๐๐จ๐จ๐ค ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ง๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐๐ฌ ๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐๐๐ญ๐ ๐ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฉ๐ ๐๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ฅ ๐๐ญ ๐๐๐ฌ ๐๐ฉ๐ซ๐๐ฒ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ฌ: ๐ ๐๐ญ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ง ๐๐ซ๐๐ก๐๐ญ๐ฒ๐ฉ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐จ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ ๐๐ฆ๐ง๐๐ฌ๐ข๐
Aka "If You're Thinking, "My Idea Isn't Original Enough," Please Let Me Hold Your Hand For Two Minutes."
I see this take constantly on BookTok, Booksta and other reading communities.
"This trope has been done x amount of time before."
Congratulations! You've discovered literature! Everything has been done before!
Enemies to lovers predates indoor plumbing. Found family has existed since mythology. "There was only one bed" is probably older than your great-great-great-grandparents. Retellings have existed for literal millennia. Arthurian legends have been rebooted more times than Spider-Man.
We're all playing with the same storytelling Lego bricks! Some of us are simply determined to make those bricks kiss!
A few people seem to treat โthis has been done beforeโ as if it's some kind of devastating criticism. But... that's what a trope is.
Stories have always been built on recurring ideas, archetypes, themes, and structures. The interesting question has never been "Has anyone ever written this before?"
The interesting question is "What are you bringing to it?"
Because nobody else has your experiences, your sense of humor, your emotional baggage, your dialogue, your pacing, your weird obsession with describing rain, or your inexplicable need to make every emotionally unavailable man adopt a child.
BookTok (and some reading communities) sometimes acts like originality is the highest artistic virtue, right up until someone says "Enemies to lovers." Or "Dark academia." Or "Who did this to you?" Or "Found family." Or "Dragons." Or "Vampires." Or "Beauty and the Beast." Or "Hades and Persephone." Or even the famous "Touch her and die."
Then suddenly everyone's foaming at the mouth with excitement. Which is almost as if people don't actually want completely original stories.
They want familiar stories told well. Nobody walks into a bakery and goes, "Ugh. Bread. Again?"
Nobody refuses to listen to music because, "tragically", someone has already written a love song. Nobody stops watching detective shows because Sherlock Holmes already solved a mystery.
Execution has always mattered more than novelty. And before anyone says, "Well, what about Shakespeare?"
Half of Shakespeare wasn't original either. Romeo & Juliet wasn't an original plot. The man, like so many others, borrowed plots and tropes all the time.
The Lion King is Hamlet. West Side Story is Romeo & Juliet. Clueless is Emma. Ten Things I Hate About You is The Taming of the Shrew. The Divine Comedy is essentially Dante writing a historical and political self-insert fanfiction with an outrageously ambitious worldbuilding budget.
If you're sitting there thinking, "My idea isn't unique enough.."
Please stop. Respectfully. Lovingly. Gently.
You are not competing with every story ever told over the last several thousand years. You're competing with whether someone closes your book thinking, "Damn. I had a great time."
Book communities will spend six months tweeting about how "chosen one stories are dead," "enemies to lovers is overdone," "academia is boring now," and "romantasy is ruining literature"... then preorder a book that contains every single one of those things because the sprayed edges are shiny and the marketing team hired someone who knows how to edit a dramatic TikTok.
I think people don't actually hate tropes. They hate bad marketing. The exact same story gets called "derivative" when it's self-published, and "genre-defining" when a major publisher wraps it in foil embossing and sends twenty influencers a PR box the size of a refrigerator.
There are books with genuinely fresh ideas that disappear into obscurity because they didn't have a marketing budget, and there are books whose entire personality is "Shadow Daddy #48" that become cultural events.
We don't have a trope fatigue problem nearly as much as we have a recommendation fatigue problem.
People aren't tired of enemies to lovers. They're tired of seeing the same five books recommended as if the genre stopped evolving in 2022. We need yours.
I promise you, readers remember how a story made them feel far longer than they remember whether it contained the first dragon ever invented.
