We Need To Stop Being Weird About Theme in Stories
What your story is really saying and why you need to stop saying it
Barton Fink (1991) © Circle Films
Stories don’t mean shit without theme.
Theme is what your story is really about, beneath all the starfighter battles, lovelorn androids, and moody wanderers jabbing fools with a broadsword. It’s the writer’s emotional and/or intellectual connection to the material. It’s how they feel about the characters and what they’re up to. If the writer can’t connect to a story, the reader can’t connect either. If the writer is bored or just typing their way to an invoice, that apathy will stink up the page like a kipper under the floorboards.
Moby Dick is a novel about the tragedy of pride, but Melville doesn’t state that theme out loud.
“Avast!” growled Ahab. “A feeling burns in mine breast that this yarn be about the dangers of the unchecked male ego and the brute indifference of nature. Stow the subtext, Mister Starbuck! To perdition’s flame with reader involvement! We seek the white whale of the bleedin’ obvious!”
Theme is exposition and as such requires a decent burial.
Theme, along with details like where the butler was when Lord Swankington got shivved with a dessert spoon or the fact that your heroine is really, really, really good at kicking people in the head, all this stuff starts out as info awaiting a dump. It’s leaden story-data that must be spun by the process of your writerly imagination into the gold of characters that live and scenes that stir the soul.
Writers lacking skill in this kind of alchemy tend to bullhorn their themes like they’re on a protest march. Or – bless them – they’ll try and educate us like we’ve been dragged into the principal’s office.
This isn’t storytelling; it’s editorial.
Storytellers seeking to confront the reader with a direct message often forget that the reader most in need of hearing that message is usually the one who will clap their hands over their ears and go ‘LALALALALALALA!’
This is just part of our weird modern relationship with theme in stories, certainly as I’ve experienced it writing comics.
