What kind of Themes are there?

Hey everyone! I’m here with another post in the theme series. I’m so excited that we are just moving right along here with every new post. Each new post on here is another week closer to the end of the semester for me! Haha. I hope that this week’s post can also help you advance your writing and so, without further ado,

Theme: What kind of Themes are there?

So far in the series we have discussed what theme is and why it is important. So logically and next step would be to establish what exactly would be considered a theme. If you don’t want to read all the way through these posts and want to figure it out yourself there is a short answer. Take this thing that you are considering and trying to decide if it’s a theme and go to the first post in this series, read through it and ask yourself, does this match what a theme is. If not try to find a different theme and if it does then there you go; you have a better understanding of what theme is. If you’d rather read all the way through this post and read my ideas of what kinds of themes there are and receive a little more advice on how to figure that out, stick around.

We know that theme is something intangible and interpretable that makes a story relatable to a wide audience of readers. But what kinds of things fit into that category? One of the basic themes that can fit into that kind of category are emotion themes. Human beings, now matter how logical or methodical we attempt to be, are also emotional creatures who are controlled, motivated, and propelled by our own emotions. These emotions can be anything from excitement, joy, and contentment to contempt, disgust, anger, and sadness. These are the simplest and most easily identifiable theme in a story. They can be easily picked out because they are generally represented in a character’s actions or beliefs.

For example, let’s say that we’re writing a story about a cyborg who is living among other humans on some sort of alien planet. Our cyborg, in such an interesting and unique situation could be having all sorts of emotions which would create all sorts of different story lines, motivation, and plot twists. But let’s just say that our specific cyborg is a very angry person because they only became a cyborg after a tragic accident in a car crash when their parents were killed. This anger is the driving force for all they do and all the actions they take. This theme about anger could be two different things. One, the cyborg always succeeds due to this anger and the theme is that anger is a good motivator. Or two, the cyborg is constantly failing, and the theme is that anger is not a good motivator.

This leads us to another concept of theme which is what I call secondary emotional actions. Secondary emotional actions are any variety of emotion fueled actions that a person takes due to a specific surface level emotion. In the example of our angry cyborg perhaps our cyborg discovers that their parents were actually killed because of some sort of political conspiracy by the native aliens who want to retain power on their now human filled planet. Our anger filled cyborg has a lot of different reactions they can have to this but let’s just say, for the ease of concept, that they decide to take revenge on the aliens who murdered their parents. Now the theme centers around revenge in some sort or other. Revenge is a secondary emotional action. Revenge is both an emotion (although it is a secondary emotion because it stems from the surface level emotion anger) and an action.

The third kind of theme that I can think of its conflict-based themes. I would like to point out before continuing with this concept, that emotion-based themes can also be considered conflict based themes, especially themes related to secondary emotional actions. However, conflict-based themes are themes that have no direct link to a character’s motivation or emotional state. These are often themes related to the basic conflicts of man vs man, man vs society, man vs nature, man vs self, and any variation of those four. They can be things such as: when men attempt to destroy nature, nature will fight back. Or even: organized government is not always right. Conflict-based themes are the themes that English teachers usually look for in high school English classes.

There are a lot more kinds of themes out there, but these are, what I feel, are the basic three that are the most common and easiest to spot. I personally have found myself writing all three kinds into a single story before and most of the time there are more than one of each kind.

I hope that this week’s post was helpful. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns feel free to message me in a variety of ways whether that’s through email, this blogs member page, or social media. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media through the links at the bottom of the page. I hope that you have a great week and remember…

Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!