It's Been Written Before

My new all-time favorite writing website isn't about writing at all. It's called TV Tropes, and it's about the "tropes" we see over and over in TV, movies, literature [there we are], and video games.

That's a long list.

I happen to be reading Stephen King's breakout novel, Carrie. I looked it up on TV Tropes and got a hell of a list. Here are the first 22 tropes in that movie. Notice that those 22 constitute only the first three letters of the alphabetical list.

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This movie contains examples of:

Abusive Parents: Margaret takes this to an extreme.

Acceptable Religious Targets: Christian fundamentalists.

• Although, to be fair, Stephen King does make it clear in his book that Margaret's behaviour is not typical of most Christians.
  

Adaptation Decay or Adaptation Distillation: The original film had to cut a lot of scenes from the book (namely Carrie's rampage through town and a flashback scene), mainly due to budgetary concerns. However, Stephen King finds the movie to be the best adaptation of his books, and has even said that he wished he had thought of some of the scenes in this film when he was writing the book.

Adaptation Displacement: Most people (this troper included) have only heard of the book as a result of this movie.

Adaptational Attractiveness: In the book, Carrie is portrayed as being rather pudgy and covered in acne. In the film, she is played by Sissy Spacek.

• To be fair, her crippling shyness does hinder her beauty by some.
  

All Of The Other Reindeer

Alliterative Name: Sue Snell.

Anvilicious: It's one thing to point out that bullying is bad (mmmkay?). It's something else entirely to turn nearly everyone (other than the protagonist) into either an overblown Jerk Ass or a complete whackjob to drive the point home. On the other hand, this is exactly how a troubled teenager might see the world, so it might just be a case of identification with the protagonist.

Asshole Victim: Let's face it, Billy and Chris kind of had it coming. For that matter, so did everyone at the prom (except Tommy, who was pissed off at his date's humiliation).

Ballroom Blitz

Beautiful All Along: Carrie at the prom, where everybody comments on how good she looks.

Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted hard. Carrie gets doused with pig blood in her prom dress.

Berserk Button: Carrie can't stand blood.

Beware The Nice Ones: Pretty much the moral of the whole story.

Billing Displacement: Home video releases of the film give John Travolta top billing, even though Billy was a fairly minor character.

Blessed With Suck: Carrie's powers cause her mother to think that she's an evil witch and try to kill her. In the original novel, Carrie winds up killing herself by overusing her powers.

Blood Splattered Wedding Dress: Prom dress, actually.

Censor Steam: The television edit put in a ton of CGI steam to hide all the nudity in the opening five minutes.

Coming Of Age Story: Albeit one that goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Confessional: Margaret White has one in her house, where she locks Carrie periodically. It is decorated with horrifically vengeful images of God and Jesus.

Cool Car: Billy, Chris' boyfriend, drives a 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle. Shame that Carrie blows it up.

• In the remake, Billy drives a Cool Truck. It suffers a similar fate — Carrie slams it against a tree. Roof first.
  

Crucified Hero Shot: Carrie's mother, in her final shot, impaled with steak knives in the style of the Christ on the Cross picture in the confessional.

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It's educational. It's fun. It eats up all your time, so you won't get anything else done tonight. Enjoy!