Central Theme

What would you say is the central theme of your work or stories?

edited 6th Jun '13 12:10:00 AM by WSM

I don't know if I really believe in having "a" central theme.

They are there whether you intended them to be or not.

If it has a coherent plot, then there is a "spine" linking it all together.

You can strengthen the spine with good writing, but unless you intentionally make an incoherent Mind Screw Excuse Plot where all the characters are abstract shapes that never speak or move or something like that, you cant remove it. And even if you do somehow remove it, the reader will put it right back in.

You misunderstand. I don't believe in having a singular central theme. I like applicability, and I try to have multiple major themes for my works (often, giving each major character arc or plotline a specific theme) - I'd be both hard-pressed and unwilling to single out one of them as "the" central theme. It's too reductive and simplistic.

Rivalry. At least for Endless Conflict. All the sides are constantly tugging at each other and neither side are either true saints or true sinners. They simply want one side to come out on top.

In an idea I had floating in my head for a game tentatively titled Alexandria, the central theme revolved around a question: "What would you do if you held the key to all knowledge?"

The fic I'm working on is about the dangers of emotional dependency, the role of the individual in changing the world, and (the previous two arising from this), what happens when one allows their past experiences to consume them to the point that they cannot enjoy the present or look to the future.

edited 10th Jun '13 5:44:36 PM by HijackThis

The main themes of my work would be fears and overcoming them. It also deals with the fact that what you find scary might not be scary to others.

I am (none too surprisingly) with nrjxll on this one. Surely I have a number of interconnecting themes, some more pervasive and deeply rooted than others—the terror of pure states and the beauty of the temporary come up a lot—but saying that X or Y is the "central theme" devalues the importance of how the many different themes interweave and play off of one another to form a polyphony of complementary ideas.

Of course, one could argue that synchronicity is the central theme in the greater meta-context of the work given how frequently I use mirroring and contrasting thematic arcs to convey a particular emotion or underlying idea, but that's pretty broad and ambiguous, isn't it? Perhaps a little pretentious, too.

I seem to have ended up with a theme about how colonialism is bad in my work-in-progress novel, despite not even focusing on that. It's too soon to say what the overall theme is, but it's something about religion and faith or something.

I'd say my work's central theme is the eternal nature of the struggle between good and evil, the cyclical nature of the rise and fall of powers, and how they interplay. Sub-themes by installment are identity, the viral nature of evil, the choking effect of establishment, the varying speed of time, the potential dangers of compromise, and the nature of finality.