#408 – Mystery and Thriller Tropes for Authors, with Sara Rosett and Jennifer Hilt

0:05Sara Rosett: Hey writers, you're listening to the Kobo Writing Life podcast, where we bring you insights and inspiration for growing your self-publishing business. We're your hosts. I'm Tara Kremen, director of Kobo Writing Life. And I'm Rachel Wharton, author engagement manager at Kobo Writing Life. On today's episode, we talked with Jennifer Hilt and Sara Rosett about their new book, The Trope Thesaurus, Mystery and Thriller. Jennifer is a USA Today bestselling author and is the creator of the Trope Thesaurus series, where she dives into a bunch of different subgenres, beloved by writers seeking to hone their craft.

0:40Sara Rosett: With a diverse portfolio spanning 24 books under four pen names, she has also authored the urban fantasy trilogy The Undead Detective. She's a frequent podcast guest, workshop presenter, and creator of TropeCon. And USA Today bestselling author Sarah Rosset is the author of over 30 novels that are light-hearted mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings, fun characters, and puzzling whodunits. Sarah's also the author of How to Outline a Cozy Mystery, How to Write a Series, and the book we're talking about today, The Trope Thesaurus, Mystery and Thriller. Additionally, she hosts Mystery Books Podcast, a podcast for writers about lessons learned.

1:20Sara Rosett: And if you couldn't tell from their bios, Sarah and Jennifer came with a wealth of knowledge about all things mysteries thrillers and tropes we talked about their book the trope thesaurus mysteries and thrillers and how authors can utilize the tropes within to outline their books craft their books market their books we talked about tropes as storytelling building blocks how universal story elements can help create reader expectations and build the emotional connections with characters and we talked a little bit about genre expectations and how to meet expectations and what you can do to kind of subvert and play with tropes while still making sure your readers are getting what they want out of your books.

2:02Sara Rosett: This is great for mystery and thriller writers especially, but as they talk about in the podcast, tropes are not just for mysteries and thrillers. So any genre that you are writing, I think there's a lot of really great information in here and we hope you enjoy. Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the Kobo Writing Life podcast, or welcome back, I should say. Hi, thanks for having us. Yeah. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourselves and your indie author career? Sarah, I'll start with you. Okay, well, I've always loved mysteries, and I've always written mysteries. So I started out traditionally published, and I had a 10-book series with Kensington, a cozy mystery series about a military spouse who moved around the country.

2:45Sara Rosett: And about 2010, 2011, people started asking me, when will those books be an e-book? And I was like, I don't know. So it led me down this path of indie and I found indie and I loved it. And for a while I was hybrid. And then I recently have transitioned pretty much into all, you know, full-time indie. Now I write 1920s historical cozy mysteries. They're, you know, fun and lighthearted. And, you know, just they let me explore all the things I love. History, the upper crust and kind of that look into that lifestyle that, you know, I will never live. you know but um yeah so that's what I do and that's kind of how I got into writing and I just love mysteries I don't people ask me would I ever write in another genre and I don't think so because I just love mysteries so much I always love the covers of your books they're so they they really

3:32Jennifer Hilt: stand out I see Rachel ferociously nodding the same thing yes that's all my cover designer

3:40Sara Rosett: nice so Jen what about you can you tell us about yourself and your indie author career

3:44Jennifer Hilt: Sure. Like Sarah, I always loved storytelling and writing and really started trying to write in my 20s. And it took me a very long time to kind of figure out how to tell stories. And I did actually a master's in English, you know, just kind of reading and trying to figure out how stories were put together. And I ended up starting indie publishing, I think, in like 2012. And I did various pen names. I started out like I'd write five books in one romance genre. And then I, cause I thought, oh, I really, I don't really, I loved mystery and thriller, but I was like not confident enough that I could like do those stories.

4:20Jennifer Hilt: So I was like, well, I can tell a romance. And so I, I did those plus my kids were little and it was like easier mentally to kind of like focus in that genre. So I did a whole bunch of those and I had this thing where I go five books in a series and then I'd be like, oh, okay, I think I'm all done with contemporary romance. So then I'll go try another type of thing. So I did a bunch of that, a bunch of different times. And then I finally wrote a series in urban fantasy, which is like the best for me because it's like mystery thriller and fantasy elements. And I did that. And I just really loved doing that.

4:53Jennifer Hilt: And then I ended up getting into this trope stuff because I was teaching some writing and students had questions. We were talking about how stories are put together and and things. And during that time, I started to think, oh, we're using tropes. And that kind of led me down this this hole of like, what are they? because at the time I was working on it, we weren't talking about them as openly as we are now. So that kind of led, so pretty much for like the last five years, I've just been kind of working in nonfiction. And now that Sarah and I have finished up that last book, I've started working back on a thriller, which I'll do indie when I get it wrangled into shape.

5:29Jennifer Hilt: So yeah, I think that's pretty much me.

5:32Sara Rosett: Well, and speaking of the book that you worked on together, we are chatting today about said book. the trope thesaurus, mystery and thriller. And Sarah, you have a wealth of expertise in outlining and series structure. And Jen, like you alluded to, you are the master of trope deconstruction. So it seems like this is a very perfect pairing for this book. But how did this collaboration come about?

5:55Jennifer Hilt: I'm trying to remember, Sarah, do you? I don't remember if I asked you or you were like, okay, do you need help?

