Hey everyone! Here I am with another post for this series. Only two to go after this one. I am so excited to be talking about today’s topic. This week’s post ties in closely with last week’s post of when you should determine your theme but is more for those who want to determine their theme while writing or after the end process of writing. So, without further ado…
Theme: How do you determine what your Theme is?
Last week we discussed when you should determine theme. I mentioned that when to determine theme depends on the kind of writer you are what you find would be the most efficient for yourself. I mentioned that I personally tend to determine my theme during or after the process of writing the first draft. This works well for me because it helps me to not write my theme too intrusively but also gives me a chance to develop it more during editing stages.
So how you determine your theme really depends on when you decide to take a good look at it. If you are working out your theme before the actual process of writing, then it’s much easier. All you need to do it pick a theme. That’s it. However, determining your theme once you have already begun writing is a bit trickier but not impossible. Therefore, this week’s post is more for those like myself, who determine their theme while writing or after writing.
Let’s think back to a few posts back when we discussed what kind of themes there are and how to write theme into a story. Those two factors are important for figuring out what your theme is from what you have already written. For those who haven’t read those two posts I’ll summarize.
I wrote previously that there are three main kinds of themes. The first, are emotional themes that are related to the main surface emotions of a character or reader and are sometimes tied to character motivation. Second are secondary emotional actions these are emotions or actions based on emotion that stem from a certain surface emotion. I used the example that revenge is a secondary emotional action to anger or disappointment. The third kind of theme are conflict-based themes. These are themes centered around the 4 main conflict types which are man vs man, man vs society, man vs nature, and man vs himself.
When discussing how to write themes I mentioned that you really need to develop a theme well. I mentioned that there were two specific ways to develop theme and that was through symbol and motif. If you don’t know the difference between the two you can google it or read my article on how to write theme for further information. Keep these two previous posts, how to write theme and what kinds of themes there are, in mind as we continue on with how to determine your own theme.
There are three basic steps to determining the theme of something you are already writing.
Step one is to determine what your character can learn from the situations they are in or what your reader can learn from the story and make a list. Almost all of the things you put on the list are more than likely to be themes that you could find in your story. For example, say you are writing a romance novel. Maybe while reading over your draft so far and/or any plot notes you may have for the rest of the story you found several themes one of which is that true love doesn’t require something of the other person but something of yourself. This seems like the best theme out of all of the ones that you found.
Step two is a little more difficult than step one but still not very hard if you understand all of the concepts from previous posts in this series. Step two is to look at the themes that you found or the one you chose and determine what kind of theme it is. With the example theme from the last paragraph, we can recognize that it’s a secondary emotional action theme. The surface emotion is love and the secondary emotional action is giving something of yourself. Once you know what kind of theme you have you can better understand what your theme influences. In the case of secondary emotional actions, we know that this theme effects the actions of the character specifically.
Step three is one of the most difficult parts, especially if you are already most of the way into your first draft or if its complete. If you are already most of the way into the story, I suggest finishing it before beginning this step because step three requires one of the things that writers hate most: editing. Once you know your theme, and what kind of theme it is, you need to look back through your story and decide where you can develop it more. Sometimes this requires adding in a few sentences, a stray thought here and there or a symbol in that specific scene. Sometimes this requires more work such as editing a whole scene that contradicts your theme or adding a whole new motif that will weave its way through the whole story. On the other hand, sometimes you might notice that your theme is too blatant, just short of practically being written out for the reader. In some cases, this isn’t bad but a majority of the time you might need to take your own writing and change quite a lot of it to make your theme more subtle and less obtrusive to the basic storyline.
With these three steps you have been able to determine what your theme or themes are and made them better in your story.
I hope that these steps were helpful and that you are beginning to see how all of the posts in this series connect to create a greater understanding of theme. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media at the links below. Next week we’re starting into the last two posts of the series, and I hope they are understandable and interesting. And remember…
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
Comments