History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

WriteHive Panel: How to Subvert Tropes

| October 16, 2023

One of the WriteHive online conference panels I watched was How to Subvert Tropes. This panel talked about what tropes are, when they become cliches, and how to then twist those tropes to make them fresh again. The panel started out by talking about how tropes are the building blocks of stories that establish trust […]

Writing Monsters While Avoiding Ableism

| March 8, 2021

There are a lot of tropes associated with monsters, and a huge number of these tropes are racist and ableist caricatures used as shorthand to suggest that non-white people and people with disabilities are inherently inferior, if not downright evil. This article from Mythcreants, “Ridding Your Monsters of Ableism,” gives examples of how monster tropes […]