What Are Your Story's Themes?

It can be helpful to figure out what are the major themes of your work to work in subtle nuances as you write. The key word here being subtle, as it's easy to go overboard and start being heavy-handed in your attempts to demonstrate the theme. Remember: show, don't tell. This thread is for figuring out what themes are most prevalent in your work and how to best express your theme throughout the story. Passages from your work are welcome here and could be very helpful in accomplishing that.

I always find it difficult to divorce themes from some kind of message, which I don't have. I can, however point out that my main character, Tirisi, is somewhat indiscriminate in his application of violence. There's always a justification, but everyone gets some, and it tends to be an overreaction.

Is the first example I came across as I scanned over my current draft. There's a few more scenarios though, where someone is killed for no reason other than them no longer being necessary. In a similar vein, I appear to have a penchant for people getting stabbed in the eyeball. It's just so deliciously unpleasant.

There's also that (while this isn't a central theme) one of my main characters, Benor seems to focus his energy on performing heroic deeds, and come the end of his arc, he's done exactly that and doesn't feel the elation he'd expected.

I suppose that could come under the idea of someone being traumatised?

Immortality is something of an important aspect, given that Tirisi is a vampire, and approaches most things in life with the assumption that he'll come out on top.

Journey is a fairly important one also, though it's not quite as neat as the one in LOTR, for example. While Benor may settle down at the end of his arc, Tirisi continues doing exactly what he was doing when he first met Benor.

I think I'll leave it at that. No one wants to read an essay about someone's own work. It's borderline onanistic.

In all honesty I am not sure whether or not I should start with particular themes in mind. I can see how having a clear theme in mind can help structure a story, acting almost as an outline, but on the other hand I have heard other, more experienced writers tell me that theme comes only after they start writing.

I laughed out loud when I was reading an article by the lead writer of Borderlands 2. (Emphasis in original, potholes added by myself.)

Just goes to show that sometimes, the theme sort of materializes on its own, and it isn't always the one you had in mind.

edited 23rd Sep '13 5:00:08 PM by KillerClowns

Now that we're talking about themes, there have been a couple that have gnawed at me for some time now even though I've yet to use them in a story:

The Rise and Fall of Civilization: My studies in history, archaeology, and anthropology have planted in me a certain fascination with the idea of "primitive" small-scale societies blossoming into larger civilizations or empires, along with how those "civilized" cultures retain certain vestiges of their tribal beginnings. And then there's the process of how these big empires ultimately break up into smaller factions, in effect reverting them to the original tribal states.

Common Origins for Civilizations: This theme, which has some resemblance to Samuel Huntington's idea of multinational civilizations, states that certain cultures share a common evolutionary ancestry even if they end up diverging from each other. The Bantu expansions in ancient Africa are one example of this, as are the Indo-European expansions of Eurasia.

Unfortunately both of these themes describe historical trends on a national or multinational scale, so converting them to stories centered around individual characters will take some work.

As a general rule, pretty much every theme in my story is intended to have a metatextual layer of writing advice that's more important than the theme itself.

Philosophical Theme/Arc: The coming together and merging of three evolutionary strains: human, posthuman, and cybernetic intelligence. Age (main character due to various circumstances is a 40,000-odd year old Human Popsicle and the last pure human from Planet Earth (as well as the last "Sleepernaut", the last Native American, the last person of his tribe, etc).

Humanistic Theme/Arc: My main character Harry froze his son in stasis during a galaxy wide war because he didn't want the boy to grow up into a fifteen year old soldier. When he woke his son up, the boy's mother had died, and he at first lied about it, earning his son's resentment. The fact that the boy's dad "stole ten years from me" and the chip on the son's shoulder that he looks eleven but he's "really 21" (inaccurate given the nature of Stasis, he still has an 11 y/o's mind) adds to the tension between them. Harry believes that he needs to push his son toward an apprenticeship which is common practice among "Starfarers" (people who spend most of their lives in space) and he and his son join the crew of a tramp freighter that turns out to be more than just another spacecraft, but a link to Earth... or whatever left on Earth has become. Along the way, Harry's son is integrated into the crew and made to feel like an adult. He and Harry reconcile, and then have their minds blown by the Posthuman plot to unify disparate strains of human evolution.