Every fic you have ever loved is standing on a trope. A trope is not a cliché — it is a shape readers already know, which means you can spend your words on the characters instead of the setup. Here are 64 of them, grouped the way writers actually think about them, with a line on what each one really asks of you.
How to use this list: pick one relationship trope, one situation trope, and one thing that goes wrong. That combination is a fic. Two tropes that pull in opposite directions — soft AU, brutal secret — are almost always more interesting than one done straight.
Romance Tropes
The engine of most fanfiction. Each of these is really a question about what is keeping these two apart.
- Enemies to lovers — they have to lose an argument before they can win each other. The hate has to be about something real.
- Rivals to lovers — softer than enemies: they respect each other and cannot admit it.
- Friends to lovers — the risk is the friendship itself, which is what makes the confession expensive.
- Slow burn — not slow plot. Slow burn means every chapter moves them one inch and charges them for it.
- Fake dating — the lie gives them permission to do what they already wanted.
- Marriage of convenience — fake dating with paperwork and higher stakes.
- Second chance — they already failed once, so the reader knows exactly what is at risk.
- Forbidden love — the obstacle is outside them: family, rank, war, species, job.
- Pining — one of them knows, the other does not. Readers will take 100k words of this.
- Mutual pining — both know, both are certain the other does not. Comedy and agony in one.
- Oblivious to love — everyone around them has already worked it out.
- Grumpy × sunshine — the grump is not cruel; the sunshine is not stupid. That is the whole trick.
- Touch-starved — the first real contact should read louder than a kiss.
- Bed sharing — the smallest possible setting, the largest possible tension.
- Soulmates — marks, timers, red strings. Best when the bond is inconvenient.
- Love triangle — only works when both options are genuinely good for them.
If you want a dynamic handed to you rather than picked, drop two characters into the relationship headcanon generator and see what it gives you to work against.
Writing original romance rather than fic? The romance tropes list covers the same shapes plus the microtropes readers screenshot.
Angst and Hurt/Comfort Tropes
- Hurt/comfort — the injury is the excuse; the comfort is the story.
- Whump — hurt without the obligation to comfort. Harder to land, easier to overdo.
- Sickfic — illness strips a character of their usual defences.
- Caretaking — the competent one finally has to be looked after.
- Nightmares — lets you show a backstory the character would never narrate.
- Grief and mourning — most powerful when aimed at a small object, not the loss itself.
- Angst with a happy ending — the tag readers search for when they want to be wrecked safely.
- Angst without a happy ending — earn it, or it reads as cruelty.
- Break-up and make-up — the fight has to be one both of them were right about.
- Miscommunication — fragile. It only works if silence is in character, not convenient.
- Secret injury — hiding it is the character trait; the reveal is the beat.
- Sacrifice — someone chooses the other person over the mission. Or does not.
Alternate Universe Tropes
An AU keeps the people and changes the world around them. The test of a good one: the characters still recognise each other.
- Coffee shop AU — the original low-stakes AU. Orders as characterisation.
- Roommates AU — forced proximity with a lease.
- College / university AU — ages everyone down and gives them deadlines.
- High school AU — small world, enormous feelings.
- Modern AU — fantasy or period characters with phones, jobs and rent.
- Royalty AU — duty as the obstacle; every private moment is stolen.
- Soulmate AU — a whole world built around one rule about love.
- Canon divergence — one canon decision goes the other way, and everything follows.
- Everyone lives / nobody dies — the repair fic. Grief-adjacent, even when it is happy.
- Role reversal — hero and villain swap places, keeping their personalities.
- Time travel fix-it — knowledge as a weapon, and a curse.
- Apocalypse / survival AU — strips characters to what they will do to stay alive.
The AU generator will put any two characters into one of 28 worlds with roles and a complication already attached, if you would rather start from a premise than a blank page.
Found Family and Ensemble Tropes
- Found family — the tag that quietly outgrew romance. Chosen, not owed.
- Team as family — the workplace version, with a mission holding it together.
- Adoption / guardianship — the most reliable way to soften a hard character.
- Mentor and protégé — teaching as a love language, and the fear of being outgrown.
- Sibling dynamics — the only relationship nobody in it chose.
- Rivals on the same team — they have to win together, which neither wants.
- Redemption arc — the villain earns a chair at the table, slowly.
- Protective friend group — the cast closing ranks around one member.
Structure and Format Tropes
Not what happens, but how you tell it. These are the ones that rescue a premise you cannot make move.
- Five times / one time — the “5+1” shape. Repetition, then a break in the pattern.
- Outsider POV — a stranger describes the couple everyone else has given up on.
- Epistolary — letters, texts, case files, group chats.
- Time loop — the same day until a character changes.
- Amnesia — a relationship re-tested from zero.
- Body swap — forced empathy, played for comedy or horror.
- Unreliable narrator — the reader sees what the narrator will not.
- Character study — no plot; one person, examined closely.
- Missing scene — the bit canon skipped, written properly.
- Fix-it — canon happened; this argues with it.
Fluff and Comedy Tropes
- Domestic fluff — groceries, laundry, an argument about a tap.
- Baking and cooking — hands busy, guard down.
- Pet fic — a cat with no respect for a dangerous person.
- Holiday fic — a deadline and forced togetherness in one.
- Road trip — a car is a confession booth that moves.
- Crack treated seriously — an absurd premise, played completely straight.
- Accidental confession — said out loud before it was decided.
- Jealousy, badly hidden — the reader sees it three scenes before the character admits it.
For the out-of-context dialogue these scenes run on, the incorrect quote generator is quicker than waiting for a line to arrive.
Picking Tropes That Work Together
Tropes stack. The interesting part is the friction between them:
- Soft premise + hard secret — coffee shop AU where one of them is leaving the country in a month.
- Hard premise + soft delivery — apocalypse AU that is mostly two people making tea.
- A shape and a wound — a 5+1 where the “+1” is the first time nobody has to be brave.
- Two speeds — slow burn romance inside a plot on a 48-hour clock.
Once you have the pair, build out what neither of them will say out loud — that is what the character headcanon generator is for. And if you want the trope list sorted by relationship instead, the ship dynamics list covers 30 pairings you can drop straight into any of these.
Once you have your tropes, decide what is going to overturn them. These plot twist ideas pair well with a trope the reader thinks they have worked out.
Planning a long fic for November? Tropes are the fastest way to shape 50,000 words – see the NaNoWriMo prep plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fanfic trope? A recurring pattern readers recognise — a situation, a relationship shape, or a way of telling the story. Tags like enemies to lovers or 5+1 are tropes, and readers search for them on purpose.
Are tropes the same as clichés? No. A trope is the shape. A cliché is the shape written without attention — the same beats in the same order with nothing specific to these characters.
How many tropes should one fic have? Two or three, tagged clearly. More than that and none of them gets the room it needs.
Which tropes do readers search for most? Enemies to lovers, slow burn, found family, hurt/comfort and fake dating are perennial. Tag honestly — a mistagged fic loses the readers who wanted exactly what you wrote.