6:00Sara Rosett: Yeah, I think you were on the podcast I do with Jamie, the Wish I'd know the podcast and when and you were talking about doing a new book and I sent you a message afterwards I think that I said you know hey if you're because I knew it was going to be mystery and thriller and I was like hey if you ever want a collaborator let me know because that I thought about writing a book about mystery tropes for years I just never done it and then you replied

6:23Jennifer Hilt: and you know we were off the races exactly yeah yeah yeah it was pretty much um I really liked doing the other books but I um after the fourth book I was having some health problems and plus like Sarah's like such a no-brainer she's like super smart easy to work with we we actually had a really fun time which is not always the way collaboration goes yeah um and it would just be like oh we kind of like this we would get on and we'd be like talking about you know stuff we liked and how we'd talk about it and what would you think about that so it was really um kind of spoiled me I think in a way for a lot of for other projects because it's like that's a pretty high standard of enjoyment of working with somebody and learning so much because they'd be like oh I never thought about that or what a

7:07Sara Rosett: great idea you know yeah me too I feel like Jennifer has more of the thriller angle covered and I have more of them and she has the darker and I have a lighter so I have the lighter of mystery and so it was a good pairing yeah I think it was my first collaboration I'd ever worked with anybody like on a book-length collaboration and I think I'm spoiled too because it was really easy when I talk about it now I'm like that was I mean it was work to write the book but the collaboration part was easy yeah

7:35Jennifer Hilt: and it was also nice the accountability part because it was it was like oh I know I need to get this done and I can't really push this deadline because I know Sarah will have her stuff done so like you know so it was kind of it was really helpful in that way and it was just because writing is such a solitary process it was really nice to not be like so alone in it even if you really enjoy it it can still be obviously stressful yeah I do want to get into the tropes

7:59Sara Rosett: of it all but I'm curious about just staying on this kind of collaboration as it sounds like it was so fruitful for both of you but how how did it work because it's not sectioned like you're not having each voice you know did you take a trope and then sort of break it around did you both write them together I'm just curious about like the actual art of writing this book as a as a

8:17Jennifer Hilt: club yeah yeah we ended up like dividing pretty much i think the tropes like in half i'm trying to remember sarah yeah i think so yeah yeah and then but we we always did a lot of swapping um like back and forth so like i'd write drafts of like the ones that i was working on and she'd write drafts of the one she was working on and it was really nice to have this like backup buddy partner because normally when i've done these books i always worry like you know am i missing something and even though you like goes through editors and readers and stuff like that it's still like you don't want to have been like oh my gosh how could you have totally missed this was an x or y you know um trope and you didn't have it in there so that was really nice about that and then um so i remember us sending a lot of you know this the manuscripts back and forth that way and then we do the zoom calls where we'd be like talking about like how because it was great like sarah said is like she's really good with all the cozy and the lighter stuff and she really likes like a lot of the korean drama the like k k drama mystery things and then i kind of like more the thriller stuff so it was really also handy that way.

9:21Sara Rosett: Yeah and I feel like that like when we went back and forth I think we broke up the tropes list first and we did that and for me it was great because Jennifer already had the structure because she'd written these other books about tropes so we already had the big structure and that's I feel like that's so important for a non-fiction book is how it's put together the different pieces and so we just kind of went with that structure and then we collaborated on each section as we went along and then it was, you know, we would talk about it and send each other back and forth, you know, what we had done and throw around ideas together, so it was good.

9:56Sara Rosett: I know, Jen, you've talked about doing the Trothosaurus for memoir and if you need a collaborator, I'm just, I'm here, I'm just saying.

10:03Jennifer Hilt: Oh, awesome, yeah. We talk about that a lot. We talk about memoir a lot, yeah, I know, we'll have to talk about that. Especially with me, I'm getting a little more rested up after this big move I had. So it's kind of like, oh, yeah, okay. I know. Every time I think, when I do see a memoir, I'm like, oh, there's Kara. She's read that.

10:21Sara Rosett: Well, jumping back into the trope of it all, as Tara put it. Our listeners should be relatively well-versed in tropes and how they function. But for anyone who needs a bit of a reminder, can you tell us what a trope is and how writers use them? Yeah, the definition that I use and that I came to just from like doing this work several years ago and, you know, watching lots of movies, reading lots of books and stuff like that is really think recognizing that a trope is a very recognized thing.

10:49Jennifer Hilt: So when we hear of like enemies to lovers or billionaire or alpha male or, you know, royalty, princess, any of that kind of thing, people know what that is. It's not like a complicated term that they have to figure out. So part of the genius of tropes is that it really helps audiences of whatever genres you're in figure out like, oh, hey, that's something I'm interested in and what's going to happen next. So the part about it that is, I think, so helpful is that it's just very recognizable. Really pretty much, you know, even like little kids, like the Disney movies are awful at tropes and like little kids are automatically like wired for those kind of things.

11:26Jennifer Hilt: So it's that easy to recognize part about it. it's that it's about relationships when you think about it it's either like enemies to lovers of course is like talking about that relationship but if you think of something of like the um like a boss you you can be that trope can be like their angle of it of like the person in charge or it can be like what is the experience of their employee so it's like whatever it is is you're kind of trying to figure out how you want to focus on that and um i think the third thing about it that I think is cool is that it can be used in all kinds of different ways.

11:59Jennifer Hilt: You're just taking this general idea, but then you're going to like add it with other tropes and other elements of story and twist it together. It's not a fixed thing that's hard to develop, which is kind of how I differentiate tropes from cliches. And that was kind of something that Sarah and I agreed on with. Sometimes people can say they're the same thing, but I don't really think that is true.

12:21Sara Rosett: Could you give us an example of a trope and a cliche that are not the same, but people might think are?

12:27Jennifer Hilt: Well, like when I think of cliches, I think of things that have like a value judgment in it. So I think of stuff of like dumb blonde or dumb jock or things like that that have already this connotation to it, where you can use any kind of like, like, say for the dumb jock thing. Like you can just talk, the trope of being an athlete is super popular, especially like if you just looked at like Netflix and hockey romance per se. There's just a lot. So that's like a whole other trope of like sports or athletics or things like that. But you can do all kinds of things with those characters. You don't have to just have it be like this one kind of narrow thing.

