Never pass up an opportunity to make things go wrong for your characters. I think the Rule of Drama is one of the keys to doing this trope well. I plan on playing with this one again in the future. Gone Horribly Wrong is a particularly fun trope to play with from a writer’s aspect, and I’m not sure if it’s a one and done. Does he open a forbidden gate, opening our galaxy to a potentially devastating entity in an attempt to save us from an equally evil threat, or does he choose the path of uncertainty in hopes of finding a safer, less dangerous option? He faces a morally weighted fork in the road.

In my book, Lonely Moon, the hero, Captain Hane, has a crisis of the monster. Sometimes the choice is long decided before it is made. A dead loved one, revenge, a preemptive strike. To make matters worse, this trope can become complicated when one’s intentions are infused with emotions. They’re so focused they never stop to think: was it worth it? Is this a line we should cross? The character has a vision of a greater good in sight–to cheat death, to cure cancer. It’s born of an innate character flaw, the inability to see beyond one’s good intentions. The key element is the backfire, the unforeseen consequence. You might also recognize this trope from Deep Blue Sea, where scientists genetically enhance sharks for cancer research, but the predators get loose and begin eating their masters. He unwittingly unleashes the mad dog from its dormant cage and makes it his mission to put it down. Frankenstein’s obsession leads him to create what would eventually become the bane of his very existence. In all cases, ethics are thrown to the wolves, and the big payoff is not as much a payoff as it is a new impeding doom the hero must now overcome.Ĭlassically, this trope is mostly derived, if not invented, by Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein. This trope has many faces and masks and plays out in many different ways.

Maybe the Mad Scientist played God maybe mankind has accidentally awakened a Sleeping Giant. Morality’s been thrown out of the window, compromised in favor of delicious success. This trope is all about Science gone horribly, sometimes violently wrong. I haven’t read it yet so I can’t say much about it, but it looks interesting, and I’m a sucker for space opera. Andrew Saxsma is the author of Lonely Moon, a space opera / horror novel. For this week’s Trope Tuesday post, I’ve invited a guest blogger to come on and discuss one of the tropes in his most recent book.

Lonely Moon by Andrew Saxsma