What is the Theme of your Story?
I once heard a Newbery medalist tell of the time her grandson called to ask about the theme of her famous novel. He needed to know what it was for a class assignment.
She thought for a moment, then said, “I suppose the theme is . . .”
The next time she heard from her grandson he wasn’t very happy. He’d gotten a D on his assignment.
I am always honored to have my novels read in classrooms, and I do think theme can be part of a meaningful discussion about any piece of fiction.
(Conversely, though, I hate having my novels presented as object lessons, as though I wrote On My Honor to teach children not to swim in rivers.)
But I, too, would probably get a D for my attempt at naming the theme of any of my stories.
Why is that?
Because my relationship to the theme of my stories is almost always entirely an unconscious one. To start with theme when I’m gathering my story, to even think about theme when I’m executing it is to make explicit what should be hidden away. The best stories carry their meaning in their hearts.
Writing a story to make a point is like stamping an idea on my readers’ foreheads. Even the most excellent ideas don’t live long stamped on foreheads.
Readers who live my stories, who feel my stories through my characters, are changed by an experience, not simply fed an idea.
I remember a long-ago letter from a student who had read On My Honor. She said, “It’s like it was saying something important, but I don’t know what. Still, I cried.”
She couldn’t name my story’s theme, but she felt its truth.
If I had to choose between the two, the choice is obvious.
The named theme will be forgotten, along with a lot of the rest of that day in school. Feeling “something important” will stay.
I don’t mean to suggest that feeling and meaning are the same thing. Most of us resent the tears brought on by a Hallmark commercial. We feel manipulated, not enlightened. And when we turn off the TV, the easy tears are forgotten.
But if there is meaning in a story, it is because the story is asking important questions. Often questions too large to be answered in words. And when questions have no ready answers, our feelings can make their meaning accessible.
Yet today I’m struggling with a new novel. And I’m struggling because this time theme seems to be preempting story. Instead of starting with action that grows out of my character’s struggle, my usual launching point, I find myself searching for action to fit my meaning. My process turned inside out.
And surprise! It’s not working.
This is a new problem for me. (My writing career seems to be a long progression of finding new problems to tackle.) Usually, a story begins in my mind with a character’s struggle. Next in my own understanding of what I’m doing comes the story’s climactic moment, the one that struggle carries us toward. It’s a moment that elicits strong feeling in me, so if I write it well, it will elicit strong feeling in my readers.
I never ask myself what that climactic moment means. I just feel it and write it and leave the meaning to play itself out.
For readers to feel. For teachers to name.
And if I know that meaning myself, I know it in a way that lies beneath all-knowing.
Stamping meaning in the middle of a young reader’s forehead is easy.
Eliciting strong feelings is easy, too.
But it’s the moment that brings meaning and feeling together that brings my story to life. And anticipating writing that climactic moment gives me energy for this painstaking, thrilling work.
Yet here I am. My new story has arrived inside out. Or maybe it’s upside down. In any case, I know the meaning, but I have yet to find the action that will bring that meaning to life.
I tell myself that at least I’m writing something after producing nothing at all for too many months. And I am enormously grateful for that.
My hope, though, is that when I can finally forget what my story means, when I can put that out of my mind entirely, I’ll find a good story waiting.
One that has meaning for my heart.
One that teachers can then translate into theme.
Photo by WanderLabs on Unsplash
