Implementing Theme

Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks, offers six core competencies of a great story. In my last post, I started discussing theme. I'd like to finish it off now and move on. Like I've said before, theme is difficult for me to understand, so I'm going to rely heavily on Mr. Brooks and his ideas for implementing theme.

Mr. Brooks says something very comforting on the first page of this chapter: "If you have complete control over the character arc... theme can sometimes take care of itself. You don't have to have an agenda to speak to the truth of life, you simply need to explore and illuminate the experiences of your characters and the consequences of their choices."

You've got to be careful to not turn your novel into a soapbox or a sermon, though. Hitting theme TOO hard will turn away readers faster than a roach sandwich. Think of theme as a continuum, a scale from 0 to 10. A zero has absolutely no theme (like the TV show Seinfeld). A 10 is outright propaganda, like something from L. Ron Hubbard (he's selling you his worldview). Exploration of theme would fall in the mid-zone, and that's exactly where you want to be. 

By exploring your character's feelings and experiences through the novel, you build theme. "If your hero learns a lesson or two over the course of your story, it stands to reason that the reader has been exposed to that very same lesson." For example, your hero abuses alcohol because he was abused as a child by alcoholic parents. In the story, he's got goals: He Must Save The Day. In order to do so, he must conquer his alcohol abuse problem. By exploring that inner demon, by showing the reader how the hero tries and fails and tries and fails and finally conquers, you've woven a theme into your novel. (Side note: having your hero wake up one day and decide to join AA would not do it. There's got to be a great motivator, a natural choice, some emotional or physical impetus, a lesson learned the hard way, that drives your hero to seek help. Don't make it too easy to conquer that inner problem, or the story will fall flat.)

In summary, "Simply having the hero explore and experience an issue, and then conquer the inner forces that would otherwise defeat him, becomes the execution of theme." 

I think we can all do that.

-Sonja

Defining Theme

 Larry Brooks's book, Story Engineering, offers six core competencies of a great story. I've covered the first two (concept and character). In my last post, I said my next post was going to be more about character. I've changed my mind. I'm skipping the rest of the stuff Mr. Brooks said about character and moving straight into the third core competency, which is theme. 

(This is a theme park. Not the same thing as theme. And my friend took this photo, so I don't have to pay a royalty for using someone else's pic of Disneyland. Isn't technology fabulous?)

For me, theme is trickiest of the core competencies. I have a hard time defining it in my own words. I have a hard time figuring it out when someone else uses their own words to define it. Mr. Brooks says theme is "what the story means. How it relates to reality and life in general. What it says about life and the infinite roster of issues, facets, challenges, and experiences it presents... theme is the relevance of your story to life...Theme is what makes you think," he continues, "what makes you feel... what will make [readers] remember it and treasure it." 

Theme is what the reader takes from the story.

I've heard many writers say that they don't worry about incorporating theme into their stories. They write what they write, and at the end, theme emerges. I'll admit I've done that very thing, mainly because I had no clue HOW to create a theme on purpose. My beta readers said they loved the theme of my book... and I have no clue it got in there, because I didn't consciously put it there. It just appeared, as if by magic.

It's not magic. I think, at some subconscious level, I must understand theme enough to make it emerge from my stories. The hard part is figuring out how that happened so I can do it again, and even more importantly, teach other writers how to do it. That's the topic of my next post, because that's what the next chapter is about. So stay tuned for "implementing theme."

Questions? Comments?

-Sonja 

Six Core Competencies

Larry Brooks at Storyfix.com ran a holiday special last December that I took advantage of, and I thought I'd share (over the course of the next umpteen posts) some of the details I learned from him and his book. I'll talk more later about what I learned from the feedback he gave me. First, I want to start with an introduction of Mr. Brooks and some of the concepts he teaches in his his book, Story Engineering.

Story Engineering is about the Six Core Competencies: the six things necessary to building a successful story. If one (or more) of these things is missing, or poorly done, the story won't be great. So it makes sense to study them. Here they are:

1. CONCEPT - This is the main idea behind the story. Sometimes it develops from a "what if" question (like what if an ordinary boy learns that he's a wizard, or what if a hobbit takes a journey to dispose of a deadly ring). Sometimes it comes from a newspaper article, or a dream, or a statement overheard from a stranger. It doesn't matter where this seed comes from. What matters is that it's powerful enough to sustain an entire novel.

2. CHARACTER - Without a great character to root for, the reader won't become engaged in the story or have a powerful emotional experience (that's Randy Ingermanson's phrase, but it works here beautifully). As Larry says, "we don't need to like him... but we do need to root for him."

3. THEME - I'll admit, I'm not an expert on theme. I'm not quite sure I understand it. But according to Larry, every great story must have a theme, "what your story is illuminating about real life."

4. STRUCTURE - Yep, even Pantsers will admit this. Novels need a structure. Larry says there are "expectations and standards" regarding structure, and novelists who wish to see their works in print are wise to follow those standards.

5. SCENE EXECUTION - "A story is a series of scenes with some connective tissue in place," says Larry. These scenes also have guidelines. A great novelist will master them.

6. WRITING VOICE - As a writing teacher, this is the hardest of the core competencies to teach. Voice comes through practice - it's what makes Stephen King's works read so very differently from Norah Roberts. It's the author's unique spin, the syntax, the sound. Larry believes that voice can get in the way of a great novel, and that less is better than more. I'm not sure I agree with him, but this is his list, and voice is definitely a part of storytelling.

There you have it. Without these six pieces, you can't have a great story. I'm going to go in-depth on these core competencies over the next however many months it takes to thoroughly discuss the wisdom in this book. It was exactly what I needed to get my eighth book written, and my entire ninth book is based on the things I learned. I now wish to share them with you. 

So stay tuned! There is a lot of great stuff coming.

-Sonja