#TropeCore, or: Everything You Need to Know About the BookTok/Fanfiction Vernacular Shaping the Entire Publishing Industry

Anna is in Nantucket this week, and Eloy is back with another post!

Everything You Need To Know About BookTok Tropes

Does your novel have enemies to lovers vibes, or is it giving grumpy x sunshine?

If my question sounds like gibberish, then I am jealous of your pure, unpolluted mind. If, however, you are familiar with phrases like one bed or dark academia, then it’s likely you spend some time on BookTok. 

Since the platform exploded four or so years ago, BookTok has transformed the publishing landscape. Retailers and publishers keep tabs on BookTok to figure out what genres are trending and what type of titles they should invest in. BookTok has made some authors’ careers and breathed new life into backlist titles. 

Lots of articles have already come out on this. Today, however, I want to pull on one particular thread of the BookTok sweater I haven’t seen anyone analyze yet: tropes.

A trope is a common or recurring plot device, motif, situation, or theme that can be found in a wide number of literary works. You could probably name a number of tropes off the top of your head: the buddy cop dynamic in a movie or a Chosen One prophecy in a fantasy epic, for instance.

In the BookTok universe, however, tropes have taken on a different usage—they’re no longer so much a tool for analyzing or sorting works so much as finding them. Since platforms like BookTok and Instagram Reels prioritize short, snappy videos, tropes have proven to be a quick code users can cite to describe and recommend books. 

Discussion of tropes is most common in the romance genre, but you might also see them mentioned in online reviews of fantasy, YA, and sometimes even literary works. Recently, publishers have even begun to name-drop tropes in their marketing campaigns. 

Allow me to lay my cards on the table: I find much of what goes on at BookTok alternately bewildering and corny. At the same time, however, I understand the appeal of tropes. Yes, they are reductive, but that’s the point. In an increasingly fragmented book market in which consumers want to find certain vibes and feelings vs. topics—particularly in fiction—they are an effective tool for connecting books with a particular brand of reader. 

What I’d like to answer today is 1) the origins of these tropes 2) what writers should not about using (and not using) tropes when querying agents. 

What is a Trope?