Remember those horrible classes where the teacher trained you to reluctantly read a story you didn’t want to read, then write down what the theme of it was? And you’d be corrected on it time and again.
Believe it or not, the class is designed to make you a novelist.
Every story concerns theme. It can boil down to good verses evil, man vs. machine, totalitarianism, come-uppance, win the prize, cruelty of man, group vs. individual, etc.
If you’re following the articles on this blog, and are training yourself to see ideas wherever they can be found – I just gave you seven ideas for novels or screenplays.
You can actually pitch some of these three ways, and have ideas for 21 movies or novels.
The importance of theme is this – theme operates within genre. Theme will work best when your protagonist argues for it or against it. If against it, he will struggle with it and either overcome, or will be changed by it forever.
If for it, he must vindicate it.
There you go – take the seven themes I listed above (not the only seven by a long shot) and use the three outcomes above – you’ve got 21 novels or movies.
The important part of it is knowing that in some way, every last scene in your book will reinforce the theme, or it should not be there. It’s nice that your protagonist gets an ice cream sundae, but unless the theme is greed or gluttony, it really is pointless unless they are using the ice cream lunch as an occasion to plot the overthrow of the world.
“A Christmas Carol” by Dickens exemplifies this. Scrooge is forced to watch all of the things he has closed his eyes to – not just misery and suffering aided by his refusal to give to the needy, but also the present Christmas, where he sees the joy he has missed out on by shutting his heart to the love of everything but money. And the saddest of all was the love of his life who left him, and jokes with her husband about him in a sad but vengeful manner.
The Christmas present seems inexplicable until you realize Scrooge is being shown what his nephew’s family has – all the things he’s mocked and belittled, and yet Scrooge discovers he yearns for this.
Conclusion
Theme is a powerful tool within genre. Every writer should spend 30 days studying theme, and learn the lesson our teachers failed to impart to us, the importance of theme within fiction.
