So how could I justified seeking to put my messages in there? Theme was nice and cute, but it didn't matter much to me: all I cared for was the story.
Looking back (but not that far back, really), I know I was both right and wrong. The story is what matters, but it will always carry a theme.
Either I leave it there, dangling awkwardly, misunderstood and misused, or I learn to use it and blow even more life in my stories through it.
I woke up to them reading Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel, which had a few great suggestions to find out what mine were. At that point I could tell what my theme was, but my grasp of the concept of them was still shifty.
The following day, Larry Brooks posted about the elusive theme on Storyfix. I love his way of explaining theme:
Theme is how a story touches you. What and how it causes you to think about. How the story mirrors and/or comments upon real life. Theme says something worth saying, even when it’s obvious.I can roll with that definition of theme. Suddenly it doesn't seem like trying to force a message and preach. It's the universal impact the story has, and through what it can reach your readers. I might not be the best at incorporating it yet, but you can bet I'll be playing with theme in the coming writing.
Great post, Claudie. I still struggle over theme and making sure I'm not being too heavy-handed. Speaking of Donald Maass, he's teaching a 'story masters workshop' with another of my favorites, James Scott Bell, and Christopher Vogler in November. Now if I could just get Maass, Bell, and Brooks in the same room together! Nevermind, I might explode from squee overload. Messy.
ReplyDeleteI bet they'd have a lot of fun cleaning it up. :P I'm reading Bell at this very moment, and I love it. The exercices are handy to wrap your head around the concepts.
ReplyDeleteAs for theme, well, I look back at my work once I have a storyline and figure out what are my themes. It feels less heavy-handed if they emerged naturally and I then highlighted it than if I forced it in.
I always thought of theme as a recurring image or feeling within a book that in some ways distill the novel.
ReplyDeleteThe two novels I turn to for the single best execution of theme I have read in my life are The Scar by China Mieville and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Both establish clear themes, some more metaphorical and ephemeral than others but each one offers a recurring set of images and ideas repeated throuout the books.
I've never thought of themes as moralizing or a hidden message. They are a set of tools that can strengthen the overall work.
This is a really great post! When I originally began the WIP I'm writing, I had trouble with themes. I thought I knew what they were but I felt like I was shoehorning them in. (Shoehorning? I think I just made that up.) So I gave them up and decided to write the first draft then go back and worry about themes later.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened was several themes became obvious and unplanned while I was writing. These were important to the characters and the story even if I didn't realize how important they were to me. Looking at other work I've done, I think themes have to exist organically in order to work best. We can prod them a bit, but once you point at them, name them, and expect them to perform for you they start to feel plastic and forced. That's when you get the "preachy" feeling.
Che: If you're refering to recurring images or sentences in a novel that carry a meaning, I've always heard those called motifs. YA author Hannah Moskowitz had two fabulous posts on the difference between theme and motif, if you want to check it up.
ReplyDeleteSommer: Sounds a lot like my own experience. I prefer not to get too concerned with theme until after the story is rewritten. I can polish the scenes and dialogues to make it shine through once I revise.