In his book On Writing, Stephen King mentions identifying your themes as part of the author’s tasks at the second-draft stage of fiction writing.
“I’m asking myself, What’s it all about, Stevie … what can I do to make those underlying concerns even clearer? What I want most is resonance, something that will linger a little while. ”
I highly recommend this book to anyone writing novels. I read it early in my writing career and found it a big help. His analogy of writing a story as akin to an archaeologist uncovering bones rang true to me as far as my own process goes, so I always remember that as well as this advice on the importance of identifying and drawing out your themes.
Deep and meaningful, or not?
Not all books are deep and meaningful. We don’t all want to read War and Peace and their like. Sometimes we just want something light, but even so, even in the most frivolous book, there can be underlying themes that we aren’t aware of when we write, and if we identify them and draw them out when we do our second draft, we add another level of engagement to our work, a level that, as Stephen says makes the book “linger a little while” in the reader’s mind.
DL Morrese’s books are like that. They are light reads that satire the speculative fiction genre—he calls it counter-fantasy—and they are sometimes quite humorous, but their underlying themes make them books that I remember, and that’s quite a feat for someone like me who reads masses of books and forgets most of them of immediately after the final page. Jonathan Gould is another author who does the same kind of thing. Both deal with classic themes such as social equality and coming of age.
We don’t need to lay it on with a heavy hand—that’s always counterproductive—it’s just a matter of being aware of what we might be saying beneath our story and making sure that we give it enough definition so that the themes come through.
How to find your themes
Write your first draft first, and then after setting the book aside for a month or so, read it again. When you read through you’ll be looking for many things that you can build on or improve – See my Novel Revision Checklist—and one of those things is the themes. Be quite clear that your themes are already in what you have written. You don’t need to add anything, just look at what you have.
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Ask yourself:
- What’s it all about?
- What am I trying to say with this story?
- Does the protagonist’s struggles have significance for the reader’s own life?
Deepening your themes
They may not need deepening. It may be enough for you to identify them, and be aware of them during your revision process. Or you may simply not want to develop them further, and that’s fine too. You may decide that developing them further is for a different book, that trying to develop them for this book may not be right for the kind of story it is. All of that is fine.
But you may find that by identifying the hidden themes, you gain new inspiration for the story, for events or character’s thoughts processes that acknowledge the theme or issue. It may raise possibilities for conflict between characters that can add more tension to otherwise lacklustre scenes. Or provide a link between characters that presently do not relate too well.
For example in a team situation. Your female protagonist might not relate too well to the male engineer who is very quiet until she discovers that he feels as passionately about some issue as she does.
If you do gain further inspiration, that’s great, but don’t be concerned if you don’t. This is just a process that it’s worthwhile going through, just in case there is something there that can be developed further.
Can there be too much emphasis on a theme?
The opposite of having no theme with which to deepen the story is for the theme to overpower the story. This is when a book gets preachy. And that’s something to avoid, because no one wants to be preached at. If you write your book with the aim to deliver a message of some kind then you need to be cautious that your writing doesn’t fall on the wrong side of the line between examining a theme or issue and preaching.
As people we have things that we are concerned about and those concerns tend to naturally flow into our writing, either somewhere in the story, or as a concern shared by a character, so even books that you don’t intend to have a theme, may have one locked inside. Your job is to find it and release it so that you can develop it fully. Developing it fully, however, doesn’t mean that it takes over the story. It’s all a matter of balance.
How to avoid preaching
The key here is to examine an issue, not to state your views on an issue. You need to allow the reader to come to their own decision about whatever issue you raise, and you need to allow them to come to a different conclusion than the one that you personally take. If you’re perfectly okay with a reader seeing things differently to you, then you’ll be unlikely to preach. If you’re determined to make everyone see the issue as you do, then your writing might have the heavy-handedness that comes across as preaching.
Those with the same view as you may not see it as preaching or may not care if it is, but if you want to get an idea across to people who may not have been presented with such an idea before, then you don’t want them to reject the idea outright, and preaching will do that. Readers discard preachy books in disgust, so it defeats your purpose.
How not to preach:
- Have characters with different points of view so that you present different sides to the issue.
- If you want your protagonist to be the messenger then have them unsure of their position at the start of the book and provide events in the book that lead them to a strong conviction by the end. The more complex the path they take to their decision, the less it will seem like preaching.
- Don’t treat the subject in a black and white fashion. Issues are rarely that simple. Try to show all the shades of grey around the issue.
- Don’t make the bad guy someone who is only bad because he or she takes the side of the issue you see as wrong.
- Don’t dump information about the issue, either in dialogue or as part of the narrative. Tease it out in small pieces at the places in the story where it is natural that the reader might want some background.
Favourite themes
When I was in theatre, I remember a dance critic telling me that choreographers tend to work with similar or related themes over and over, and that they just examine the themes in different ways in different books. That may be the same for you. It’s natural that we write about topics that concern us or that the topics that concern us bleed through into our stories, and we may or may not want to examine those topics in a major way. The degree to which you tease out a theme is entirely up to you and dependent on your reasons for writing the book and the kind of story it is.
I do have a favourite theme: mind, in particular how our mental processes create our perception and determine how we handle, or don’t handle, whatever situation we find ourselves in. The first series I wrote is comprised of 4 books that examine this theme through the lens of a story where the demons in the book are external manifestations of the protagonist’s negative emotions. In order to defeat the demons who have kidnapped her mother, she has to learn how to work with her emotions. The theme is right out there in the open, but it’s all examined through an analogy.
Another favourite theme is bullying and abuse. It’s always been something that I’ve felt strongly about and I’ve always tried to help root it out of any workplace in which I find myself. My first Prunella Smith novel Worlds Within Worlds deals with this issue as does my YA novel You Can’t Shatter Me, but they are very different stories aimed at a different readership.
What kinds of themes and issues interest you?
What kind of themes do you like to work with in your stories?
This is part of a series of blog posts on how to write a novel. It doesn’t just cover the technical details, but also the emotional journey we take and the personal challenges we meet on the road from potential author to author. Join the journey now, and don’t miss a post, click here to sign up to get my Novel Revision Checklist and links to the articles sent to your inbox.
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You’ll also find my book on writing, The Elements of Active Prose: Writing Tips to Make Your Prose Shine, very helpful.
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