What is theme? - Heather Dyer

The theme of a book might be considered the underlying ‘message’, or the moral of the story. Or you might call it the values or issues that are explored in the story. Or, as the wonderful Mary Carroll Moore describes theme, it’s the ‘silvery thread that holds a story together, that transmits meaning by the end’. It’s the ‘underground river, like the subconscious movement beneath your story's subject.’

The theme of a book is what a reader is left with, after the story ends. And it’s often only when the story ends that the theme is revealed to the writer, too. Although the theme might be the most important element of a story, it’s usually not decided upon beforehand. It usually emerges, like steam, from between the lines, and isn't fully realized until the final drafts. 

So how do you realize your book’s theme? It’s sometimes difficult. Here are a few things to try:

1. Describe the book you’re writing (or your favourite book) without using any proper nouns. This way, you might discover the feelings, values and events that matter most to you.
2. Freewrite on what the book you’re writing means to you.
3. Free write on what your readers might take away from the book you’re writing. The theme may fall somewhere between 2 and 3. 
4. Freewrite on what you don’t want to write about, or are frightened to write about. 
5. Meditate on questions like: What do I want? or What do I care about? and see what arises. 
6. Imagine that you’re in prison and the guards are confiscating your manuscript. You’re only left with one page; which page would it be? They’re snatching that page out of your hands, and you’re left with only one paragraph. Which paragraph would it be? They take the paragraph, too, and you’re left with only one sentence. Which sentence would it be? Within this sentence may reside your theme.

Or try some of Mary Carroll Moore’s suggestions:

1. Identify the images that occur repeatedly in your writing. What might they symbolize to you?
2. What’s the subtext of the conversations that your characters have? What’s left unsaid? What’s between the lines? These issues might also point to your theme.
3. Where do you use the senses to describe things – particularly sound, smell, touch? Does this usage point to certain theme, or evoke a surprising meaning? 

When you identify your theme, you’ll need to highlight it by using imagery, using the senses, enhancing the subtext in dialogue, or having characters talk openly about these issues. 

Allowing your novel’s theme to reveal itself to you is one of the most interesting and enlightening things about writing. It can show you a lot about what matters most to you. This may not be what you thought it was. Often, a writer will explore – unintentionally – the same themes over and over in each new book. It’s often only when a writer changes in themselves, that their theme changes, too. 

Heather Dyer - children's author and Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow

• For enquiries about creative writing workshops for children or adults, or editorial services, go to www.heatherdyer.co.uk
• For enquiries about academic writing workshops, go to:  http://rlfconsultants.com/consultants/heather-dyer/

What do Your Stories Say About You? - Heather Dyer

Last week I did an event at my local library to promote my new children's book The Flying Bedroom. A few children turned up - but a few adults came along as well - some of whom knew me and perhaps were there out of curiosity about the sort of thing I write.

After the event one of them came up to me and said he'd he loved the ideas in The Flying Bedroom - "so many metaphors!" he said, and looked at me knowingly.

"Yes," I said, self-consciously. "I know."

Perhaps this is why I always feel slightly awkward when reading my stories to adults. Like dreams, our stories are full of symbols – and symbols are the way our unconscious sends us messages. You don't have to be a psychiatrist to figure out the issues I’m still resolving – you just have to read my children’s books.

In fact, they say that the people in our dreams aren’t themselves at all – they just represent alternative versions of ourselves. Might the same be said of the characters in our stories? Might Elinor be me?

In one adventure in The Flying Bedroom, Elinor wakes up and is appalled to find herself in bed on centre stage, with an entire audience waiting for her to perform. Insecure? Moi?

In the next adventure, Elinor finds her bedroom stranded on the moon and longs to get back home again, to that blue-green marble on which resides 'everyone she knew and everyone who'd ever been'. Might she be trying to tell me that, despite the fact that I love living alone, I do need people after all?

Is it Elinor or me who says, 'the world is a big place; it seems a shame to stay in one place all your life when there's a world out there waiting to explore'? - then contradicts herself by saying: ‘it's only when you're far from home that you can see how beautiful it is'? And surely it is Elinor – not I – who speaks the line: "I don't want to kiss Prince Charming!"

The intention to reveal our innermost selves is never intentional - but when we make up stories from the heart, it happens regardless. If we try to deny that our stories reveal something about us,  we're like the psychiatrist's patient who is asked to 'write down his dream and bring it in next week to be analysed’. The patient thinks he'll pull the wool over his psychiatrist’s eyes by making something up from scratch, instead. Then, when the psychiatrist analyses the ‘dream’ the patient says, ‘Ha! But it wasn't a dream - I just made it all up.’

And the psychiatrist just smiles and says, 'same difference’.

Do your stories reveal something about you?

The Devil is in the Detail - Heather Dyer

‘The trivial is sacred’ - OSHO

I think it was the poet Blake Morrison who said, ‘Try and write about The Meaning of Life, and you will end up staring at a brick wall. Describe a brick wall accurately and you may incidentally say something about the meaning of life’. Note his careful use of the word ‘accurately’, here. If you can get close enough and be truthful enough about your subject, you might find big ideas in something very small.

 

If you are looking for a place to begin writing, try starting with small, specific images and objects that interest you. There’s a reason why you’re drawn to these things: perhaps they are symbols that reflect things buried in your unconscious. If you could interpret these images the way that dreams are interpreted, you might reveal what your unconscious wants you to know. You don’t need to interpret the images though, just as you don’t need to dissect a seed to find out what it will become. Just plant it, and see what grows.

For example, you might have the urge to describe the box of buttons that you used to play with for hours as a child, while your mother was working late. You don’t have to know that the piece you are going to write is about loneliness. You just have to describe the box of buttons – get right inside it and see where your thoughts wander. Perhaps it will be in writing this story that you will first realize that you’ve always felt lonely. Maybe only now will you realize that this feeling has affected all the decisions you have ever made. And when you look back at your initial image – that box of odd buttons; each one lost, alone, waiting for a garment to belong to – you might marvel at the wisdom of your unconscious in choosing the perfect symbol to portray your loneliness. But you don’t have to know this in advance. To begin with, all you need to concern yourself with is describing the box of buttons.

This technique can also be applied when you’re stuck in the middle of your story. Instead of trying to look further ahead and predict the ending, try going deeper into the story. It’s like drilling down to tap into an underground river; direction and flow can be found if you drill deep enough in the right place. So, hover above your story. Look down upon your settings, see the characters walking through various scenes, and hear snatches of their conversations. What draws your attention? By digressing in order to describe the details more accurately, more authentically, you might find that you unearth a truth about a character, a setting, or a situation that leads you in the right direction.