The best and worst romantasy tropes, according to author and viral BookTokker Stacey McEwan

Australia Broadcast Center

4 days ago

When I ask Stacey McEwan to describe her latest romantic fantasy novel, A Forbidden Alchemy, the Queensland-based author and content creator responds with a question indicative of a broader trend in the book world.
"Do you want the elevator pitch? Or do you want me to just give tropes?"
The use of tropes in fiction is nothing new.
But in the age of BookTok, Bookstagram and Goodreads, it's increasingly common to see romance and romantic fantasy (romantasy) fans summarise entire novels from these genres using the tropes within them, from "fake dating", to "dagger to the throat".
Many traditional publishers are following suit, leaning into trope-first marketing. Some advanced reader copies of romance and romantasy books even list tropes on the cover, relegating key information like book titles and even authors' names to the spine.
McEwan says there's a reason romance and romantasy novels are particularly prone to this.
"Because they all have a three-act structure and need the happily ever after, and because they're so repetitive — I say that with deep, deep affection for them — [the romance genre has] leant itself to tropes that people started referencing and labelling a long, long time ago," she explains.
"And, because many [elements of romance] carry over into romantasy, now we have all these romantasy tropes that you wouldn't see in contemporary romance."
Romance and romantasy books are more than the tropes they're based around, which is why some see a reliance on tropes in reviews and marketing as a problem.
But McEwan thinks readers seek hyper-specific romance and romantasy tropes for the same reason they're criticised: familiarity.
"It's comforting and something we know and understand," she argues.
McEwan's latest novel follows a fated pair in a world divided by the magical and non-magical, who discover a secret that starts a revolution, and leans into the "slow-burn romance" and "found family" tropes.
But she doesn't just explore romantasy tropes in her writing — McEwan also dissects the tropes fans love and hate in her viral book-related Instagram and TikTok content.
Who better to ask about the best and worst of the genre and why we feel so strongly about them?
This is the romance/romantasy trope du jour. And for good reason, McEwan says. The "enemies-to-lovers" trope often comes with delicious tension and irresistible banter between love interests.
"Those things can occur in other dynamics between two characters, but 'enemies-to-lovers' really calls for it, and the anticipation and the pay-off at the end when they flip is everything," she explains.
It also lends itself well to a bunch of other tropes readers love, from "slow-burn romance", to "dagger to the throat" (in a moment of high tension, one of the love interests holds a knife to the other's throat, prompting a barrage of conflicting feelings); to "only one bed at the inn" (the love interests need to stay somewhere for the night, but the inn/hotel only has one room left, and that room only has one bed); and "forced proximity" in general (any scene where predicted love interests are forced into close contact with each other for a significant period of time, ensuring their relationship develops).
"When an author forces enemies into close proximity to each other, you just know the banter is going to be really good, and the tension is going to be sky-high," McEwan says.
To McEwan, this trope is "pure escapism — particularly if you're femme".
"If you're reading fantasy or romantasy, you're looking for escapism anyway, but to me this trope is the height of escapism because I like to pretend that I am, in fact, the main character, and I won't take any judgement on it because I think we all [pretend we're the protagonist].
This is your morally grey masc love interest who typically possesses some sort of shadow magic, and definitely has an attitude problem.
McEwan thinks most of us don't want to be "pick-me girls" — women who seek attention from men by proving they're somehow "not like the other girls".
"But at the heart of it, we kind of are," she says of this trope.
"Reading about a shadow daddy, or a morally grey love interest who hates everyone, will fight the entire world off for the main character … it's really fun to watch a character soften for that one person."
McEwan describes "found family" as her favourite trope "by far", which is why it crops up in almost everything she writes.
"'Found family' is really comforting for readers because it's the family the main character has chosen rather than been born to, and the main characters in these books typically have terrible families or dead families, to make their decisions more believable and relatable," she says.
"And so [as readers] we're always rooting for them to find their people, and it's comforting when they do."
Picture this: you've just made it past all the world-building and will-they-won't-they of a new romantasy book and the love interests are finally together, only for a new conflict to appear out of nowhere.
Said conflict could be solved in one conversation.
"Really, there are no bad tropes if you know how to write them properly," McEwan says.
"I've read books that have used the 'miscommunication' trope very, very well, to the point where it's believable. It's just that the 'miscommunication' trope so often isn't, and that's incredibly frustrating for readers.
When it comes to romantasy, McEwan concedes this trope is often used out of necessity.
"In most of these books, [the love interest] would smell of sweat and body odour because they've been riding on a horse for five days, with no way to bathe themselves," she points out.
"If the author instead draws attention to the idea that they smell like sandalwood and pine and starlight, we can all pretend they don't smell terrible.
"There's no way what they're smelling is eucalyptus and tea tree, though."
Think: Nesta in A Court of Silver Flames or Aelin in Throne of Glass, both by Sarah J Maas.
"This can be done really well and for really good reasons, but often it feels stereotypically sacrificial that the woman would have to part with such a big piece of herself to fix things for everyone else," McEwan says.
Another "stereotypically sacrificial" trope, McEwan says "surprise pregnancy" is widely disliked among readers because it "feels cheap to have this huge conflict happening and then, suddenly, pregnancy changes everything, from the main character's motivations, to the love interest's, to the way she sees the world and what needs to happen next".