- Fiction:
- Literary Fiction: Character-driven stories often focused on themes and deep exploration of human experiences.
- Historical Fiction: Set in the past, often featuring real historical events or figures.
- Science Fiction: Speculative stories that explore futuristic technology, societies, or scientific concepts.
- Fantasy: Often set in imaginary worlds with magical elements, mythical creatures, and epic quests.
- Mystery: Stories centered around solving a crime or unraveling a puzzle.
- Thriller/Suspense: Fast-paced narratives filled with tension and excitement, often involving danger or espionage.
- Horror: Intended to evoke fear or dread through supernatural or psychological elements.
- Romance: Focuses on romantic relationships and often includes themes of love, passion, and interpersonal conflicts.
- Adventure: Exciting narratives involving journeys, exploration, or daring escapades.
- Non-fiction:
- Biography: An account of someone’s life written by another person.
- Autobiography/Memoir: An account of a person’s life written by themselves.
- History: Provides factual accounts of past events, eras, or civilizations.
- Self-help: Offers advice, strategies, or techniques for personal growth, improvement, or problem-solving.
- Cookbook: Contains recipes and cooking instructions.
- Travel: Describes travel experiences, destinations, or cultures.
- Science: Explores scientific concepts, discoveries, or theories.
- Business/Finance: Provides insights into business strategies, finance management, or entrepreneurship.
- Health/Fitness: Offers information and advice on maintaining physical and mental well-being.
- Politics: Analyzes political systems, movements, or ideologies.
- Essay/Opinion: Presents personal reflections, opinions, or arguments on various topics.
- Poetry: Literary works characterized by rhythm, meter, and often expressive language, conveying emotions, ideas, or experiences.
- Drama/Play: Written works intended for performance, often featuring dialogue and stage directions.
- Children’s Literature: Books written specifically for children, ranging from picture books for toddlers to young adult novels.
- Graphic Novels/Comics: Narratives presented in a combination of text and illustrations, often featuring sequential art.
These categories are broad and can overlap, with many subgenres existing within each genre. Additionally, new genres and subgenres continue to emerge as literature evolves and diversifies.
While I can’t claim to know every single subgenre (as they are constantly evolving and emerging), I can certainly provide you with an extensive list of subgenres across various genres:
- Science Fiction:
- Hard Science Fiction: Emphasizes scientific accuracy and feasibility.
- Space Opera: Epic adventures set in space with grand scale and sweeping narratives.
- Cyberpunk: Focuses on high-tech, low-life societies often characterized by cybernetics, virtual reality, and dystopian elements.
- Steampunk: Blends advanced technology with Victorian-era aesthetics and steam-powered machinery.
- Dystopian: Portrays societies characterized by oppression, totalitarianism, or post-apocalyptic conditions.
- Time Travel: Involves narratives where characters travel through time.
- Military Science Fiction: Focuses on military conflicts set in futuristic or spacefaring settings.
- Fantasy:
- High Fantasy: Set in elaborate secondary worlds with intricate magic systems, epic quests, and heroic characters.
- Low Fantasy: Takes place in a more familiar, real-world setting with magical elements.
- Urban Fantasy: Fantasy elements intersect with contemporary urban settings.
- Magical Realism: Blends magical elements with realistic settings and characters.
- Sword and Sorcery: Features action-packed adventures with a focus on combat and magic.
- Grimdark Fantasy: Dark and gritty fantasy worlds with morally ambiguous characters and bleak settings.
- Mystery/Thriller:
- Cozy Mystery: Light-hearted mysteries often set in small communities with amateur sleuths.
- Police Procedural: Focuses on the procedures and methods used by law enforcement to solve crimes.
- Legal Thriller: Involves legal cases, courtroom dramas, or legal professionals.
- Psychological Thriller: Emphasizes the psychological aspects of suspense and tension.
- Conspiracy Thriller: Centers around uncovering hidden plots or conspiracies.
- Medical Thriller: Involves medical professionals or diseases as central elements.
- Romance:
- Historical Romance: Set in historical periods with romantic elements.
- Paranormal Romance: Combines romance with supernatural or fantastical elements.
- Contemporary Romance: Set in modern times with realistic settings and characters.
- Erotic Romance: Features explicit sexual content as a central focus.