13:04Jennifer Hilt: They could be protagonists. They could be antagonists. They could be secondary characters. It could be, you know, relationships of like love interest stuff or it could be, you know, mysteries. So that's kind of how I view it is like one is a lot easier to develop for story and gives you like more range. And the other one is more fixed and is kind of tends to get more of like a flat characters like those two dimensional characters is generally kind of the realm of the cliches.

13:30Sara Rosett: And you mentioned kind of early on that, like, Sarah, you live in the cozy mystery kind of realm, and Jen, you're more in the thriller, dark realm of it. So I'm wondering, two-part question here, one, can you kind of define the difference between a mystery and a thriller? Because those two are often put on the same shelf in a bookstore, but they do function very differently. And for writers that are just starting out in the genre, how can they use your book as a compass to decide which direction their book is leaning. Yeah. You want me to take this one to start with? I feel like a mystery, I totally agree with you that they are different.

14:10Sara Rosett: They both have an element to them that are similar, but they are very different reading experiences. And it always annoys me when they mix them all together in the bookstore because I'm like, oh, this is not what I wanted. So a mystery is more an intellectual puzzle. It's a whodunit. Usually you're trying to figure out, who committed the crime, whether it's murder or theft or whatever. And it's usually a little bit slower paced than, say, a thriller. And it often has a really tight little circle of suspects, a closed circle. And because of that, it has a smaller stage sometimes than a thriller.

14:47Sara Rosett: So whereas a thriller is like, there's more going on. It's more exciting. It's kind of a thrill ride. There's a bigger stage because it can be international and you're not oftentimes, you know, who did it and you're trying to prevent it from happening again. Whatever it is like the end of the world or a bank robbery or something like that. So, yeah, I feel like there are different promises that you're making to the reader. And I think as a writer, you have to figure out. I thought of it this way when I first started writing. What kind of ride do I want to take my reader on? Do I want them to go on this thrill ride or do I want them to go on this puzzle of whodunit?

15:23Sara Rosett: So that's kind of how I think about it. I don't know what you think, Jennifer.

15:25Jennifer Hilt: I think Sarah is very smart. And she explained it very well. When we were working on the book, she was helping me because I was thinking of the same thing. And one thing that I've kind of boiled down to what she said is, and correct me if I got it wrong, Sarah, but we ended up like mystery is kind of the quest for justice.

15:46Sara Rosett: Yes.

15:48Jennifer Hilt: And that the thriller I just kind of think of is who will survive. It's like life or death stakes. So that's kind of like those are, I guess, the two big camps. But I think there is a lot of mixing in this current, you know, in these markets. Not only in, you know, books, but I think we see it especially all the time in, you know, movies and series and things like that. because they're like, everybody's always trying to like raise the stakes and get people more engaged. So, um, I think, you know, you need, I think it's really important to like tell the story that you want to tell. And then you can go back and be like, okay, so what is it?

16:30Jennifer Hilt: You know, as opposed to like, oh, I need to engineer. I mean, if you're able to sit down and be like, I'm going to engineer a mystery and this is the way I'm just going to sit down and do it, like kudos to you. But I've never been able to do that kind of thing. I just kind of like have a question and then all these like characters wander by and I try to like you know wrangle them in shape and figure out what we're going to do and all these kind of things so I think it's it's it can be helpful like you don't need to necessarily I would say know it in the beginning if you're a beginning writer it's just more important to like get the story out and then shape it but it's it is helpful for sure when you're going to be marketing and doing revisions to be have a sense of is this mostly mystery is this mostly thriller if I'm really doing a mashup how do I communicate that to the reader?

17:12Sara Rosett: And I think that hitting those reader expectations is also just like very important across any genre. You know, a romance reader picking up a romance book, they know they're going to get that happily ever after in the end. However, we're always going to come up against writers who want to subvert tropes and subvert genre expectations. So I'm wondering if you can kind of speak to balancing those, both making a trope your own while also ensuring you're not fooling your readers.

17:43Jennifer Hilt: Yeah, I'll just go first, then I'll let Sarah chime in. I think it's really, a lot of times people are very, like when I speak at something, they're like, I want to know how to twist tropes. They're very concerned that like a trope as is isn't enough, and they need to be able to twist it. And I think a trope is a single, if your character just has a single trope, that's not going to be a very developed, interesting character. But I think the great thing about tropes is that they play super well together. They're, you know, the more you kind of layer them on, the more interesting and complex the characters become because we're trying to mimic like real people.

18:14Jennifer Hilt: So a great example of this would be like Slow Horses because, you know, those people are super complex and they're full of tropes, but yet they're very complex and interesting people. So I think that's kind of, and there isn't necessarily a lot of, I would say, subversion going in there. There's like great dark humor and things like that. and there's certainly lots of twists but I think the important thing about knowing if you were truly going to twist tropes is to understand what is the thing that people are coming to that trope for what's the value, what's the kernel of that relationship and then how to kind of twist it on it and it's not a example in Mystery Thriller but it's one I like and it's the 40 year old virgin movie because you know on one hand that movie is all about relationships.

19:05Jennifer Hilt: It's not like this kind of old, like these old movies that we used to have in the 80s that were all this kind of teenage sex movies. This is actually about like a guy on an emotional journey. And on the other hand, that the virgin trope has been used forever to, you know, mean basically one thing, this like young woman that's, you know. So it was like that, I think to me, was a great example of, oh, understanding a trope and subverting it, because it still worked, but it was a really good twist. And I think you can still tell really great stories without doing all that twisting. If you are interested in trope twisting, I think horror is like probably the best market for it because there's so much awesome trope twisting that goes on in horror because you're really not, those authors are really not afraid and those readers are really looking for that subversion of like, for example, domestic horror is just super popular now, which is great.

