: Re: How can I convince my reader that I will not use a certain trope? Imagine a fantasy story in which there once was a very powerful evil divine being, but it was defeated long before the beginning

@Goswami879

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The audience takes its cue from you. If you build this up, they'll assume its for a plot twist reason. If you mention it in passing, they'll assume its background knowledge.

Imagine two different treatments of your very old, very dead, god.

In the first treatment, you're so keen to ensure the audience knows it's dead and how bad it would be if not, that you focus characters and some early narrative on it, to explain this. Naturally, the reader assumes this is for a key reason in the plot, so they're very likely to suspect the god isn't dead or will arise. You effectively create the problem for yourself.

But in the second treatment, its never allowed to be a big deal. It's mentioned a couple of times, but only in passing. A bit like this:

Joe paused, his newly forged steel gleaming, and gave a deep sigh. "Can you imagine how hard this would have been, if the old god hadn't shattered in the Xerxian rebellion? He'd've been in the heart of that forge, laughing at us, and we'd have got no work done for a decade. What a nutter he was"

Mavis nodded. "Y'know, I bumped into one of those pamphleteers on the way in this morning. Idiots never saw the pathologists report. I told him 'Dead god is dead', and he just sat on the kerb and cried. What a jerk." She looked down, expertly appraised the cooling steel, and glanced back to Joe, "Careful, its getting cold", and with a quick exclamation of annoyance, he loaded the steel back into the forge, "Thanks Mave, I owe you".

Here, the in passing description (imagine this as part of a longer scene) and their brutal scornful dismissal, combined with the abrupt switch in narrative/dialogue to get back to their work, all suggests that it may just be casual chatter and "world information", but not necessarily a hint what'll happen in the rest of the book - which is more the effect you're after.

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