So, theme, what is it?

I meant the audience. The readers. Theme is about them. Do you give them questions and explore real issues with them?

 

After having read through this whole thread, I'm surprised at how strongly people feel about this. Theme is one of those things that I think about sometimes as I'm writing (my current WIP has something of a theme to me) but I've never stopped to consider the evils or virtues of.

However, I do think that what happens most often is the author writing with one theme in mind and readers insisting on another.

This right here is a perfect example. Ray Bradbury said as recently as 2007 that his theme for the book was about illiteracy and the dangers of mass media killing literature. He said he's tired of hearing about how the book is about censorship and that we've all missed the whole point.

So to a certain extent, I think that people will pull whatever theme they want from your novel despite your best intentions. If you aren't going to be obnoxiously preachy and obvious about your own idea, people will to find the message they want.

 

It's something I never thought about when writing, I'm still a novice and need to learn these things but never considered the reader to see my story differently to the way I want them to see it, I guess no one can 'Make' them.

 

Oh, you can make them, you just have to be creative.

My names Greg and this is my story.
Somewhere down the line reading this, you might start to think it's about true love, doing the right thing, or advertising for Petsmart, but its not.
This story, from the second I start telling it till the moment you put this book down, is about one thing.
Cute kittens.

 

Now this just screams 'unreliable narrator'. I'd love to say more, but I really need to go out and buy Socksie a new water bowl.

 

No... you can trust Greg.
Just not with money, anything sharp or kitte- oh my God, what have i done?

 

Well, obviously censorship came up. It might not have been his intention but does it mean it's fake? That's why I don't get attached to my stories as arguments. They shouldn't be. Stories should explore. That's my approach to theme. It's about provoking thoughts and feelings and you might make somewhat of a position but it shouldn't be a propaganda piece for your point of view. And no matter what you do many ideas and feelings will be relevant and to some degree people will see it through lense, so you need to consider they will be more drawn to certain things than you want sometimes.

 

I've just been reading the most interesting book on writing. It's not a how-to book, but an analysis of novel writing itself. What goes into the process and what comes out of it. The book is : On Becoming a Novelist, by the writer and teacher John Gardner.

Here's a passage from it that I quite liked. I've truncated it a bit:

Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists so that a character has someplace to stand, something that can help to define him, something he can pick up and throw, or eat, or give to his girlfriend. Plot exists so the character can discover for himself (or the reader can discover for him) what he, the character, is really like. Plot forces the character to action and choice, for which he will reap the rewards, or pay the price. Theme is critical language for what the character's main problem is.

 

An interesting approach.

 

I've always thought this (for as long as I've thought about such things, at any rate). Theme is a function of character – an exploration of the main character's principle dilemma. It's not some grand polemic superimposed on the story by the writer to enlighten his or her readers (at least within the realm of commercial fiction, which is the stuff I like to write).

 

The writer, John Gardner, actually made that point later on in his book. He said that cack-handed attempts to force theme on a story makes him think the writer ought to go become a parson or political leader or something like that, instead of writing fiction.

Theme evolves from story in the mind of the reader. Gardner said themes are sometimes very apparent in simple fiction (like the stock Western) but more difficult to determine in other simple stories (like Jack and the Beanstalk.) Ditto more complex and more 'literary' stories. Often a writer has a theme in mind before they start writing—or discovers the theme as they write, or after the book is finished. All that is excellent if the writer is subtle. It will add a lot of depth to a story. But if theme is applied with a trowel, creating sterotypical characters and plots in order to service the theme, then the writing suffers for it.

I'm an ex English teacher, so you think I'd be all in favour of theme theme theme. But instead, I would rather a person went away from a story thinking 'Wow, what a story THAT was. I can't wait to read another book!' And maybe later on, when they think about what happened in the story and how it makes them feel, they might discover a universal theme.

 

I couldn't agree with you more, @jannert! I've nothing to add. You've said it all right there. Especially this:

I think I shall check out Mr Gardner's book...

 

That seems to me to be a narrow definition of the concept. Now, I don't care much about theme, but that seems to suggest that theme must always be about an absolute. Can you clarify? For example, is it forbidden, by your definition, for a book's themes to include, "Sometimes <action> doesn't lead to <expected outcome>."? Are sometimes and maybe and kinda forbidden in themes?

 

And why does it have to be the results?

 

Haven't the time to read the rest of the posts right now, so this is simply what comes from my gut.

When I think of a 'theme', it's rarely what starts my creative ball rolling. It's something that occurs to me as I start pulling my plot points together. For me the theme is what ties all these other elements together. It's what they have in common. Sometimes it's kinda revelatory, in that my theme is the manifestation of dormant desires for my story and character, things I very often have no conscious perception of til the reveal comes. That's why I often end up writing a wholly different story than I initially intended. I think it one thing when, in fact, it's another. Maybe I lack control over my writing. There must be those who decide on a theme and write from there. I haven't the presence of mind for the mental acrobatics that must entail. My gut tells me that a theme shouldn't have the appearance of being forced and should filter through to the reader in organic fashion, especially when it is the original concept and consideration.

I'd like to think that the theme is what the reader is left with long after the book is finished.

 

I'm quoting Lejos Egri from his book, The Art of Dramatic Writing. And, no, it's not that narrow. There are other variations of theme statements, but they all boil down to the same thing, theme is what the MC learns by living through the story. To get the whole picture, it's best to read his book.