19:55Jennifer Hilt: So it's like, instead of, oh, the home being this like loving place that you have all these great things going on that you might see like with this you know sweet romance or something you know it's like the call is coming from inside of the house like on all levels and my my plug for if you love domestic thriller horror mystery is this book sundial i actually bought a hard copy so i could bother people with it catriona ward anyway so yes um i will turn it over to sarah because i probably chanted on too long no you did great i would just add to that one

20:26Sara Rosett: thing that we kind of came to while we were writing this book is that tropes, you can kind of sort of dial them in for whatever sub-gen you're writing. Because we talked about how one of the tropes in the book is domestic, what do we call it? Domestic?

20:40Jennifer Hilt: Oh, yes, the domestic staff. Staff. I was like, it's not the help. Domestic staff, domestic service, something like that. Yes, domestic staff.

20:48Sara Rosett: So like you have that as, you know, like you're getting this look inside this world that is different from what many of us know, but you can make it a thriller like The Housemaid, or you can make it more cozy like The Maid by Nita Prose. So they both have that element to it, but you can make one cozier and one darker, one more thriller, one more whodunit type thing. So I think you can kind of dial the tropes into your genre. You just have to figure out exactly what your readers want and then kind of aim for that. so it's not and the other thing I learned working with Jennifer is that tropes that you may not think are in your genre may be in your genre because like we came to ticking time bomb and I was like I don't know you take that one because I don't know but then I realized oh I do have ticking time bombs in my books because it'll be oh this you know has to be solved by next week because you know something's going to happen or the sheriff you know the statute of limitations is run down and you have to do it by then.

21:49Sara Rosett: So you can make, even though I think of ticking time bomb as a thriller trope, it can be in a cozy too.

21:55Jennifer Hilt: Oh yeah. And I was just going to shout out for ticking time bomb, because I think that's one of like the, kind of the, I don't know if it's toughest, but a lot of times people, people think it isn't really that relevant, but like you have it in, in, you know, romance all the time or sci-fi with like, oh, this, this magic is going to run out or so-and-so is leaving town or getting a job or they're going to have a baby or whatever. it's any kind of like time restriction element. And I think it's so important in stories, and especially when we talk about mystery and thriller, because we need to have readers like, and we want them to be like, turn the page.

22:23Jennifer Hilt: What's going to happen next? What's going to happen next? And that ticking time bomb really drives that engine. So I think if you're working on a story, think about why is this story happening now? Like what's the reason why it's now and it's not set next week or it doesn't have, you know, it can't be solved in five years. like you know all this kind of stuff so it's it's kind of maybe one of those very foundational things that takes a little bit of thought and planning and revision to get to but I think it's

22:52Sara Rosett: super important and we don't talk about it a whole lot in that way I like your examples of the maid and the housemaid as something that is mystery and thriller like like separated but also how I would love to see like a Venn diagram of people that have either accidentally or on purpose purchased both because the readership probably overlaps you know I'm sure somebody's picked it up being like oh yeah this book and then it wasn't what they're expecting but they enjoyed it. In your book you talk about tropes as storytelling building blocks and we've touched on this like a little bit but I'm just curious if you can tell listeners a bit about how they could use tropes as building blocks to create like emotional connections to the reader.

23:32Sara Rosett: Yeah we talked about this a lot with like how tropes are basically relationships. So we both like the amnesia trope. Some people don't like that trope, but I think it's a fun trope. I've come to love it after at first I didn't like it, but I've come to love it. And it basically what it's about is how the person who has amnesia will navigate the world and the relationships that person has. Will they reestablish the relationships, you know, as they discover them. So it's all about discovering who they were before. or do they want to stay that person? So it's also, you know, has that sort of ugly duckling trope mixed in there with it where you have maybe a change.

24:13Sara Rosett: You know, are you going to go back to that life that you had before or not? So it's like you can take these different things and pull them together and create a more complex story, I think.

24:22Jennifer Hilt: Yeah, and there's the other thing because, yeah, Sarah and I can go on about the amnesia trope because we do love it is I think what's really neat about it is that there's a choice inherent into it. Like if you just have somebody who just assumed another life for whatever reason and they were never challenged with that with what happened before, that takes all the energy out of that trope. So that's why Severance is like I'm like such like total gaga bonza over like the first two seasons of that because it was such great storytelling with with how it was challenging those characters with dealing those elements and a really great a really great example of trope twisting, in my opinion.

25:00Jennifer Hilt: because a lot of times we see amnesia as like somebody gets bonked on the head. It doesn't happen. You know, it's not something that a character chooses. So we had characters in that storyline actively choosing amnesia, which was really, really clever in terms of like, oh, the whole power of memories. And so really understanding the core of that trope is like memory and identity. And yeah, huge fan of that storytelling to think about that. But yeah, like Sarah said, it's just really all about like the before and after and how those things intersect.

25:35Sara Rosett: I feel like I could talk to you about Severance for a very long time, but unfortunately that is not the theme of this podcast, but that show is phenomenal. But we've talked a lot about what tropes are and how writers can use them, and I'm wondering if we can take it into a little bit more of a practical sense of integrating tropes throughout the drafting and outlining process. Like you kind of already mentioned, you know, you don't want to pigeonhole yourself as a writer and be like, I am writing this exact trope and then losing the story because you've done that. But I'm wondering how, I mean, even using your own personal experience, how you integrate what tropes you're hoping to include throughout your outline and drafting process.

