I went shopping recently. At this time of year, gift shopping isn’t unusual; however, I was shopping for a birthday present. My son’s fiancee has a December birthday, so we wanted to ensure she was able to celebrate both her birthday and Christmas separately. It’s important not to lump a person’s birthday into holiday festivities.

In genre fiction, doing something a little differently refreshes the theme. In real life, that might be shopping for a birthday present during the Christmas season. In fiction, that might be something just as small and simple or it might be a dramatic twist on an tired trope.

As I’m an avid reader of romance and a writer a romance, I’m familiar with all the tropes. There are a few I’ve grown to detest if only because they occur so often without those distinguishing touches that refresh them. Of all those tropes, one in particular comes to mind: The heroine losing her job and her cheating boyfriend/fiance the same day

In this trope, the heroine loses her menial job due to circumstances beyond her control. This trope generally places an indigent protagonist in dire financial straits that force her to consider less-than-respectable options to acquire funds, so she can maintain her cramped apartment in the big city. The options tend to involve a wealthy man who becomes her one true love. Of course.

The cheating boyfriend/fiance scenario often entails the heroine being both financially distressed and living with said man, thus booting her out into the streets without resources. Or she’s on the chubby side, and the boyfriend/fiance expects her to overlook his transgressions because she should be grateful for his attention whenever he deigns to give it to her. Of course, the fabulously wealthy patron … er … employer who rescues her from destitution, crushing disappointment, and low self-esteem believes she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

It all ends with the de rigeur “happily ever after,” which satisfies the genre’s requirement but don’t relieve the reader’s boredom with a worn out and hackneyed trope.

Truly, there probably isn’t anything truly new under the sun when it comes to literature, especially when it comes to this version of the eternal Cinderella story. The latest estimates I’ve seen say that anything from two million to four million books are published each year now. That’s an incredible, unfathomable number spanning both traditionally published and self-published books spread across all genres and encompassing both fiction and nonfiction.

That’s a whole lot of competition.

A hackeneyed trope is like a bald tire: it has no traction.

As far as the “lost job/lost boyfriend” trope itself is concerned, it’s common enough to be plausible in today’s world, especially among the Millennial and Gen Z populations, those younger adults for whom romance is primarily written. What’s odd is that it’s commonly written by older adults, adults who generally had a lot more life experience than many twenty-somethings. With life experience comes a certain degree of maturity and hard-won wisdom because life experience arises from poor judgment. The school of hard knocks delivers those lessons.

Older writers bring the wisdom of hindsight to their stories, even to tired old tropes. For authors writing to that trope, I urge them to use that wisdom of life experience to do something different—something new—to revitalize that trope.

The concern that one’s story has been told before is valid: an author does not want to retell someone else’s story. However tired and old the plot, the writer can revive it with his or her own unique treatment. That originality is what you should aim for: take something old and make it your own.

Or hire a ghostwriter who can do that for you. I’d be happy to write your story for you.

Every word counts.