- Regency Romance: Set in early 19th-century England during the Regency era.
- Horror:
- Supernatural Horror: Involves supernatural elements such as ghosts, demons, or vampires.
- Psychological Horror: Focuses on psychological terror and the human mind.
- Body Horror: Involves grotesque or graphic depictions of bodily transformation or mutilation.
- Survival Horror: Characters must endure extreme situations or threats to survive.
- Monster Horror: Centers around monstrous creatures as the primary source of fear.
- Non-fiction:
- Narrative Non-fiction: Presents factual information in a narrative or storytelling format.
- True Crime: Involves real-life criminal cases and investigations.
- Memoir Subgenres: Can include travel memoirs, food memoirs, career memoirs, etc.
- Nature Writing: Focuses on the natural world and environmental issues.
- Political Non-fiction: Analyzes political systems, movements, or events.
Tropes are recurring themes, motifs, or conventions that are commonly used in storytelling across various mediums, including literature, film, television, and other forms of entertainment. Tropes can serve as narrative devices, character archetypes, or plot elements that audiences recognize and expect to encounter. While some tropes may be perceived as clichés, they often provide familiarity and comfort to audiences and can be used creatively to subvert expectations or add depth to a story.
Tropes can encompass a wide range of elements, including:
- Character Tropes: These involve common character archetypes or personality traits, such as the hero, villain, sidekick, mentor, love interest, etc.
- Plot Tropes: These are recurring storylines or plot devices, such as the hero’s journey, the quest, the mystery, the redemption arc, etc.
- Setting Tropes: These involve common settings or locations used in storytelling, such as the small town, the dystopian future, the magical kingdom, etc.
- Theme Tropes: These are recurring themes or motifs that are often explored in stories, such as love, friendship, betrayal, sacrifice, etc.
- Dialogue Tropes: These involve common phrases, expressions, or exchanges that are frequently used in storytelling, such as “I’ll never let go,” “I have a bad feeling about this,” etc.
Tropes are not inherently good or bad; their effectiveness depends on how they are used within a specific context. Skilled storytellers can employ tropes in innovative ways to create fresh and engaging narratives, while also paying homage to the traditions and conventions of storytelling. Additionally, tropes can evolve over time and may be subverted, deconstructed, or reinvented by creators to keep storytelling dynamic and interesting.
Romantic Tropes:
- Enemies to Lovers: Characters start off disliking or even hating each other but gradually develop romantic feelings over time.
- Friends to Lovers: Close friends realize they have deeper feelings for each other and transition into a romantic relationship.
- Second Chance Romance: Former lovers reunite after a period of separation or misunderstanding, giving their relationship another chance.
- Forbidden Love: Characters face obstacles or societal constraints that prevent them from being together, such as class differences, family feuds, or professional rivalries.
- Fake Relationship: Characters enter into a pretend romantic relationship for various reasons (e.g., to avoid social stigma, fulfill a contract) but end up falling for each other for real.
- Opposites Attract: Characters with contrasting personalities, backgrounds, or interests find themselves drawn to each other despite their differences.
- Love Triangle: Involves one character torn between two romantic interests, often leading to emotional conflict and decision-making.
- Rescue Romance: One character saves or protects the other, leading to a deep emotional bond and romantic connection.
- Marriage of Convenience: Characters enter into a marriage for practical reasons (e.g., financial stability, social status) but eventually develop genuine feelings for each other.
- Slow Burn: The romantic relationship develops gradually over the course of the story, with tension building up before the characters finally get together.
- Arranged Marriage: Characters are forced into a marriage by external circumstances or family arrangements but eventually fall in love with each other.
- Rebel Love: Characters defy societal norms or expectations to be together, challenging conventions or authority figures.
- Celebrity/Fan Romance: Involves a romance between a famous person (e.g., actor, musician) and an ordinary individual, often dealing with the challenges of fame and privacy.
- Amnesia Romance: One character loses their memory, leading to rediscovery of their relationship and rekindling of romantic feelings.
- Time Travel Romance: Characters from different time periods or timelines fall in love despite the challenges of time travel.
These tropes can be used individually or combined to create complex and engaging romantic storylines, catering to various reader preferences and expectations.