26:16Sara Rosett: And Sarah, we'll start with you. I'll shoot direction this time. Okay. All right. So a lot of times I'll think for mystery, a lot of the tropes are integral to the story. So one of my favorite mystery tropes is the disappearing body because you have something happen, somebody dies, the body's discovered, then the police or the police come back and the body's not there. So I feel like you get two mysteries in one with that because you get the where is the body and then whodunit. So I like that. And there have been books I've started out and I'm like, okay, I'm going to write a disappearing body.

26:50Sara Rosett: And so that's how I started. Another couple of times I've done a locked room mystery and I know that that's what it's going to be. And so I sometimes I start with the trope, but then other times I'll be writing and I think, you know, what would make this book great is hidden identity. You know, and I'll throw that in there. And sometimes my characters, they don't do this a lot because I tend to be pretty set and I know where the story is going. But sometimes I'll have a character and I'll think, oh, wait, this person is not an FBI agent. And they're, you know, whatever, or they're not the, you know, like they're not the, I don't know, the repairman.

27:27Sara Rosett: They're actually an FBI agent undercover. So it's like, and that'll come to me in the middle of the book. And then I'm like, oh, okay, that makes it so much better. So I feel like you kind of have to, like, I like to start with a plan, but then you can work them in as you go along. So that's kind of how I do it.

27:42Jennifer Hilt: We haven't really got a chance to talk about it yet, but the goal motivation and conflict are super important for, instead of just trying to like use a trope in the abstract I find like those to tying those the tropes go like kind of think of as a triangle of tropes go to motivation and conflict and genre expectations and like kind of how they all reinforce each other but what goal motivation and conflict is is there's actually there's books written on it but I find it's really helpful to think about this and it's really like your character needs some kind of goal that's concrete and I don't mean like it need like so for our examples it would be like to solve the crime or to save the world or something like that.

28:21Jennifer Hilt: Those are two really great goals for mystery or thriller. And then the conflict has to really be in opposition to that goal. So the reason why they can't do it, save they can't solve the mystery is they're in jail. So that's, that would be like a really nice kind of locked room thing. And so, and really the bigger that you can make the gap between the goal and the conflict, the more story juice you're going to have. And so kind of really thinking about like, what am I, what does my character want to do? and then what are going to be all the things that make it really hard to do that. And in that gap, you find motivation, which has taken me a really long time to appreciate how important that is to the emotions of the stories and like really how we identify with them.

29:02Jennifer Hilt: So I like totally think it's important. You obviously would need to know this for your protagonists, but it's also super important for your antagonists because then you get like these more full fleshed out characters. and then it's also really great to know like for your side characters if you're doing a mystery and even in thrillers like the victims or the the other characters that we see parts of them but like knowing who who they are so just having those like notes and working on those things is really great for having the characters have more conflict and and really more story juice and then you can kind of see how they they start to overlap like sarah said like yeah your your undercover person is also this and oh it happens to have a love interest of that and I think a story that does a good job with that is justified um if you totally recommend um that for like how they show the multi-nuanced characters and like it's supposed to be a simple goal of like this one guy is supposed to catch this other guy and yet five seasons of fantastic storytelling is all that gets twisting back and forth so anything by Elmore Leonard who was the guy who wrote the what that's based on but as if you just like want to like sit and watch a really great series I would recommend that.

30:13Sara Rosett: Kind of ties well into my next question actually because we're kind of wondering about how if you're writing a series as is so common in indie publishing how can you like keep it fresh without like losing you know the cozy or the thriller elements that really brought a reader in like say if you're on book five or book ten do you have any advice on this? You want to go first, Sarah? Yeah, I would say the long-running plot threads, that if you can pull something through from book one to book seven, especially romance readers love the romantic subplot, or if you're in mystery, they love the romantic subplot.

30:51Sara Rosett: Or you can even have a dual mystery going on. You could have your main mystery, and then you could have, think about how many TV shows, like the main character, there's some mystery with the mom or the dad or the husband, And like they're trying to figure that like you'll get just a little drip of that at the end of each book or episode. And then it just for series, you know, like the season and it keeps you hanging on because you're curious about how that big overarching plot is going to go. And that could be anything. You know, that could be, you know, like a heist. Maybe there was a heist and somebody was involved in a heist and the money's disappeared.

31:28Sara Rosett: Where is it? And you get a little drip of information each time the book goes along. So I think having those long plot threads is helpful. And especially romance. People love the character interplay with a long series. They like to see the characters grow and change.

31:43Jennifer Hilt: Yeah, I learned that one from working with Sarah because she was talking about like her character. She gets all these letters from people that like want to know when her characters are getting together. And she's like, oh, look, this is only book three, you know.

31:54Sara Rosett: And it's 1923. So you got to take it slow. Yeah.

32:00Jennifer Hilt: So I think that's a really great example of that. Yes, I think there's a couple different things. I totally recommend the TV series and book series Longmire as a really great example of how you would do a longer series in terms of there were lots of different story questions throughout the series. So there's kind of like the mystery of the book or episodes. There's like some larger character mysteries of like backstory of what happened to this. there was a big mystery of what happened with this, this sheriff's wife who passed away. And there was this ongoing tension with him and his young deputy.

32:37And so those things really,

32:40Jennifer Hilt: I forgot how many books they, I mean, it was like a seven arc TV series, but I think he's actually still writing the books, but it was like, you're trying to layer those things on. So you're answering some questions, but then like raising larger questions. And I've noticed that identity, questions of identity are usually the ones that people like through a whole big series arc. And a really old example, but good example, was Kinsey Milhoun's ABC Mysteries. A is for alibi, B, and she went up all the way to the end. And Kinsey was an orphan. But of course, halfway through, you realize, well, she wasn't really an orphan, you know.

