Where else can you find information about Oscar Baiting, the rare element Unobtanium, Tom Hanks Syndrome, and the Ugly Guy Hot Wife phenomena just clicks away from each other?
As someone who has dabbled in screenwriting a bit and also has a tragically terminal case of Wikiphilia, I’ve become at least briefly obsessed with TvTropes.org. If you’ve done a lot of reading and writing, you may share a problem that frustrates me: I have a hard time getting engaged with a lot of fiction for the simple reason that I can’t help seeing past the poorly-written story to view the underlying plot mechanisms. You may have heard of the assertion that there are only 36 basic plots. At least that was Georges Polti’s conclusion in his 1917 book The Thirty Six Dramatic Situations
; more recently, author Christopher Booker claimed there are only Seven Basic Plots
. Which is what drives the content of TVTropes. It’s a wiki, but as they state right on their home page “We are not Wikipedia. We’re a buttload more informal.” Which makes it a lot more fun, but also makes it more likely that you’ll run into the occasional dead end than you would on Wikipedia. It helps if you start on a well-referenced page; we have a few links to get you rolling below. The site also seems a little over-run with Manga and Anime experts, but heck, even voyeuristically observing a basement-dwelling gamer obsess over cartoon nudity can be amusing. Rather than starting at the home page, start with something like the Ugly Guy Hot Wife page, which for me, quickly led to the Attractiveness Isolation, Hollywood Homely, and Beauty Inversion entries, which all explore beauty as a plot device. You’ll also find a nice analysis of how sci-fi and fantasy stories often resort to the Applied Phlebotinum trick, which often requires an heroic search for Unobtanium. They also explore things like how Tom Hanks Syndrome is really just an elaborate form of Oscar Bait. The Oscar Bait page suggests that “films are more likely to get nominated for Oscars if they are painful for the average viewer to watch“, and who could argue that Robin Williams in a dramatic role isn’t a slightly painful thing to watch? Come back and let us know if you find any interesting entries of your own.
