WARNING! PLEASE READ ABOUT THIRD PARTY ADS: Authorlink encourages writers to thoroughly investigate third-party ads on this or any other site offering free and easy publishing help. We subscribe to the highest standards of the traditional publishing industry, and do not necessarily endorse any advertiser on our site. Also, Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site enabling display of ads based on user visits to our site and to others on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy. Authorlink guidelines, #7 includes more on our own policies
By Joan McCord Writing Lecturer, Teacher, Member DFW Writers Workshop
A theme is a dominant thought, a unifying vision, a moral. It is the central idea behind your story.
Kirk Polking, editor of Writing A to Z, defines theme as "the point a writer wishes to make. It poses a question, a human problem."
"A theme is a natural, unobtrusive part of a story. The writer starts with an idea; as the story develops, it is influenced by the writer's own philosophy or observation of the human condition. This is the theme, the quality that brings with it a sense of values and drama."
People sometimes confuse plot with theme. The plot is the series of events that proves or disproves the theme. Plot is a series of conflicts, literal happenings. Common conflicts are man against man, man against nature, and man against himself.
According to Laurie Henry's
Fiction Dictionary, "theme" is a broader term than "plot". "Theme illustrates whatever universal idea the story puts forward, while plot has to do, instead, with the literal events that occur in the characters' lives," says Henry.
A theme is often not profound. It is usually simple and appeals to our emotion and intellect. Examples of common themes are:
The old ways are best
The new ways are better
Determination wins the day
The champion never gives up
Faith will see you through
Father knows best
Crime does not pay
It pays to be frugal
The more you give the more you get
As the twig is bent, so the tree grows
An over-protective parent cripples the child
Technology will save us
Technology will rob us of our humanity
Put duty before pleasure
Indulge yourself, life is short
A small slight has huge repercussions
Man is helpless against nature, society, women, etc.
Man is the captain of his soul, the master of his fate
A fool can get away with anything
Honesty is the best policy
Winning is all that matters
Winning without honor is ruin
To state the theme of one's work in a single sentence or phrase serves as the author's mental preparation for answering the question: "What is your book about?" The theme statement keeps the author focused. It clarifies our scattered impressions of a rewarding story and solidifies the insights we have found in telling the story.
Theme communicates a kind of truth about the way human beings act, think, or feel in a way that word-for-word truth cannot.
A writer can, and should, identify the major and minor themes of his or her story. Formulating a theme statement is one way to make ourselves better aware of whatever we may have only vaguely understood.
1. Begin analyzing the theme of your work by considering the story in retrospect to see how story development leads to the conclusion. Write a statement of theme about the story. Does your statement hold true for the story as a whole, not just for part of it?
2. The theme usually concerns the main character and the changes he or she undergoes as a result of interactions with others. What has been learned, suffered or experienced is key to the theme.
3. Look for direct statements made by the main character, minor characters and characters who stand for ideas, or by an unnamed speaker (a commentary may guide us to an insight).
4. Note how plot, character, setting, point of view and symbolism support and create theme. Does the story contain especially curious objects, mysterious flat characters, song titles, significant animals, repeated names? Any of these may hint toward meanings larger than themselves.
5. Examine key positions for meaning. The beginning, the title, chapter titles, and particularly the ending should lead to a dominant meaning.
6. Do you, as the author, make any general observations about life or human nature?
If the common themes listed earlier seem trite to you, reconsider. Novelist and teacher, John Gardner, says that old, familiar beliefs cast in new contexts are satisfying stories.