33:16Jennifer Hilt: And so, but that was this kind of like dripped, like Sarah said, and through each of the little books, each of the books has smaller elements to pull through with the other threads. So I think you definitely want to see for like what kind of relationships you have with your characters, romantic relationship subplots, because I mean, I know for myself with Longmire, I was like at the end of that, I'm totally watching to see if he's getting together with the deputy. I mean, I'm like less enthralled about the other stuff. I'm like, what's going to happen with that? You know, so I think having those different part, you know, elements of the stories are really are really important.

33:48Jennifer Hilt: So think of like romantic relationships and character identity, like what kind of questions if you're having a series. those are really big.

33:57Sara Rosett: Yeah, and I just thought of another example of this is the Mentalist TV show. It's an older TV show, and you had Patrick Jane, you know, he was solving cases every week, but then he would get a little information about what had happened to him and his family, but it was also tied up in Revenge and Justice for him. So you've got that theme playing out, that trope, and it's like his character arc as well. So it's really good if you can tie all of that together if you know you can make it make sense in the series that's a real draw I know we don't usually like point out things that do it badly but it's been some weeks and I'm still a little bit mad at this movie but like the Practical Magic 2 sequel where it was fun but I think it's kind of just Sarah it reminded me that it's doing the opposite of everything that you just said it just forgot any character development and it started the movie again at zero and as a viewer it wasn't satisfying because you want to be able to see the progression and sorry if I'm now making people mad but I can't stop thinking about it.

35:00Jennifer Hilt: I had the same thing with the Devil Wears Prada 2. I was like I thought the first movie was great and I loved it and I was watching on a plane so it's like you know you always have a little but I was like I felt like they just kind of showed me the first movie but not as good.

35:16like how'd you take the funny parts out yeah it's so funny we want to see that character growth and

35:22Sara Rosett: if a series or a movie or a book series doesn't acknowledge what has happened before it really does annoy me because there were scenes I don't know if you remember Bones tv show in about halfway into it like the I can't remember how many seasons it had but they were like they I didn't know if they brought in new writers but I was like don't you remember she had a call This whole thing about, you know, all these things. And I was like, all that just poof, disappeared. And I was like, okay, I feel like they've dropped the important stuff, you know? So I totally understand that, being frustrated with that.

35:56Sara Rosett: And I'm just going to counter with a good example, which is the first season of Veronica Mars, which I think does an overarching mystery for the whole season of what happened to Veronica's best friend, who was found dead. So you have the whole season of that, and then you have mysteries of the week. So I just want to counter the Practical Magic 2 negativity with a good example. But it also kind of leads into my next question, which, how did you come up with all of the examples? Because for every trope in the book, you not only break down an example pointing out all of the tropes that are within the example that you were talking about, but you also list another, like, five to six sources for readers to look at for examples of the tropes.

36:39Sara Rosett: so I guess my question is two parts which is how did you narrow down the list and how many books and shows have y 'all watched because I'm impressed

36:49Jennifer Hilt: far too many probably I was gonna say uh I think Sarah and I are pretty nerdy about this so a lot of times we'd be like okay we can't have that many for that like we gotta like I think we tried to do like maybe no more than five for each yeah so some of them we went overboard yeah you kind of go down this jam of like you just like want people like oh you got to check this out you gotta look at that we tried to balance it between stuff that was accessible that people could find um it really helps to do things on even though we're writers um it really helps to have things available on visual media because people are so busy and like being able to watch something while you're doing something else i just in the beginning when i would just try to just talk about books i would get all these like glazed eyes so it's like okay so i gotta so it's okay to talk about movies which I like to do anyway so I was like okay I'm just going with that so we had a lot of we had a like a lot of fun like mixing like trying to just kind of balance our list and um Sarah knows a lot of stuff about like all the Korean shows so that was pretty cool too um but mostly it was we just tried to do things that would in a way I think we were happy with and feel like they were constructive to other people I don't know yeah yeah and we tried to have

38:02Sara Rosett: just different examples. And so when we traded our list, a lot of times we would add to the other list, you know, and I think just over time, as we were writing the book, like we came up with a list and I would just jotted down ideas that I had that would match up for each trope. But then, you know, you're a month later and I'd be like, oh, and I could run right this, you know, like you just think of one when you're watching a show or you see, you know, something pops up in a recommendation. So, yeah. And I have to say, going back to the satisfying endings and things. I have to say that's one reason I really enjoy the Asian dramas is most of the time they're limited series.

38:38Sara Rosett: So you get the beginning, middle and end. And I think those are really good for writers to check out, even if you're not interested in, you know, reading subtitles, maybe try one or two just to see, because I think in Western television, the thing is always to keep you going and keep you on the hook for, you know, eight to 10 series seasons. But with a limited series, you have the ending and you get to see the resolution. You get to see the redemption arc. And, you know, that's just so satisfying to me as a viewer. I love a limited series. Yeah. Like I probably won't hit play on your two hour movie, but your four hour limited series.

39:19Sara Rosett: I've got so much time for that. 12 or 16. Sign me up.

39:24Jennifer Hilt: Oh, one thing I should mention that we didn't mention earlier, but can be helpful for newer writers or things, is that we don't generally view that there's like, you don't have to learn like one set of tropes for these different genres. There are some tropes that are going to be used more in mystery thriller, like we talked about with like Hidden Identity and like something like The Khan, which is telling lies, and like MacGuffin, which is like an object that everybody's looking for. but for by and large a lot of the tropes that are used in other genres are still used in mystery because you're still talking about people in relationships so i just want people um you know that's how we view it and we put all our reasons why but i think it's just important because like as you're watching things then you can see like oh hey they you know you can use like sarah and are saying you could use the amnesia trope you could use it in a mystery you could use it in a thriller you can use it a romance you could use it in historical you can do a lot of different of stuff with it.

