The Three Strands of Storytelling
Welcome! This is the last week of our three-part series on storytelling. You can find the first part here. And the second part here.
This week we’re going to address what I believe to be the most important of them all: theme. Yes, you have to have a plot. And yes, characters are crucial to engaging with your readers and creating a story that they can relate to. But theme is the reason we write…or should be.
And yet, I think it’s the most misunderstood, overlooked, and poorly executed part of storytelling. If we want our stories to endure and to really speak to people, we have to master theme. So let’s look at what’s going on there.
What Is a Theme?
When I ask people what the theme of their work is, or I listen to authors talk about theme, I often hear things such as “my book is about friendship;” or “survival,” or “community.” Now, those might be true on one level, but friendship, survival and community are not themes.
Think of a theme as a thesis, but in fiction rather than non-fiction. So a theme is essentially the question you’ve set out to explore, or the point you’d like to put forward.
Here are some examples:
- No friendship can survive the consequences of betrayal
- In order to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape, every person becomes a killer
- Community is founded upon subsuming one’s differences beneath the umbrella of unity
Do I agree with every one of those? Do you? Not necessarily. That’s the point. A theme is something that an author is exploring. It stems from a question: can friendship survive the consequences of betrayal? The more personal the question, the better! We’ll get to that in a minute.
A theme is a writer’s way of influencing the world, of saying here’s what I’ve discovered and believe to be true. And here’s why. We just happen to use fiction as our medium. Now, there are lots of books out there that don’t address theme at all, or only very nominally. Especially in certain genres. And you know what? There’s a market for that. But those stories don’t last. They don’t impact people. They don’t change the world. If you’re just interested in the next dollar, you can write a book without a compelling theme. But if you’d like to say something that causes people to think about something in a different way, you need a theme.
But before you jump to the natural follow-up question: doesn’t that make my writing preachy? let’s talk about that. Because the answer is actually, no. It shouldn’t.
Is a Theme Preachy?
Like every other aspect of writing, there’s a way to do it well. And a way not to. So yes, a theme can come across as preachy, but only if it’s not handled well.
In order to present the theme well, even if it’s handled very subtly (which is generally more powerful), it’s important to do the following things:
- Write as if you haven’t yet found the answer that you believe is true. That means that, as a writer, you have to keep a humble mindset. Picture yourself in your earliest days with this question. Let’s say you’re asking the question: is every person obligated to defend his family? This question could take many different angles.
Are we talking about physically defending one’s biological family? Verbally standing up for a family member’s reputation? Lying under oath in court? Ahh! You see how this can suddenly look terribly different from what we might have initially assumed.
Now, you might have come to a strong opinion on this subject, but your readers may not have. And you want to explain what you believe in such a way that they can understand how you got there. But to do so, you have to write, through your characters, as if you were backing up to the beginning, exploring the issue all over, without a knowledge of what you would ultimately believe.
2. Explore the whole picture. In order to do what I described in number one, you have to give weight to multiple sides of the issue. The fastest way to come across as preachy is to lay down the answer you believe without opening your characters up to the alternative.
If you’re looking for examples of how to do this well, check out any book Jodi Picoult has ever written. She loves to explore super-charged issues. The sorts of things that can erupt into strong disagreements. And yet, most of her readers would probably agree that she handles the subjects with immense care. How? She shows both sides of the issue.
However, if you read between the lines, you can see that, in every one of her books, she leans just slightly to one side or the other. She has an opinion. She has something that she wants to say about that issue. And an answer that she believes is the best. Do I always agree? Nope, but I appreciate the way she handles the subjects.
And most importantly for this illustration, I’ve never read anything of hers that sounds at all preachy.
3. Show why your opinion is true. As I just mentioned, every author is going to come down on one side of an issue versus another. And I’m not suggesting that your book has to be politically-charged. You can be exploring the effects of adult-interaction on a child’s development or the consequences of homelessness on a family’s identity. But you have an opinion about that issue. A reason you’re writing about it in the first place.
Show your belief by having your character(s) struggle with the issue as they navigate the plot. Show why, in the end, those characters come around to believe what you believe about the question at hand.
Make it Personal
I’ve heard some authors recommend things such as “write so much truth that it embarrasses you.” Or, “write about what makes you uncomfortable.”
What they’re eluding to is theme and the need to say something that’s so deeply true that it exposes a piece of ourselves. That’s the hard part of writing. The cringy, agonizing part. But it’s that part that really matters, because if we’re willing to be vulnerable, we’re able to speak to some of the deepest concerns of those around us. The things that our readers secretly fear or question.
It also makes our writing less likely to be preachy. Because vulnerability, assuming we can keep the defensiveness out of our writing, keeps us humble.
To find a personal theme that matters to you, start by asking yourself things such as:
- What are the things that have impacted me most?
- What deep-seated pain still sits with me no matter how old I become?
- What problem do I see in my family, community, people in general, or the world that really eats at me?
In other words, what really bothers you? What do you constantly revisit? Look at those things and you’ll find your theme.
That’s how many of the greatest authors crafted such memorable works. Dickens wrote about the plight of the poor in nineteenth-century England. Austen crafted witty commentaries on the role of women in an era in which their only hope was to marry well. Steinbeck wrote about the abuses and hopelessness that plagued many of the rural poor as they attempted to navigate early twentieth-century America. These writers wrote about what troubled them most.
Writing the B-Story
Once you have that theme, you have to bake it into your novel. How do you do that?? Well, unfortunately, that’s actually an entire writing class in and of itself, but let’s look at a few things here that will point you in the right direction.
As I mentioned in the first part of this series, every scene in a book should contribute to all three strands of storytelling. Each scene should advance the plot, the character arc of your protagonist (and any other characters with defined arcs), and the theme.
