Television Tropes & Idioms is a “a catalogue of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction” (in wiki format, of course).

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means “stereotyped and trite.” In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to play with tropes, not to make fun of them.

Examples include E equals MC Hammer (see above), better than it sounds (with the related I am not making this up), slap slap kiss, and the untwist.

TV Tropes is definitely worth bookmarking and looking around, but be careful. It will steal all your time and ruin your life.

(via the subversively troperific Ryan North)

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