Scribble it down, tuck it into the back pocket of your Levi’s and pull it out to read and re-read to remind yourself in case you forget.