Theme is one of the most difficult aspects of fiction to discuss. This is partly because there are so many different ways of looking at it…and because there is no one clear, simple definition that everybody agrees on. “The definition of theme” ranges from the simple and straightforward “The subject or topic of the piece” to the more obscure “the understanding that the author seeks to communicate through the work” or “a salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work’s treatment of its subject matter” to the broad “theme is what the story means.”

Several of the web sites I looked at didn’t even try to come up with a definition; they just gave paragraph after paragraph of examples of things the writer thought were and were not themes. One had a list of “themes in the science fiction genre” that included things like “alternate history” and “generation ships” and “virtual reality,” none of which are anything like what I understand theme to be.

Not that I understand the concept of theme particularly well. It isn’t something I’ve ever needed to understand in order to write fiction; in fact, thinking too hard about theme during my writing process gets in my way. This isn’t true of every writer, by any means, but for me, it’s a subject that’s a lot safer to consider when I’m between books.

Still, I’ve always had a suspicion that if I could ever really get my arms around it, theme would be one more exceedingly useful way of looking at my work. So I keep poking at it periodically, in hopes of seeing how other people work with it and how I might adapt their methods to my own process.

Part of the problem is that the vast majority of writing about theme comes from literary analysts who aren’t themselves writers. This has always made me suspect that theme is one of those tools that is great for dissecting a story after it is written, but that may not be much help in getting the writing done. Nevertheless, there are writers who do start with theme (whatever they understand it to be), and who do find it a useful tool, so I keep looking at it.

The main thing I’ve taken away from all the various reading I’ve done on the subject is that theme is generally abstract to some significant degree. That means that “generation ships” and “faster-than-light space travel” aren’t themes, but “the future evolution of society” might be, and “loyalty and hatred” almost certainly is.

Most of the time, the versions of theme that make most sense to me are expressed one of three ways: as a one-sentence argument, as a one-word idea, or as a question. The one-sentence argument variety has always seemed to me the least useful to a writer, as it tends to be couched as a proposition to be demonstrated: “Pets should be treated nicely” or “Testing honesty builds character.” Laying out one’s theme this way seems to me to invite the author to “prove” it in the story, which in turn is just asking to turn the story into a sermon – and in the process, miss out on interesting characters and plot twists because they don’t prove the theme as stated.

The one-word idea – “loyalty” or “honor” or “integrity” – seems to me more useful because it invites the author to look at the theme from different angles: how one character demonstrates loyalty or honor, compared to another, or how different characters acquire or lose their honor or integrity. For me, though, the one-word theme is seldom obvious, even after I’ve written the entire book. This makes it of extremely limited use to me so far as writing is concerned.

That leaves the theme-as-question. I like this because it seems more open-ended than the other versions. “What question am I asking/examining in this story?” can be answered with something as abstract as “Which is more important, loyalty or personal integrity?” or with something as pointed as “What makes a family break down?” The temptation, though, is to make the question into something a little too specific, like “How does the hero defeat the dragon?” which gets right back to plot and away from theme.

Ultimately, though, I doubt that thinking about theme will ever do me much good up, because the concrete has more appeal for me than the abstract, at least when it comes to stories. The themes in my work arise from the stories themselves – from these particular characters and the exact obstacles they face and the various choices they make, which have everything to do with who they are and very little to do with the author trying to demonstrate or examine anything other than the characters.

12 Comments
  1. Whenever I try to write a story with a theme firmly in my mind, it always, always, always turns preachy. No matter how I fight it. But my stories without any kind of a theme are rambling messes.

    What works best for me is to look at my story after I’ve finished the first draft but before I start any editing or polishing, and see what idea keeps threading through. There’s usually one there, even if I have to poke around a lot to find it. Then I get to do my polishing with that theme in mind, make it more prominent without twisting my story around it.

    My creative writing teacher in college wrote literary fiction. It took me a long time to realize that her idea of theme didn’t need to be mine.

  2. One of the books I’m reworking right now was inspired by a theme, but the theme emerged essentially from the worldbuilding. Actually, weirdly enough, it came from a comment a friend of mine made in middle school. She said that feminists didn’t like her mom because she had chosen to be a wife and mother and not have a career.I had been distressed by that because I had been reading Ms. Magazine a lot and had figured out that that was wrong, that part of the feminist movement was to acknowledge just how much work it took to be a wife and mother and make that valuable again. But it also became clear that the ideals of a movement weren’t enough. How people acted and how people felt were a lot more complicated than a list of principles.

    So, um, now I have a novel about princesses.

    I don’t think theme is something you can sum up in a single word or sentence. Even a question just builds a list of possible answers. There’s a theory, though, that every utterance is a partial answer to a question, and the big question that subsumes all the little questions is “What is the way things are?” or were, or might be. A theme for me is scratching out a small patch of linked subquestions, and then using the way people and worlds interact to suggest some possible answers.

    Essentially theme, I think, is the link between your story and ‘the way things are.’ Not the way they ought to be – the way things ought to be has little or nothing to do with the way things are. Shoulds, oughts and musts don’t belong in theme.

