asforetold:

Favourite narrative tropes:

• “That was ONE time!”
  
• “Due to an administrative error”, or any major plot point which is caused almost entirely by bureaucratic fuckups
  
• “Contrary to popular belief” appended to something that’s either really obvious or completely subjective
• A character makes an assertion, then cut to the narrator contradicting it (‘“Everything’s fine!” Everything was not fine.’)
• First-person narrators who call a specific character by a series of increasingly convoluted nicknames
• Unusual narrative euphemisms. I still hold that describing around a curse word is almost always funnier than just using the word.
• Establishing character moments which subvert your expectations right from the get-go. The best example is in the Brooklyn Nine Nine pilot, where Jake’s fooling around at the crime scene before revealing that he’s already solved the case.
• Montages. Just montages of any kind, for any reason, anytime. I actually think they work better in text form because you can do so many creative things with them.
• Side characters with a level of fourth-wall awareness / quasi-supernatural ability which is never quite certain, like the janitor in Scrubs.
• Double meanings in narration that take a while to make themselves clear.
• Really, really specific similes.