December 2024

Heads up! For 2025, I will be shifting to twice monthly posting. Hopefully this will mean I will be able to tag only one or two key ideas instead of half a dozen, making the posts easier to search for specific advice.

I’ve been told I should write my stories with a theme. How do I do that?

A story’s theme, basically, is the lesson about life, or the way the world works, that the character spends the story struggling with as they grow into the life they want/need in order to feel happy and whole, socially, emotionally, and physically.

But here’s the thing. For all that your English teachers (and yes, I know, I was one) talked about themes in the literature you read in school, a theme tends to develop organically from what the author is choosing to write about. It often doesn’t come first, but comes out, and is shaped most clearly, during revisions. It’s based in not what the main character wants, so much as why they want or need it. A theme is what they struggle to make sense of in the world. This struggle, of course, can be internal — something in themselves, or it can be external — something they struggle with about society or people.

Identify your theme

Your story will have one or ore natural theme — yes there can be more than one. To find them, look at your main character’s goals, their motivations for those goals, and the inner and outer conflicts they face while achieving those goals. Themes grow around topics – like Authenticity, but it’s formed as a question to which the character is seeking an answer, even if only subconsciously: What does my authentic self look like? or Can I be authentic if I’m hiding parts of myself from those I love?

Here is a huge list of theme topics. As you read them, consider which one(s) your character is questioning or struggling with, and form that into a question or statement about what they believe. That theme will guide you as you write their scenes.

Understanding a POV character’s theme(s) will help you write the internals and dialogues of scenes as the character wrestles with understanding themself or the circumstance in the moment and develop a piece of the answer to this overall story question.

Enhancing theme

Since I’ve explained that theme is already going to be there, the key to including theme is actually enhancing it. That means looking at your scenes and incorporating symbols, motifs, and mottos, that reveal the theme. Yep, those things that your English teacher said to look for when trying to find out a story’s theme.

A symbol is an object that represents the theme topic. If the character is struggling with what makes a family – it might be coveting a new friend’s heirloom *since this is a thing that the character believes is only passed from one family member to another. Then you have them get something from that friend and it is *treated* it like an heirloom. The idea being communicated is that the character feels this friend views them as family.

A motif is an intangible symbol, an idea that represents the theme to the character. So, instead of a physical thing, it might be an action, or a traditional behavior. For example, to give a character a sense of family, there might be receiving an invitation to Sunday dinner. They attach a great deal of pride to the invitation – take extra care in dressing, because they want to keep the idea of family intact by making sure they are not going to be turned away.

A motto is a saying or a statement about the theme topic that the character either consciously or unconsciously believes is inarguable truth. And remember that sometimes the character can be lying to themself and that belief is going to change.

~ Lara

PS – I’ll see you again in a couple weeks. If you have a question you’d like to see answered here, please ask.