    John Searle, when he was trying to define fiction, said that one of the interesting problems was that you couldn’t define it by it being false, because it wasn’t always false. Within a fictional narrative there could be many true statements (or statements considered true by the author at least). I think theme might be what remains after the fiction has been stripped away.

    For literary theorists the theme is only a part of that – the part that they find convincing and surprising, and can sum up in a pithy thesis statement. For readers, it’s the part they find convincing and surprising and wave their hands wildly when trying to explain. For the writer, maybe, it’s being honest – to the truth of the characters, the way they would act, or the way society is, or the way people are in groups, or how words mess with people’s heads.

    Sometimes an author has one particular truth that seems the most important, so they build a story around it. And sometimes they do that without ever being able to say what it is. Though perhaps a lot of them fall into plot. “How do problems get solved?’ seems to be a popular one. [possible answers: teamwork, sacrifice, teamwork and sacrifice, destiny, they don’t.]

    Okay, now I have an essay without an actual answer. Just, maybe, this is what theme is: (Characters x Context) – Falsehoods = Theme.

  3. I guess I don’t really think of theme that much while I’m writing. I try to make sure my characters have an arc and that they change, but I guess themes just sort of come out naturally on their own while I’m working on that.

  4. One word themes can help resolve the question of whether a subplot really belongs in the book. If it complicates the main plot, that’s one justification. Another justification is that it reflects the theme, whether love or loyalty or persistence or honesty, in variation on it.

  5. Another alarmingly timely post, as I’ve been struggling with issues of theme lately. I don’t do theme on a conscious level; it evolves naturally out of the plot and characters, and I’m fine with that. But apparently I do need to have a theme, at least for serious stuff, and to know what it is by the middle of the book or so.

    With the ongoing WIP, I had to throw out my original plot (reality-compliance is a b*tch) and come up with an entirely new one. I’m quite keen on the new plot qua plot, but the new theme that’s naturally developed out of it is one that I’ve no interest in whatsoever — and it’s leaving me every bit as choked on the story as if I’d written seven chapters based on a character doing something she wouldn’t do.

  6. Like LizV, I don’t do theme consciously. It arises organically from the characters and plot, which coalesce from the issues of the human experience currently preoccupying me. (Plus setting. Setting is always key for me.)

    I don’t usually identify my theme until after I’ve finished the manuscript and have started writing cover copy! Then I’m always astonished (pleasantly) when I notice that the theme threads through all the character arcs (in different ways) and through the movement of the plot. “How did I do that?” I ask myself. Wow! You’d think I planned it. It’s a fun moment!

  7. “…have everything to do with who they are and very little to do with the author trying to demonstrate or examine anything other than the characters.”

    Do people ever ask you about the themes in your books? That could get interesting, a la Mr. Earbrass:

    “He demands to know just what Mr Earbrass was ‘getting at’ in the last scene of Chapter XIV. Mr Earbrass is afraid he doesn’t know what the Colonel is. Is what? Getting at himself.”

  8. I’ve seen theme described this way: Plot is what happens in a story. Theme is what it’s about.

    I find theme most important to keep in mind during the editing process. “What’s the story *about*? Did you *really* mean to advocate that, and if not, what about the story needs to be changed? Can your readers figure out what the story is about, and if not, how do you fix that?”

  9. Another justification is that it reflects the theme, whether love or loyalty or persistence or honesty, in variation on it.

    That idea was quite a revelation to me (when I saw Wrede defining ‘theme’ elsewhere, iirc). So that’s why many books had characters and/or subplots or other things that had nothing to do with the main plot (and weren’t even cool).

  10. One word themes have never worked for me because they’re too general and there are too many ways to examine them. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! books taught me a trick that helped me defined my themes. He said to put the theme into the mouth of one of the characters early on. Doing that lit the light bulb over my head. In my current wip, the theme is whether or not one can break the destructive patterns learned from one’s family. Knowing that this is my theme helps me create create resonance by echoing the theme with multiple characters.

  11. I’m not sure I grok “theme” well enough to address it consciously — but I do know what floats my id-boat (“surfing the id,” from fanfic, is a concept that I leapt upon), and once I embraced the fact that Power Dynamics make my little withered heart go pitty-pat… How many different ways can I ring that bell? I’ve done it three ways so far, in public, and am working on more.

    *long pause* Actually, Power Dynamics may be a driving force in many of the interactions or plot necessities in just about everything I’ve ever written in public. Um. Er. UM.

    Time for me to go write more on the latest twist.

  12. I look at theme as the answer to, What is this story about? A typical answer might be:

    City of Glass is about the shattering of the glass, unspoken boundaries in the world of the Alliance.
    A Lovely Light is about being willing to live the most of every moment without regrets.
    And Everything Nice is about creating oneself more than one’s world.
    Modern Theology is about the things we worship and a relationship only right when the two people are right themselves.

    These kinds of themes are rarely necessary, but sometimes, I find they keep me more on track than the one-sentence plotline.