When I started writing, I often began with an image in my head, or a piece of dialogue that had just come to me out of nowhere, and I’d build from there.
Most likely I’d build my narrative castle on air and then, once that castle was built, I’d try to shove a foundation under it, which often meant restructuring. Sometimes tearing the castle down and starting fresh, while the foundation got to stay in place.
I don’t know about you, but building castles, when you take this approach, is pretty damn exhausting.
Thing was, I had to take this approach, because I didn’t know how to lay that foundation without seeing what the castle actually looked like.
Okay, let’s land this metaphor now and be done with it, shall we?
If the castle is the narrative, then the foundation is…
Well, that actually takes us to the question I’d like to explore with you: what is the foundation? What is the bedrock of any story? However much the structure of the rest of it may change, this one part is constant.
The foundation is theme.
What exactly is theme?
It’s the answer to that age-old question: Yeah, but what’s it about?
It took me a long time of writing and reading and reading about writing to understand what exactly the hell that question is actually asking.
If someone asks you this, they’re not necessarily looking for an answer related to plot.
Instead, if an editor or agent or producer asks you this, chances are they want to be swept up in the message of your narrative, in it’s thematic premise, and they want you to tell them why this story should be told, or is being told, by you at this point in time.
Yes, see, the question isn’t really asked in order to find out what the story is about at all, it’s asked to find out why the story is about what it’s about.
Sound daunting? (or mildly confusing?)
It really isn’t, but the trick is knowing what it is you want to say. The way to know is to ask yourself one question and to find the honest answer. That one question is:
What do I believe, in my heart of hearts, to be right and to be wrong?
No matter how it relates itself to religion, science, politics, society at large — what is your moral stance on life and how to live it? Is there even a right and a wrong, or is it all more of a gray scale?
Knowing what you stand for creates a relatable dynamic between you and what you’re writing, meaning you infuse your writing with a relatable thematic premise that helps connect you to any audience.
What exactly is a thematic premise?
Well, it can be built on a platitude like True Love Conquers All or Greed Corrupts, but then it’s up to you, from the basis of this premise, to answer the questions: why you? and why now?
And that’s where your passion comes in, your belief system, your understanding of why this story is bursting to be shared with the world, at this point in time, no holding of bars, caution thrown to the wind, this is important and it’s important because…
…because equality is for everyone, not just a select few, and I want to help change the world by opening people’s minds up to how different isn’t bad, it’s just not the same as what you’re used to.
…because the political system is failing everywhere and people are becoming more and more desparate for any kind of change that gives them a sense of control and I want to explore that fear and question where it really comes from.
…because grief is something personal, everyone experiences it differently and I’d like to discuss this further and take away the guilt that might make some people linger in grief too long, and the shame at feeling relief at being able to let go.
The because doesn’t have to be related to high stakes drama. It can be quiet and reverent and deeply heartfelt. It can be about love, joy, loss, desire, faith, hope, hatred, fear, anger, greed or lack of any of these things, and your theme can centre itself around a family feud or at a polical summit, a small mountain village or a big city office.
Basically, your theme can be the foundation for any scenario under the sun, but the power it holds comes from how you allow it to thread back into real human emotion.
Finding Your Theme
All writers are different. We have different ways of approaching our writing, and isn’t that grand?
I like to rest against an understanding of why structure works the way it does and what’s appealing about it to us humans, because we’re all storytellers and we all tell stories that build from beginning to end. It doesn’t matter if it’s a story about how your cat got in a neighbourhood brawl with the dog down the street that you tell your sister-in-law, that’s still storytelling.
We grow up with it, we’re connected through it, we know, unconsciously, what to expect from a good story, and what we want, and I think we can all agree that what we want most is for a story to mean something to us at the end of it.
Even if it’s not a life-changing insight into a different perspective of the world, even if the meaning is contained in connecting with a narrative that is saying you are not alone, this story is telling you that someone understands you and your journey and here is a reflection of your joy, or your grief, or your hopes, or your disillusionment.
The moment we understand what the story is trying to tell us is the moment when we feel that engaging with that story wasn’t simply a colossal waste of our time.
I’ll outline to give myself a feel for where the turning points of my story should logically fit, but once I start writing, details will pop in there that suddenly give me a much more solid idea of what my main characters internal journey is really all about.
But the basis of my outline and the axis of the turning points is theme, resting on the answer to: What is it that I want to say and why do I want to say it right now?
When there’s not a clear answer to this question and you try to write without it, because the story just won’t leave you alone (some stories are like that), the roundabout way of building the narrative castle without the foundation can make you get stuck, going around and around in narrative circles as your unconscious tries to find a way into the heart of it all: your theme.
When this happens and you feel it’s impossible to actually clarify to yourself exactly why you’re telling this particular story, leaving the meaning of it, its commentary, obscured to you, and you can’t seem to find your way to it, there’s usually something intrinsically faulty in how theme and structure are disconnecting.
The easiest way of finding your theme is through the journey of your main character.
Where does that journey begin and how do you see your main character change and evolve over the course of their story? What is your main character’s motivation? What is your main character’s superficial wants and repressed needs?
Your main character is the driving force of your narrative.
Their choices are what should create the forward momentum through those turning points I mentioned.
These choices should be made in order to further your character’s growth, because a main character progressing, through the narrative, from point A to point B to point C, is the emotional framework for your thematic premise.
Example –>
Let’s keep it straightforward. You decide that your story is built around the thematic premise Love Conquers All.
This gives you the theme of love and the thematic threads related to love: friendship, family, relationships and the correlating emotions.
These correlating emotions provide an infinate range of possibilities, each possibility creating an opportinity for the narrative to comment on your thematic premise.
It does this by you asking the narrative a thematic question related to your thematic premise.
If your thematic premise is Love Conquers All, then your thematic question becomes: Does love conquer all?
The Thematic Question: Your Guiding Light
You ask your thematic question throughout your script, dropping foreshadowing of what the resounding answer is going to be, until the climactic moment of your third act, where the resounding answer… resounds.
What you need to decide on is simple: is the resounding answer to your thematic question yes, or is it no?
And digging ever deeper into your theme in order to find that simple answer, you can ask yourself:
- What is it that you want to say?
- What’s it all about?
- What is love?
- What kind of love conquers all?
- All kinds of love, or only a certain kind?
- Is love fluid?
- Is the idea of love a construct?
- Is looking for love as validation a good thing, or a bad thing, or is there a grey area in between?
Once you begin to feel how you’d like the answers to these questions to go, you’ll begin to get a clearer picture of your main character – your protagonist – and what their journey needs to be.
Once you begin to see the turning points of that journey, and how they connect to your thematic question, you can begin to work through the rest of your narrative.
And I don’t believe that you need to forego writing on pure inspiration.
Hell, I usually write an outline for mind map purposes, so that I get a feel for what most likely needs to happen and when it needs to happen, stopping me from going in completely blind; but once I start writing, it’s all about what comes to me in the moment, and things always change and evolve, and that’s what’s so delightful about the writing process as a whole. (at least to this writer)
Making a statement about the world with your narrative is easy. Anyone can make a statement about anything.
Proving your statement correct is hard work.
Making people actually understand and feel like they truly agree with how correct you are in your statement is the light at the end of that long dark tunnel of despair and searching for answers to the how and the why your statement needs to be made, now, by you.
But it’s also the ultimate payoff, because when an audience feels that they agree with your thematic premise, they will feel fulfilled and connected and seen.
They’ll take your story and feel like you’ve reflected their own story back at them, or possibly, hopefully, even that you’ve given them something new to hold onto.
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