Theme

This will be the last of parts of story blog posts. Not because I have written everything there is say about them or that I have added some great new thing to the conversation but I just out of parts to write about. So I do not know what I will be writing about next week; so I'm back to be being a pantser. My last post is on Theme. Theme is something that I think every writer and reader should be aware of. Theme is more than just the basic idea of a story but is something that aids the plot. Theme is mostly seen in poetry. It is something I use when I am writing my poetry because it is a good way to help your poem get where you want it to go.

Now my poetry is mostly dealing with my grief but my stories are more about isolation. About the hero/heroine being forced out of their natural society into a larger world with a mission to do. Theme is a great way to get started when you are writing a new story. I did not notice that about my writing until I started talking about with a fellow writer. My friend is a writer and she is an editor, so we were talking about what we were working on at the moment. So I was talking about a new story and she looked at me and said; 'You know everything you write about is really about being alone and finding yourself...'. She just trailed off from that. That got me to thinking. She is right, everything I write about in my fiction is about being alone and learning to overcome that.

So if you want to get a good idea about theme and how it works watch an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Now I know he gets a lot of flak about his twists and the very sad Avatar movie but I'm not kidding. For example Lady in the Water is about hope, Signs is about faith, every one of his films is about some basic theme. Now I am not saying take writing cues from him but he does tell a great story. If you want your story to have some emotional pull having a theme is a good way to do it.  You should think about your theme if you are smarter than me. Books that have a theme that I have read recently- Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (hope), The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce(self-acceptance), pretty much all the classics have themes and maybe that is what makes them classic. Thanks for reading and I will write you next week.