40:17Jennifer Hilt: And so just kind of, those are just like storytelling tools that you can use. And you're not like, oh, if I've written this kind of story or I'm doing this, I can't move to a different thing. No, it's just kind of like paints. And in some ways I think of them as paints, colors that you use and that you can mix and blend. So I just want people to feel like they can explore and shape these things and not be like intimidated to like, oh, I can't, I only know this, so I can't try that.

40:44Sara Rosett: I want to talk a little bit about tropes and marketing, because as I'm sure you are very aware, indie marketing especially has really started to embrace tropes within marketing copy. And you'll see it on BookTok all the time. So how can authors use the specific language and tropes that you identify in your book to improve their ad copy, newsletter hooks, blurb, without necessarily just listing like tropes in this book include? Well, I'll start because I feel like I'm very basic in this. I'm not very good at it. And Jennifer can take the advanced level. I feel like first, you just need to be aware of the tropes that are in your book.

41:24Sara Rosett: And to go beyond just the basic, it's a locked room or it's whatever, because there are lots of tropes that will pull people in and you may not be aware of it. So like having a friend read it or, you know, asking your readers, looking at your reviews and seeing what people are talking about are ways to find those things that maybe are more subtle to you. Or like we're so close to it, it's hard to distinguish like that. I was earlier, I was talking about the ticking time bomb. Like I didn't realize, you know, I've got this ticking clock in here, you know. And you can use that in your blurb to say, will they find this by this time or whatever, to kind of heighten the tension so that people know that it's not a relaxed mystery.

42:07Sara Rosett: If it's intense, you want them to know it's intense. So I would say be aware of what you have, and that may take some searching out to figure out the deeper, more subtle tropes.

42:17Jennifer Hilt: I think it's really important to know when you are ready to market what your comps are, What other books are similar to yours? They don't have to be just like yours, but if they maybe have like a similar voice or there's a similar journey for the character and see, you know, kind of what tropes those are using and how those are doing. So, you know, if revenge is a great trope, right, but if your story is not strongly a revenge story, it's just maybe a subplot or it's like, you know, just a minor element of it, I wouldn't like push it as a revenge story. So like Sarah was saying, it's really knowing not just what they are, but like how it really functions in your story.

42:56Jennifer Hilt: Just because you have it in there doesn't mean it's like a driving engine because tropes can be used for, you know, different things. The main plot, subplots, like those kind of things. So I would really know like what's the focus of what you're doing. And then I would look at like what your genre is. So like, you know, romance, it seems like we can never have enough of enemies to lovers. But if you aren't writing an Emmys to lovers story, don't put that in there. or don't try to market it as that. Lovers to Enemies is huge in domestic thrillers, right? And that's kind of what we see with The Housemaid and those kind of stories.

43:29Jennifer Hilt: Those are really popular. Now, if you have that in your story, then you have a way that really works to do that. It's mostly just, I think, trying to get the emotion across of what that journey is. And then also, for myself, I'll think, well, why do I pick up this book versus that book? or what intrigues me about it. And so then it's just like, what's your world building like? Because we haven't really had a chance to talk about that a lot. But that's also super important for where your readers want to hang out. Something like The Housemaid, there's a lot of, I think, did you call it wish fulfillment, Sarah?

44:02Jennifer Hilt: Or something where characters want, you want to be someplace, like a life that's nicer than yours.

44:09Sara Rosett: Yeah, that's very common in Cozy Mysteries. People want to read about a beautiful seaside town or a small town that everyone's friendly and nice except for the murderer and the suspects and stuff. But in Mystery 2, the setting can be a huge draw. Readers like that isolated manor that people are invited to for dinner and there's a murder and you have to solve the crime. And you get all those things. And even just mentioning something like that in your copy can pull people in and they're like, oh, tell me more. Yeah.

44:43Jennifer Hilt: And I love like this, the dark, like depressing stuff. It's like, if you're an alcoholic Scandinavian detective, I am like so into you, you know, so like, so like, I'm always like, ooh, Iceland in February. Okay. You know, right.

44:59Sara Rosett: With a damaged person, sign me up.

45:02Jennifer Hilt: Exactly, exactly. Nobody's speaking to them. They're, you know, like this close to being fired, you know, all this stuff's happening. And like, those are kind of like, so being able to communicate that kind of atmosphere with your tropes is like, also super important. So I think it's like knowing the market, knowing yourself, and then thinking like, where do I, where do I find this little kind of gap? You know, where can I, I can, and there's a great New Zealand author, Stephanie Holmes. and the reason why you guys have you guys I don't know if she's been on your show before and but what I like what Steph did is she basically created her own little she does why choose romance with cozy mysteries and nobody had really been doing that before her and so she her in and so it's like there are new twists and things you can do and it was just what she wanted personally to read so she's like I'm gonna write this so so there's really kind of a lot of opportunities out there when you trust yourself and your storytelling even though sometimes it can feel like oh there's you know just so many books coming out all the time you know but but trust in yourself and like what your vision is and how you can share that with your readers

46:10Sara Rosett: with that in mind and knowing that you have been deeply entrenched in all of the tropes related to mystery and thriller is when you're compiling this together was there any that jumped out where you're like man like this is just prime for like a new modern take on this trope like what's the the one that you just think or maybe you don't want to say it because you want to write it but like what's something that you think could do with being retold?

46:37Jennifer Hilt: I have one but it's like Mail Order Bride. Nobody wants to do that anymore and I think it could be so fun if you know done in a different way like you probably do it pretty easily in like a sci-fi thriller but it's like we don't like Mail Order Bride used to be like a whole big thing and you know in westerns.

