Neil Gaiman's Coraline: Trope Stacking and Secondary Characters

In appreciation for the outrageous in fantasy

Before I start discussing the amazing Coraline, I’m part of a free Crime Thriller Author Summit this week so check it out! There’s a great line up of authors discussing marketing and craft targeted to the mystery and thriller genre. I’ll be discussing some of those tropes on Friday so join me.

Now onto my thoughts on Coraline, tropes and secondary characters!

This time of year is perfect to share my thoughts on one of my favorite stories, Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

One of the reasons I love Coraline is that I feel seen as a child. Even though I'm many decades beyond childhood, writers never really outgrow that vulnerable child within us. That resonance is what we, as storytellers, seek to engage with our readers.

One tool Gaiman uses to tell Coraline's story is tropes. As much as I enjoy the heroine's grit and sense of style, I cherish the secondary characters who show Coraline the horrors of adulthood. Like most observant children, Coraline knows there is more to how the world works, and being kept from accessing that power makes her restless.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, here is my trope synopsis for Coraline.

Coraline (2009)

Loner, tortured heroine, ugly duckling Coraline's parents (family, fish out of water, profession) don't have time to spend with her in their isolated new house (forced proximity, secrets). Coraline visits with her new neighbors, the opera singers, and the band leader (family, red herrings, road trips).

Bored and frustrated, Coraline finds a secret passageway to a parallel world (time travel) in her new house. In this new place (across the tracks, fairy tale), she meets Other Mother and Other Father who are fun, attentive, and indulgent (fake relationship, mistaken identity, red herrings, twins).

But there are warnings in Coraline's new home. She finds a doll who looks just like her (hidden identity, twin) which seems to change locations around her house. The hidden door she finds isn't always accessible by a skeleton key (MacGuffin). There's a black cat always skulking around, as well as a boy her age named Wybie. Plus, dancing mice! They all warn her to varying degrees about the Other Mother (secrets), but Coraline's hurt and pride keep her from listening.

She meets a version of Wybie in the Other Mother's (boss) world but he, like her Other Father, is a puppet. The Other Mother (stalker) tells Coraline all she needs to do to stay with them is to sew buttons in her eyes (victim, violence). Coraline refuses. She sees the cat in the other world (time travel). He speaks to her, telling her that the Other Mother loves to play games and hates to lose. The Other Mother is shown to be a witch (hidden identity) who can change her form.

Coraline finds three ghosts of the Other Mother's previous victims. They warn her that she will be trapped here like them if she sews the buttons in her eyes. Back in her real life, the Other Mother has kidnapped her parents. Coraline (woman in peril) challenges the Other Mother to a game (bet/wager). If she wins, her parents are free, and the ghost children go free. If she loses, she will sew the buttons on her eyes and stay (ticking time bomb).

Coraline must find three ghost eyes in each of the worlds that The Other Mother created—the garden, the opera singers Spink and Forcible apartment, and the band leader Bobinsky's place. She wins the contest with the cat's help and returns home to find her parents waiting (redemption, reunion).

Coraline's free-range childhood allows her to meet curious neighbors in her adventures. The most interesting secondary characters she meets are Spink, Forcible, Bobinsky, and the Cat. Not surprisingly, one reason that I love these characters is how the twin trope plays out with other tropes like profession and ugly duckling.

In the real world, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible are two elderly women who constantly reminisce about their time onstage. Their archetype plays into the trope of "past-their-prime stars," eccentric but somewhat endearing in their over-the-top nostalgia. When Coraline encounters their counterparts in the other world, the actresses are reimagined as younger, exaggerated versions of themselves, performing eternally for an audience of dogs. This transformation into grotesque versions of their former selves amplifies their trope into something more unsettling. Aging and youth are juxtaposed here, and the vain desire to reclaim the past turns eerie. This also plays with the twin trope, where characters have opposing versions of themselves in different realities, deepening the sense of disorientation and horror.

In Coraline's world, Mr. Bobinsky is the cheese-loving man who claims to run a mouse circus. He represents the "eccentric old neighbor" trope—the strange man with odd habits no one takes seriously. However, his obsession with his mice becomes more sinister in the other world. He commands a fully operational, seemingly magical mouse circus, hinting that his oddities may hold more truth than Coraline initially believed. Bobinsky's transformation into this grotesque circus master plays into the "mad genius" trope, turning a harmless oddball into a dangerous figure of control and manipulation, illustrating how adding a dark twist to a familiar character archetype can introduce a layer of complexity and unease.

By combining tropes such as "the eccentric old neighbor," "past-their-prime stars," and "twins," Coraline's side characters gain more depth and contribute to the overall atmosphere of unease. They reflect the more prominent theme of duality and transformation within the story, making even the supporting roles rich with subtext.

Practically speaking, we can try a similar method by making sure our characters (secondary and otherwise) have three tropes: one for their social set up, one for their profession and then another one for dimension.

In Coraline, the Actresses tropes are: best friends, former actresses and rivals. Mr. Bobinsky’s tropes are: loner, band leader, and friend to Coraline. There are more tropes than these that Gaiman uses such as the twin tropes in presenting a exaggerated forms of all the characters except the cat in the two worlds.

This is a shout to trope stacking as a way to create more complex characters. Side characters provide an opportunity to be more outrageous than the main characters and yet highlight the central storyline themes. Coraline's message includes the horrors of dabbling in the natural order of things in a quest for unreal perfection.