That means that every scene you and I write should examine the theme that we’re exploring and should move the protagonist along towards a more complete understanding of that truth that we’re putting forward.
This is where good writing and bad writing diverge.
Because this is the hardest part of writing: managing all three of these strands simultaneously. But you can do it. The key is to break it down and work with each scene by itself, while maintaining an eye for the overall picture. Let’s work with an example. We’ll start from a wider perspective and then narrow our vision.
1. Choose a Theme
Let’s use our first sample theme: No friendship can survive the consequences of betrayal
There are a lot of ways that this can go. It could be a platonic friendship between a man and woman, or between two women or two men. It could be a childhood friendship that seemed invincible, but which suffers a terrible hit (the betrayal) at some point. It could be a familial friendship- mother and daughter. It could be a romantic relationship.
I’ll use the example of a childhood friendship.
2. Choose a Plot that Shows the Effects of Betrayal
We want to structure a plot so that it works with our theme. As you can probably tell, I find it a lot easier to start with the theme rather than the plot, but it’s possible to start with the plot instead. Whatever you do, you’re going to need to work with both almost simultaneously so that you have both sides of the story.
Ok. Let’s assume that you enjoy writing historical fiction and that you’re particularly interested in 20th century American history. Maybe you’re really into the history of WWII.
You could write about a couple of young boys – a Japanese boy and his Caucasian schoolmate – who were inseparable as children around the turn of the century in Seattle. You’ll want to show their friendship and its seemingly unbreakable bonds. They grow up and start families of their own. But then WWII starts and President Roosevelt declares that all Japanese people are to be evacuated to internment camps.
You know where this is going. The Japanese man and his family attempt to hide and avoid this decree. Perhaps it’s even his lifelong friend who hides them. But something happens. One of them betrays the other. The obvious example would be for the Caucasian man to face some personal duress and, in response, turn in his friend’s family so that they’re taken to a camp.
Most of the Japanese survived the American camps, so our protagonist comes out the other side physically sound. But of course, there are emotional scars. Fear, insecurity, and a distrust of other people and the country as a whole.
Perhaps his friend who betrayed him is deeply remorseful. It could even be a situation in which readers don’t know what they would have done. Maybe his own family was at great risk. Regardless, he attempts to make amends with his Japanese friend.
They try to patch things, but there’s a terrible rift there. Something that won’t heal. As the author, you want to show that things look like they’re back to normal…except that they’re not. The relationship is forced. The trust between the two of them is gone.
That leads to some terrible event. Perhaps the Caucasian man comes into financial hardship. He’s taken up with a group of back-room gamblers. Things progress to the point that he is a target. Now the tables are turned. He’s the one who needs to hide and avoid notice. For a while his friend, who knows where he is, says nothing. But eventually the past eats at him so much that he can’t bear it any longer. He blows his friends cover. His friends’ enemies find and execute him. And his family.
It’s a terrible testimony to the damage that betrayal causes even many years after the fact. Of course, all of these things need to flow out of each of these character’s deepest values. This is something that you’ll learn about if you read the book that I recommended in Part II about Character: Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets A Novelist Can Learn From Actors, by Brandilyn Collins
3. Work with Each Scene
But now you have to make sure that your theme advances in each scene. You have a strong plot here. The key is to work with your protagonist as if he’s learning the theme from the very beginning.
I like to start with a simple bullet-point list of how my character might progress along the lines of this lesson. Ask yourself questions such as:
- Where does your protagonist start?
In this case, what does our young Japanese boy believe? (Usually we start our protagonists on the other side of the spectrum from where they need to end up.) Perhaps he has a very idyllic vision of his friend. He either thinks that his friend would never betray him, or better yet, he does suffer a small foreshadowing – a precursor – of what’s to come and he blows it off. It’s probably some sort of childhood playground spat. It’s easy to let go of. He thinks that their friendship could never fail.
- Where does your protagonist end?
Generally this is the point at which they’ve evidenced the theme and have internalized the belief that you, as the author, have about the issue. In our case, he definitely learns that his friendship couldn’t survive the effects of the past betrayal.
- What mid-event threatens his initial belief system?
Remember, your protagonist is not going to accept the theme, at least not 100% at this point. But perhaps he learns something important here. In our case, he’s stunned and dismayed by what he experienced (his friend’s betrayal).
But when his friend is terribly remorseful after the fact, especially given the circumstances, perhaps our protagonist can understand why he did it. No matter how terrible it was, he thinks that he can forgive what happened and move on. And they sure try to.
However, from this point on, readers should see cracks in the system. Our protagonist is desperately trying to hold onto his former belief system. He wants to believe that his friendship can rebound. He doesn’t see that it’s suffered a fatal blow.
- What ending/ climactic event finally causes him to believe the theme?
It may be a shock even to him that he betrays his friend at the end. He tried so hard to fix the past, but it was irremedial.
- How are you going to get there?
This is when you plan out the scenes that show their relationship moving either away from (before the midpoint), or towards (after the midpoint) an understanding of the theme.
We can’t get into scene planning here, but I hope that this gets you started on the road towards building a strong theme into your writing.
Also, notice two crucial things:
- This story doesn’t sound at all preachy. Why? Because our protagonist is quietly learning the theme through the events of the story. He believed one thing to start with and life showed him that the opposite was true.
- You may never actually state the theme. In fact, writing is usually better if the theme isn’t overtly stated. However, the readers still see what’s happening. They may not be able to articulate it, but they’ve still internalized what you believe about betrayal in friendship. They see it in action. And that’s a lot more powerful than just telling them.
Lastly, if you’d like a resource to help you address themes in your writing, I recommend The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue & Vice for Box Office Success, by Stanley Williams. It’s written from the perspective of screenwriters, but is equally helpful for novelists.
If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends!