THIS IS IT

I FOUND IT!

From the "what you are in the dark" trope examples for real life.

This is the very, and most direct premise of my ENTIRE BOOK, my entire point, I guess then, is to be what you are in the dark all the time, and not just in the dark, because it is better to be bad and honest with yourself than lie to yourself, as it may lead to realizing just how bad you are with being honest, and through that self-awareness, although it hurts, will make you a better person as you work to improve yourself constantly.

How do I do this?! I have tried many times, but seeing this I knew this is exactly the point I was trying to get across, it is a philosophy of mine, but it manifests itself so many different ways it was hard to pin down until I saw this example.

This is the whole theme of the book, that and human nature, well, human nature is what we are in the dark, so i guess they are related. See?! Like that! This is how it branches out, I see too many applications of it spreading, and I do not know which one I want to be the main theme! Maybe two weeks later my mood will change and I want it to be different.

How will I know when I have the right theme? This truely feels like it though, I dunno though. T His thing in the dark and being honest about it is a MAJOR corner stone of my morality.

Would that be a subversion of 'better to be an honest sinner than a lying saint?'

Please help me with this, you guys are so awesome.

To be honest I don't think the trope concerns honest sinners at all.

You decide on your theme, and that's how you know which theme the story has, if you decide one at all. It's your story.

But what you are in the dark, is what you are when no one is looking.

What you are, most people do not show. It has everything to do with facades, lies, honesty, and yourself in the dark.

Though as for the actual TROPE, I am a not saying these have to do DIRECTLY with that, but that is is very closely related, and at the end I asked if this would actually be a subversion.

Well I take back theme, it isn't the theme per say, but this ties into the theme strongly. Typically I just say human nature, but I run into this problem though: human nature is soo complex, what part of human nature is the theme? What truths will it reveal? What things does my work demonstrate about human nature?

I thought that this could be it, or one of the main things. I am not really sure, how will I know when I have it right? Does everyone have their own magical method to figuring this out? The answer is probably no, and that it is different for everryone, which is why writing is an art and not a science, but that does not stop us giving advice on how to figure this out.

I don't want to know what it is, but how I find that out what it is.

You find it by saying "this is my theme" and then picking up your pen and paper and writing your story.

Alternatively, you can pick up a pen and paper and write your story, and then read through it, and figure out what you were writing about after you've written it.

There's no magic. Just hard work.

its all confusing! I do not know if need the theme and then the story, or the other way around, idk

IDK how to find it and without knowing it i cant get the direction of it.

the thing is I want a theme very much like this, or something very similar. i suspect it is a subtrope or some kind, but I can't figure it out.

I just know i am very close to it here. I know I am making a list of the emotions I want involved when the darkest hour hits and this trope comes into effect, and illiterates one of the key parts of the theme of the 'honest sinner working to get better' attitude I have about life.

But I do not know if this is just the crux of the aesop/theme, or the whole damn thing. "Is it the apple core, or the all the apple?" is what I am asking, how do I find that out. How do I explore this?

Theme is so big, I do not want to write everythign to just change it again so drastically and scrap it again. Would just writing a few plot sensitive scenes help me? Currently I have played the scenes on my head over and over again in different ways and taken notes on the best way to do it, it goes faster than writing, and then using expostion, so that when I read my notes the scene comes into full glory back into my head.

I have made a bunch of rough diamonds, and I keep trying chipping away the big parts before I realize which one is the best quality to make the base of the story. If I just cut every single one reguardless I may never get to it, and end up with a bunch of junk.

Also part of a problem I have, motivation decay. I get motivated to write, lose it part way through, and half the scene is terrible. My typing cant keep up with the expositon in my head, so i start to focus on stuff instead of keep up with the thoughts, and quality decays.

Damn, I wish I could type as fast as I talk... I talk 30% the speed I think (still really fast), and type about 10% the speed I think at about best.

"Also part of a problem I have, motivation decay. I get motivated to write, lose it part way through, and half the scene is terrible. My typing cant keep up with the expositon in my head, so i start to focus on stuff instead of keep up with the thoughts, and quality decays. "

This is your main problem.

I have this problem too. Motivation is not what powers your writing. You are what powers your writing. If you lose the motivation,. hold onto yourself and your purpose and keep writing, even when it's bad. Finish the story, even when it's awful. That's what re-writing is for.

I take the second option because I'm not much of a planner and I change my mind several times on when I'm writing, so it's a lot easier for me to look at what I've written and decide on a theme and edit from there than it is for me to keep changing my mind about the theme.

This is why I'd say it's a bad idea to write your "key scenes" to decide your theme, because if I would do that I wouldn't end up using the scenes anyway because by the time I got to that point in the story everything would be completely different. If you're very, very, very good at following a plan, that might help. I don't know.

And anyway, theme isn't really important when you're writing if you don't want to deal with it. It's really one of those things English teachers decide for you. Your first mission is to make an interesting story. If the story isn't interesting, all is lost.

well ya, but theme is central.

tho I wrote a couple of key scenes in a type of dialogy/outline, without the enviroment mentioned, just character, talk, and action to see if the feel is right, and I think I thought too much into it.

From what I can tell, I do not think I will have any one central theme. Just finished polishing the "empathy hooks" and figured out where to place them all.

I am good about following an outline... mostly. I go out of the lines sometimes in the moment, but for the most part the intention is exactly the same, and it is essentially the same thing. I use a lot of freedom with my plan.

I think it is planned out enough to where I will actually write the entire first full draft soon, just finish out the "skeleton" scenes, and if it all feels consistent mood with what i want, I will actually write the first draft following those, fixing teh small passages, and adding a crapload of text to make it vivid. It more looks like a movie script at the moment, I pretty much wrote it in that style.

ugh. I'll read some on theme, but perhaps I have many, or it isn't obvious, but I wanted it to be one that I thought was very true, but not often noticed one, one that will influence someone's views possibly and make people think.