46:56Sara Rosett: I have one that I think has started taking off. And it's one that I love. It's, I call it the band of misfits. You have more of a ensemble cast because in the past mysteries usually had a sleuth or a sleuth and a sidekick. And now you've got, um, like, uh, Richard Osman's books about the retirement home where you have four to five characters that, you know, you get rotating points of view. So I feel like that one is on the rise right now. And also, I don't know, you'd call this a trope. It's more like a situation, like this retirement setting is huge. There's so many sleuths now and so many mysteries that take place in retirement homes.

47:34Sara Rosett: I've seen several that are very cleverly done with people who have amnesia or dementia, like they're older. It's like a variation on amnesia where it's like they kind of know something, but they don't know what they know and they're trying to figure out or they saw something, but they can't really remember. It's an interesting take. It may be a twist on amnesia that we haven't seen or maybe seen more of.

47:54Jennifer Hilt: Yeah, yeah. I think the imperfect sleuths are like we see with the slow horses and then there's this Assassins Anonymous is a thriller series of basically like professional assassins who are trying not to kill. But I feel like, you know, after years of like these James Bond, these very kind of solitary professional kind of characters. And then we're like having seeing these whole other side of the crime element and like killing Eve, you know, which is great with like, you know, two female characters. And then, yeah, I think just seeing like the flip side, maybe humanity, that would even go back to like the Sopranos where that was like so groundbreaking of, you know, having all these like, oh my gosh, a mob guy who's got mental health issues.

48:37Jennifer Hilt: That's awesome.

48:38Sara Rosett: You know, another one, sort of the crossing and mixing of genres, I think it's happening more and more, the blending of it. And I just read a book called If Books Could Kill. And it's one of those where a woman is, she likes romance, and she makes this wish that she could live in a book. And then all these things start happening to her, and it's like she kind of falls into the book. It's kind of got this magical realism element to it. But it's not a romance. It's a thriller. And so she meets up with a guy who, he wants to write thrillers. And so he knows all the tropes. And this is actually perfect.

49:14Sara Rosett: I didn't think about this before we got on the call, but he knows all the thriller tropes. And they'll be going along and she'll be saying, what should happen next? And he's like, well, I think we should have some rising action now. And so it's really funny because it's got the romance tropes and her expectations and the thriller tropes, too. So that was really fun. So I think like that kind of falling into the story is another thing that I'm seeing more of, especially in movies and TV shows. But maybe we'll have more of it in books, too.

49:40Jennifer Hilt: Yeah, I think unreliable narrator never gets old. because it's like we instinctively trust that person and who's telling the story. And there's so many great things they can do, you know, to take us and doing it well. So like not so you feel like jerked around, but that you're just like, oh, and you look back, you're like, oh, you see all the different kind of, if I had slightly altered my point of view, I would have caught all the little things that were askew. So that's, I don't think that can ever get old. And there's so many different ways for people to tell stories like with that.

50:11Sara Rosett: like yesteryear being kind of like the book of this year and um yeah i mean i'm a sucker for an unreliable narrator i hate it but i love it yeah those are the hardest to promote though because that's a trope that you can't really talk about too much or else you're giving it all away so yeah some of the tropes are harder to promote than others i think right yeah if you have a big

50:32Jennifer Hilt: twist like we'd talk like sarah but you can't so you have to like lean into other parts you know the elements of the story.

50:39Sara Rosett: I genuinely think we could sit and talk story and tropes with you two for hours. And I honestly, I think people would listen, but we will let you go. So, but before we do, what are you both working on next? What's next for you both?

50:53Jennifer Hilt: Jennifer, we'll start with you this time. I'm working on a thriller and I don't know how this is going to turn out. So I'll just tell you guys, cause it's been kind of fun about probably 12 or 14 years ago, a while ago, I wrote a woman's fiction story. And I think it's a good story and a solid story, but I'm not in that place emotionally. But as I reread it, I thought, there's still things I like about it. So I thought, what if I took this story and I stabbed it with a thousand knives? So that's what I'm doing now.

51:21Sara Rosett: I'll make it even better.

51:23Jennifer Hilt: Yeah. Everything she thought that was going to go great and turn her life around over is, stab me, stab me, stab me. So we'll see what it turns out. but that's my current project.

51:35Sara Rosett: So let's see, I'm working on a new book in my 1920s series that's set in Egypt, and that will come out in 2027. So I've just sent that off to the copy editor, and then I've also done this thing where I do letters, a limited series of letters, physical letters that are mailed to readers. So it's a story told. This one is in eight installments, and it will be mailed once a week for eight weeks. And so I just started promoting that now, and it'll go out in December for delivery in January. So that's what I'm working on. And I really, I like that because I can combine the story with some visual elements.

52:13Sara Rosett: And it has, you know, images that, you know, that's harder to do in the physical books and in eBooks. So I enjoy that part. That's super fun. And where can people find you online if they're interested in learning more about these letters or your books in general? I'm at sarahrosette.com.

52:30Jennifer Hilt: Same thing. JenniferHilt.com.

52:32Sara Rosett: Perfect. Well, thanks so much. You both, I mean, as Rachel said, we could keep talking to you, but unfortunately we have to hit end, but thank you. This has been wonderful.

52:40Jennifer Hilt: Thanks for having us. It's really fun for us. Yeah, it's been great to see y 'all again.

52:43Sara Rosett: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for listening to the Kobo Writing Life podcast. If you're interested in picking up the Trope Thesaurus, we will include links in our show notes to this book and their other books. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. And if you're looking for even more tips on growing your self-publishing business, you can find us on socials. We are at Kobo Writing Life on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok. This episode was hosted by Tara Kremen and Rachel Wharton. Editing is provided by Kelly Robotham, and our theme music is composed by Tearjerker.

53:20Sara Rosett: And a huge thanks to Sarah and Jennifer for being our guests today. If you're ready to start your publishing journey, sign up today at Kobo.com writing life. Until next time, happy writing.