What I was getting at is this: what most people describe as theme is actually the conflict type or a recurring motif.

 

Theme is what the MC learns by living through the story. I like that a lot. Great way to put it.

Of course sometimes the MC doesn't learn it, and goes away just as clueless as before. The reader learns the theme instead.

Think of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind. I don't think she learned much. Her final words "Tomorrow is another day," aren't so much optimism as stubborn refusal to see that, for herself and Rhett, there will BE no other day. Selfishness, resourcefulness and never giving up are excellent survival traits, but some things, like love, just can't be bulldozed into compliance. Scarlett learned that she loved Rhett after all, instead of Ashley, but that wasn't the theme. Selfishness kills love, and once love dies it can't be revived.

 

Yes, I like this better. Theme is what the reader learns through reading the story. The MC and other characters may or may not learn it, and may not live through the story in order to learn it.

 

I was thinking about this a lot this week and came to the conclusion that I might have a theme, although like most have said I didn't intend my story to have a theme, I never even thought about it until seeing this post!
So my theme I think is 'Survival'

 

I think's a bit futile of Bradbury to tell us we're all wrong. Perhaps it wasn't the message he intended to communicate, and I defnitely see how that would be annoying ("Look! I made you this picture of a sunflower." "No, that's a yellow daisy." "No, look, I painted it and I'm telling you it's a sunflower." "Nah, it's definitely a daisy.") but in the end, the purpose of telling a story is to make your readers think or feel something - even if it's just a feeling of entertainment. Whatever part of the story that speaks to them most is not our choice. It's one of the reasons why picking apart novels in English class always frustrated me. The teacher would say, "the theme of the book is about this." And I'd wonder if that's what the author intended, what the teacher intended for us to see, or why it seemed to be about something else to me. I'd rather they ask students what the theme was for them, to personalize the experience for the student - who is, after all, having a personal experience with the story.

 

This is why I like the explore approach so much. It's much harder to discuss a theme exploratively and it not be noticed. If the idea of, say, death, comes up. broadly and commonly. It will be hard to ignore. I don't think you shouldn't have specific ideas, and as I said before you can say a message, it's just portray it less as a big argument. And don't be too attached to the message over the general contemplation, because they might not get the exact message. Also, I tend to have characters talk about my themes somewhat, that probably helps.

 

Writing a novel takes a metric fuckton of time and effort. Theme is what the novelist is emotionally invested about in the story. It organizes and drives him whether he is consciously aware of it or not. A novelist might say "no, I am invested in those characters, that's what gets my pencil moving," but why _these_ characters? Dig long enough and you'll find it is about how they represent or contradict the theme. If you can figure that out soon enough, you can save a ton of time when it comes to restructuring your story. Theme will help you once it is revealed, the bitch is getting it to reveal itself. Once it reveals itself, the goal of the writer shouldn't be to chase it down and hit it with an over-sized hammer. Rather, the writer should flirt with it.

At the same time, theme is what a reader is looking for to a great deal. It is why some readers find the world of Star Trek fascinating (particularly the 1980s Star Trek) and other readers go for Firefly. These two worlds are radically different from each other, with radically different political statements (Star Trek is very socialist whereas Firefly is very libertarian). They affirm something in the reader that they want affirmed.

 

Um, kind of. But that feels a little extreme. There's also an element of "that's entertaining" and "that's interesting". And it's certainly not centered on being agreed with. (What do you say to a socialist who likes Firefly?) Cool it with the dramatic statements.

 

Theme is such a silly thing for the writer to worry about. I'm of the Damon Knight school, which is to say that theme arises naturally in a competent piece of fiction; a real person who deals with a real situation will generate its own theme(s) in the observer's eye.

The main problem with theme is that it's subjective. Consider an historical story--say, the rise and fall of Hitler. A skinhead and a normal person will look at that same story and draw radically different themes. The same is true of fiction. Ten people can read the same novel and draw different themes from it. Hemingway once remarked on the absurdity of this. When asked what he made of literary critics who saw deep themes in his works, he laughed it off as over-imagination on the part of literary critics.

So my advice is to focus on character and story. Theme is a byproduct of this.

 

Only if you view it as one (and I'm not saying it's wrong to). But character or plot could easily be a product of theme if one approaches from a different angle. I don't think there is a right or wrong.

Theme is definitely subjective (and that's not necessarily a problem; generating discussion/debate isn't necessarily a bad thing), but your analogy is misleading IMO: there isn't a definitive version of 'the story of history', so a skinhead and a normal person likely aren't 'reading' the same thing. Even so, that you mention skinheads as a minority compared to 'normal people' (i.e. the moral majority) implies that there actually is a general consensus theme (and I suspect everyone here aligns with that particular one, as I do).

Part of the beauty of writing is that the author does make a definitive version and can exert some influence over the prominent themes. Maybe not enough to sway the perspective of a radical fascist or whatever other differently-thinking minority, but probably enough to colour the interpretation of the majority. Moreso if you consider theme and the message you want to send; less so if you don't.

To me it's a cop-out to disregard theme just because you can never perfectly communicate your intention. Does anyone think they're ever going to communicate anything (plot, characters, setting... climate change/vaccination science... etc) perfectly?