Another example of Tropes is:
Time Travel Tropes:
Time travel is a popular narrative device in storytelling, offering endless possibilities for exploring themes like fate, identity, and consequence. Here are some common time travel tropes often found in literature, film, and television:
- The Grandfather Paradox: A character travels back in time and inadvertently changes something significant, like preventing their own birth or altering a key event, leading to potential paradoxes.
- Fixed Timeline: Events in the past are predetermined and cannot be changed, no matter how much characters try to alter them. Efforts to change the past often end up causing the events they were trying to prevent.
- Butterfly Effect: Small changes made in the past have unforeseen and significant consequences in the present or future, often leading to unintended and disastrous outcomes.
- Time Loop: Characters find themselves stuck in a repeating cycle of events, often reliving the same period of time over and over again until they learn a lesson or make a necessary change.
- Alternate Timelines/Parallel Universes: Time travel creates branching timelines or parallel universes where different outcomes exist based on the choices made by characters, allowing for exploration of alternate realities.
- Meeting Yourself: Characters encounter their past or future selves, leading to confusion, identity crises, or collaboration between different versions of the same person.
- Time Police/Temporal Enforcement: Organizations or individuals tasked with regulating time travel and preventing abuses or disruptions to the timeline.
- Time Machine: The device or mechanism used for time travel, often taking the form of a vehicle, machine, or magical artifact.
- Fish Out of Temporal Water: Characters from one time period find themselves in another, struggling to adapt to the customs, technology, and social norms of the new era.
- Temporal Fugitive: A character is on the run through time, pursued by authorities or enemies for crimes committed or knowledge possessed.
- Time Traveler’s Dilemma: Characters must grapple with ethical and moral questions related to altering the past, such as whether to intervene in historical events or to let them unfold naturally.
- Time Travel Romance: Love transcends time as characters from different eras or timelines fall in love, facing obstacles and challenges unique to their temporal circumstances.
These tropes can be used in various combinations to create intricate and engaging time travel narratives, offering audiences thrilling adventures and thought-provoking explorations of time and its complexities.
Most popular Tropes:
In literature, certain tropes have endured through time, captivating readers across generations. Here are some of the most popular tropes frequently encountered in books:
- Coming-of-Age: Follows the protagonist’s journey from youth to adulthood, often involving self-discovery, growth, and overcoming challenges.
- Quest: Involves a journey undertaken by characters to achieve a specific goal or obtain an important object, often accompanied by trials and obstacles.
- Rags to Riches: Features a protagonist who rises from humble beginnings to achieve wealth, success, or social status through hard work, talent, or luck.
- Tragic Hero: A noble or admirable protagonist whose downfall is caused by a tragic flaw or external circumstances, leading to their demise.
- Redemption Arc: Centers around a character’s journey from wrongdoing or moral downfall to eventual redemption and personal growth.
- Love Triangle: Involves one character torn between two romantic interests, leading to emotional conflict and decision-making.
- Forbidden Love: Characters face obstacles or societal constraints that prevent them from being together, adding tension and drama to the romance.
- The Hero’s Journey: Follows a hero as they embark on an adventure, face challenges, receive guidance from mentors, and ultimately achieve personal transformation and victory.
- Villain Protagonist: Features a protagonist who possesses morally ambiguous or villainous traits, offering readers a different perspective on traditional hero narratives.
- Unreliable Narrator: The narrator’s credibility or perspective is questionable, leading readers to question the accuracy of the story being told.
- Dystopia: Set in a future society characterized by oppression, totalitarianism, or societal decay, often serving as a warning or critique of contemporary issues.
- Metafiction: Draws attention to the artifice of storytelling by breaking the fourth wall, playing with narrative conventions, or blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
- Epic: Features grand-scale narratives with heroic characters, epic quests, and sweeping landscapes, often drawing inspiration from mythology or history.
- The Chosen One: Centers around a protagonist who is destined for greatness or possesses special abilities, often tasked with saving the world or fulfilling a prophecy.
- Slice of Life: Presents a realistic portrayal of everyday life, focusing on the ordinary experiences and interactions of characters without a central overarching plot.
These tropes serve as familiar narrative frameworks that resonate with readers, offering them engaging stories that explore universal themes, emotions, and experiences.
If you want a breakdown of tropes of your favorites genres, let me know! 🙂
Happy Reading!