Author Archives: jlodom

The Everlasting Trope: The Love Triangle

For these Everlasting Trope posts, I try not to pick only tropes I like, or only ones I dislike, but a whole range of them. Yet I think it is necessary to admit, up front, my own biases. I do not particularly care for the Love Triangle. I don’t hate it with the fire ofContinue reading “The Everlasting Trope: The Love Triangle”

Poetry Tripping up Prose

So it is a common thing to hear reviewers and book-lovers complain about ‘purple prose.’ Like most complaints, however, this is shorthand for something more complicated. At times we like highly poetic prose, even relish it. What most people mean when they say ‘purple prose’ isn’t simply “elegant or florid” but rather “overly-dramatic or painfully excessive.”Continue reading “Poetry Tripping up Prose”

Everlasting Trope: Dash or Die

I don’t know what the real name of this trope is, but it generally works like this: there’s a ticking clock of some lethal kind and the character has to run–and I mean RUN–to make it in time. Run to slam a gate to keep the monster out. Race to deliver a letter before aContinue reading “Everlasting Trope: Dash or Die”

Things Beloved: Mara Daughter of the Nile

I do not remember how old I was when I first read Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s Mara Daughter of the Nile. 12, perhaps. And I have probably read it nearly a dozen times since then. This book rests firmly in the category of “books-that-I-love-till-death-do-us-part-but-am-not-sure-if-they-are-as-good-as-I-think-because-I-am-blinded-by-old-affection.” I find that books read in my teenaged years often fall intoContinue reading “Things Beloved: Mara Daughter of the Nile”

The Everlasting Trope: Anti-Hero

Few things are more beloved and ubiquitous than the Anti-Hero. The term has come to encompass such a broad range of character types, from the simply less-that-sugary member of the good guy band, all the way to someone who only escapes utter, horrific villainhood by one or two actions, which are nevertheless significant actions. So,Continue reading “The Everlasting Trope: Anti-Hero”

The Red Herring Device

So in this recent blog post, I discussed a storytelling device that I really liked which was to be found in two wildly different stories–Till We Have Faces and The Emperor’s New Groove–and now I want to talk about a different device which also seems to have a similar sort of bait-and-switch quality. I’m sureContinue reading “The Red Herring Device”