Lord of the Flies was really good about that... good book. I wanted an effect like that in my reader's minds, like when I read it. Oddly, in that class I was the only one to notice that the theme of most of the stories we read was human nature, one of the best English Classes I ever had. I told her at the end of the year, and she says in all her years nearly everyone misses that, and only a few really smart ones get it. It was fucking bleeding obvious to me at the end of the year. After about 5 months I noticed it might be a pattern. A couple of days before the end of the school year I told her I noticed they were all connected by a theme, and she asked what it was.

"Human nature"

I got so much praise. felt good. just never commented cause i didnt know if it was intentional or not. hmmm

tbh I wanted to give a cynical theme with a positive spin on it, that is what I am going for. but hey, "the journey is more important than the end or the start" as Linkin Park says. Perhaps this will come out of it latter, but for now, I think I realize it would be benifical to not worry to much about the theme and just say "it is about people" as the theme or something really vague on purpose if I am asked.

edited 22nd May '11 10:17:41 AM by jasonwill2

Just so you know, "human nature" isn't a theme. A theme is what the author is trying to say. A theme is more like "human nature is fundamentally bad and needs to be punished into submission" is a theme. People get "theme" and "motif" mixed up a lot, because how a theme is used in novels is not the same as a theme in musical composition.

truths about human nature was the themes... each work had a different theme, but it was always about human nature.

herm herm [deep thinking mumble]. I really do not know what else to say. So I just turn into a zombified corpse and crank stuff out? I did that for Nano Wrimo, but, it felt different. hell, i might just do it anyway, but i dread getting it started in a way, i dont remember how i did it with nano.

it isn't writers block so much as i feel timid about starting to write a bunch, dunno why. maybe i am afraid i will want to throw it all away again part way through, or maybe i do not think i have somethign down yet that i should before writing...

a) waste more time

b) figure out what it is

c)just write the damn thing and fix it later

d) give up

e) wait, this is a fucking first draft!!! why should this intimidate me, make it suck on purpose I say! don't give an honest fuck, write for myself first, then fix up the fucking bitch and make her a classy lady. state things really dumbly, dont worry about flow, tell and dont show, and then damn go back and reverse it all later!

I am leaning to e, someone tell me what to do. Please tell me E is the best choice. If I just give a "I dont give a fuck" attitude for my first FULL draft, will that help me? I hate getting stuck half-way in the manuscript.

lol I do not even have parts of the first draft, from... 2006? No, it was 2004-2005. Second draft was 2005-2006, and the third draft was 2009. I started some on this current draft, "3.5" not terribly long ago, maybe around New Years I started planning, after writing a non-canonical Nano Novel set in my 'verse got me back into it.

What You Are in the Dark is... not something you should strive to be all the time.

Despite what TV tells you, sometimes it is better to lie. For example, when in polite company, or when trying to interact socially.

Not if what you are in the dark isn't that bad. I mean, I don't do violent things, but sometimes I want to, but that is different, I am holding back. Besides, most of the time I don't want to hurt someone, just yell at them, and I have done that in public before.

If I have a beef with someone, I tell them. I am not afraid to show my frustrations, fears, desires, or ambtions or hide my beliefs if it comes up. I don't lie about myself. If someone asks something about me, I am dead honest.

Though it has made me a target before, most probably assume I am darker than that, but it really does not go terribly deeper. I am on full on display for people to see, and sometimes this makes me easy to manipulate unfortunately.

I don't intend to hurt people, as I don't want to. What I am in the dark is still a good person. The only thing I do in the dark that I don't around people is sing terribly and talk to myself and do some weird mannerisms that would make people look at me weird if I did them in front of them. Otherwise, my thoughts and actions are the same. Even then, I talk to myself in public sometimes under my breath.

Anyway, I do not think it is that bad, I think it is better to be HONEST with yourself and other people, and not hide it. I am not saying wack someone, but don't act all sweet and nice when down deep you are boiling with rage. let them know you are angry in an honest, but in an appropriate way.

I am on here what I am in the Dark.

what you are in the dark = who you are when no one is around = what i am when i am around people = i am not two-faced or have facades

Anyway, any advice on theme/motif/ stuff like this? I seem to have some terminology mixed up and have been having communication errors.

I feel familiar with the regions you chart into; the darker portion of humanity's nature. More raw, more naked, some may say more truer to ourselves. For me, it is something of a deep fascination. We may consider these instincts as evil, from what follies people have committed under them — even though we have inherited them evolutionarily from our ancestors, the primates who fight naturally for their territory. (It is not evil for the sake of being evil.) Always remember though, we have our lighter side too, and the Apple's core is not the Apple as a whole. When we learn to acknowledge this aspect of ourselves instead of repressing this closet, we may learn to make good out of it.

That's what my Aesop was going for. That is more or less the point of it all really, I think. The story isn't constructed from it, it is easy to make it work, but I didn't know if it was tilted in some other way. I know its aesop is about human nature, but I am not sure how I want to portray, as a whole, the issue.

I just keep asking myself "what do I want the readers to hear?" I believe that I have a limited right to say what the proper interpretation is of part of the work, unless I state otherwise that it can be taken in any way, or set it up on purpose to be interpreted different ways ( a couple of characters are designed to cause alternate character interpretations, and make you question who is really the bad guy, this helping hand who tries to kill you sometimes, or the bad guy all along?)

but then what is theme? so confusing all these words.

aesop=moral

theme=?

??=??