Tropes I love: The Bargain

So it's fun to rant about tropes I hate but I actually prefer to gush about tropes I love.

And one of them is what I call "the bargain": it's really a game of wits between a (usually lawful) villain and a hero (or protagonist/antagonist, take your pick).

A deal is made, which looks to be heavily slanted in favor of the bad guy, but somehow the good guy finds something in the phrasing, or in the details, or in the requirements, that gets them released from the binding terms of that deal.



It's a classic trope, earlier than Shakespeare ("pound of flesh, not a drop of blood") and I absolutely can't get enough of it!

This type of fight can't be won with brute strength for whatever reason: either the protagonist isn't strong enough to overpower the antagonist and break the contract that way, or it just can't be done (there's magic involved or the legal system is not amenable, whatever). That means the protagonist has to outsmart the antagonist at their own game (usually the antagonist is the one that wins in these 'contracts').



To add such a trope to your plot requires a bit of strategy. Not only must you think up a contract/deal/agreement that looks iron clad, but also what loophole there is that isn't immediately noticeable.

It might be already existing in the contract or it might be created by circumstance (chance or deliberate).



But as the author, you must know what it is, and how it will come about so the contract is dissolved or cancelled.

It's a little bit like setting up a mystery when you must hide the clues to the solution, only instead of solving a murder you …dissolve a malicious deal!

Usually after the deal is off thanks to the loophole, we are also treated to a really cathartic, entertaining bad guy meltdown of the "IMPOSSIBLE!" variety.



And that is just perfection.

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