THEMEThe Core of Story

With thanks to Eleanor Brown, NYT bestselling author of The Weird Sisters and (soon to be released Lights of Paris)

There’s What Your Story is About—

A hard-boiled crime detective chasing a notorious serial killer who has kidnapped his ex-wife.

And then there’s what your story is about. Power and corruption. Coming of age as a child. Coming of age as an adult. Death. Aging. How creating a family history affects future generations. Marriage. Divorce. The possibility of a second chance at love.

What your story is about is its theme. Its universal message about life. The central ideas of your story and the lessons the characters – and readers – can take from it.

Fiction, Memoir: Moves toward universal experienceKeeps things ordered, reduces TMI

A Few Definitions

Robert McKee says that theme is used to tell the emotional lesson of a story.

John Truby says that theme is “The writer’s view of the proper way to act in the world.”

Larry Brooks says “theme is what our story means. How it relates to reality and life in general. What is says about life and the infinite roster of issues, facets, challenges and experiences it presents.”

Robert McKee STORY

“Theme has become a rather vague term in the writer’s vocabulary. … I prefer the phrase Controlling Idea, for like theme, it names a story’s root or central idea, but it also implies function.”

The Controlling Idea shapes your strategic choices. It determines… what is appropriate or inappropriate in your story, what may be kept versus what is irrelevant to it and must be cut.

In other words, your theme is the lighthouse in your story’s sea. If you can identify your theme upfront, you’ll be able to keep your entire story on track. If any aspect of character or plot fails to contribute to this controlling idea of theme, then you know it’s probably extraneous

Theme is not the subject

…but the message you want to convey about that subject

Jonathan Franzen: one of the central themes of Freedom is how people change as they straddle the world between their childhood and grownup lives. “Adults relinquish a certain kind of freedom.”

WRITING WORTHY

A Big Difference• writing to thesis • writing to theme

THESIS=deductive “If X then Y”

THEME=inductive “What do X and Y mean? So what?”

Finding a Theme

•Write to discover theme (journaling, freewriting)• Establish themes and write• Focus on character (Stephen

King) and let themes evolve organically

From Eleanor Brown:

In English classes, we were often asked to sum theme up in one word. Death. Life. Happiness. That’s often how we start, but I almost always use a number of words or a full sentence for it. “having the courage to live the life you want.” “The way our families affect the people we become.” “The secrets and compromises that define a marriage.”

Tinker with ideas

Start by just taking a few minutes for you to list possible themes or a project you are working on (or may work on!). Stories are often about more than one thing, so don’t limit yourself.

Picking a word, emotion, or value is a good place to start. “Love,” for instance. Even better that one word is complicating it, i.e.: “The limits of love.” You can even frame it as a question: “Are there limits to love? Should there be?

Relationship between Theme, Character and Plot

“A quick definition of plot” by Steve Almond: “The mechanism by which your protagonist is forced up against her deepest fears and/or desires.”

Another way to think about it….

The Thing Your Character Wants = PlotThe Thing Your Character Needs = Theme

The Thing Your Character Wants vs. the Thing Your Character Needs = Character Arc

Put these two Things together by forcing your character to grow to the point of being willing to sacrifice his Want in order to gain his Need–and suddenly you’ve got a character arc. All three–plot, theme, and character arc–are integral to one another. Your character arc will always drive your plot, and your theme will always be found at the heart of the arc. Figure out the fundamental questions your character will be asking in his journey through the plot, and you will have found the theme your story must tell.

Worthy

Character WANTS mother’s approval (and barring that, attention and esteem from others)

How she goes about it: Advanced degrees, commercial pilot license, publications

What she NEEDS: To be “released of conditions”

Whether You are a Writer or Reader…What are your own life themes?

How do your wants and needs conflict?

What do you learn from the tension?