Writing a good story is complicated. You have to somehow weave a cohesive narrative out of a chaotic storm of inspiration.
If you’re like me, you end up with hundreds of different ideas for characters, locations, and scenes just for one story. Without a clear through line, a spine holding everything together, your story will be a mess.
The more books I’ve written, the more I’ve realized that the core of any great story is theme. Not only that, but every character, scene, and subplot can be traced back to that central theme. To show you what I mean, I’d like to share a visual analogy I call the Story Tree.
But first things first—let’s get clear on what exactly theme is. It might not be what you think.
I. A Unifying Idea
Theme can be a complicated and confusing concept, in large part because of how vague its definition seems. So for the purposes of this video, I’m defining theme as your story’s Unifying Idea. It’s the simple question or statement that your story exists to explore.
Note that I said simple, not simplistic. A solid theme is clear and can be expressed concisely in a single sentence. That doesn’t mean it’s basic or lacking in depth. In fact, the theme should be the deepest question in the entire story, the most profound idea present in the narrative. The level of profundity can vary widely depending on the story, of course. If you’re writing a children’s book, it’ll probably have a more straightforward and self-evident theme than a lengthy piece of literary fiction.
But a theme isn’t so simple as to be summed up in a single word. Death is not a theme. Nor is war or friendship or revenge. Without a statement or question surrounding each of those words, it’s just a vague topic. A theme has something specific to say or ask.
For instance, say you want your theme to be about the topic of revenge. Your theme could be, “Revenge only fuels the cycle of violence.” Or it could be a question, like, “Is revenge ever truly justified?” The reason I say your theme could be a question is because you as the writer may not have a specific message you want to convey, but an open-ended mystery you want to explore. This is often the case with my stories. Sometimes, through the course of writing the story, I find an answer. Sometimes, I leave it to the reader to make up their mind. One of the most annoying things a story can do is preach at you, so framing your theme as a question practically ensures that can’t happen.
Whether your theme is a statement or a question, it’s your duty as the storyteller to explore both or all sides of it. Even if the writer has taken a side, the most honest stories present multiple perspectives on the theme, and stay away from caricature.
But why should you have only one Unifying Idea? Why limit yourself to a single central theme?
Screenwriter Robert McKee in his book Story calls this the Controlling Idea. What he writes here I think wonderfully sums up why having this singular thematic center is so important. He’s talking about films, but of course, this applies to all kinds of stories.
“The more beautifully you shape your work around one clear idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in your film as they take your idea and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives. Conversely, the more ideas you try to pack into a story, the more they implode upon themselves, until the film collapses into a rubble of tangential notions, saying nothing.”
And perhaps the worst thing a storyteller can do is say nothing with their story.
Another reason it’s so important to have a single theme is that it makes your story more memorable. It’s a lot harder to remember a story with an essay’s worth of thematic ideas than a story with one clear message at its heart.
Chances are, your reader has consumed hundreds if not thousands of stories, and will continue to do so in the future. And chances are, you won’t just write one story in your entire life. So there’s no need to cram as many thematic concepts as possible into one story. With every additional theme, you dilute your story’s potency. Focus is clarity.
Speaking of clarity, there’s an essential distinction to be made here in defining theme. The word “theme” is also often used to describe what I prefer to call “motifs.” They’re recurring ideas, symbols, and forces at play throughout the story.
For an example of the difference between theme and motifs, let’s look at Macbeth. It’s been on my mind because I just rewatched The Tragedy of Macbeth, which is one of my favorite films and an influence on my current work in progress, Catalyst of Control. And I think the writer, a little-known up-and-comer by the name of Shakespeare, happens to be pretty great at what he does.
The theme of Macbeth, the story’s Unifying Idea, is that unchecked ambition leads to destruction. You see this destruction play out on multiple levels—Macbeth loses his morality, his mind, and eventually his life, and destroys the lives of many others in his pursuit of power. This theme is the backbone of the story, what everything connects to.
But if you look up “themes of Macbeth,” you’ll find a lot more than just that central idea. Good versus evil, loyalty, fate, appearance versus reality, supernatural influences, morality, guilt. All of these are definitely present in the story. But they’re not themes in the sense I’ve been talking about.
What makes these motifs and not Unifying Ideas? Well, for one, they’re not nearly as omnipresent. They recur throughout the story, but none is an undercurrent in every scene. And importantly, they’re not statements or questions. “Unchecked ambition leads to destruction” is a theme. “Fate” is not. Nor is “good versus evil,” although it seems closer. A theme has something important to declare. A clear message, or a specific question.
Motifs also play an important role, and they serve as secondary through lines to tie the story together. But they’re not the Unifying Idea, without which the story has no core.
II. The Story Tree
Let’s imagine your story is a tree. I think of its theme as the trunk. It’s what everything else branches out from. Characters and subplots may branch out in their own directions, but in a good story, they can all be traced back to the central theme. If they can’t, they probably don’t serve the story very well.
Your story tree may be well-pruned, where everything has a clear purpose and connection to the theme. Or it might be a less tamed tree, with branching tangents that may not at first appear relevant to the theme. But ultimately, it’s one tree, and everything can be traced back to the trunk.
Tying everything back to a central theme works on all scales of narrative. For a short story, where economy is all-important, it ensures everything contributes to the story’s idea. It minimizes fluff. For an expansive saga, it keeps the story from getting too unwieldy and convoluted. It also gives you clear paths to take the story down, following related or contrasting themes.
To extend this analogy further, you could say the roots of the tree are your own experiences and beliefs. They’re a lot more expansive and varied than the single trunk, but they come together to form the foundation of your story’s theme. This brings up another important point—if you don’t have any strong feelings about or personal connection to your theme, the roots of your story will be shallow and sparse. If you don’t really care about your theme, your readers will feel that. But drawing from your own life and unique perspective, you’ll naturally arrive at themes that resonate with you.
Tying everything in your story to a central theme will ensure a certain kind of cohesion, but it doesn’t guarantee a logical narrative flow. To craft a story that’s cohesive in both theme and the progression of its plot, you need causality.
Each scene leads to the next in a string of cause and effect until the end. Every event in your story should be a domino that tips over a larger domino, until you reach the biggest at the climax.
This doesn’t mean you have to tell your story linearly. Especially if you’re dealing with multiple subplots, not every scene will lead directly into the next, since you’ll be jumping around between different branches of the plot. But as long as those branches all come from the same trunk, this cutting-back-and-forth style of storytelling doesn’t feel too jarring or hard to follow. So by tying everything back to a central theme and following the natural progression of causality, you’ll write a story that holds together both thematically and logically. Fail to do one or both of those things, and you’ll end up with a pretty big mess on your hands.
III. The Heart of Story
Why does theme matter? Why not write a story without a theme?
To me, story is theme. So is character and setting and plot. Everything springs out from that Unifying Idea.
You might think character or plot is the heart of a story, but what are those things but extensions, manifestations of theme?
Your protagonist’s internal flaw, which informs every aspect of their character, should be rooted in the theme. Secondary characters exist to embody a range of different viewpoints on the theme. The story’s narrative arc is all about the expression and exploration of a theme, and the climax is the definitive thematic moment, usually validating the central thematic statement. Even locations and imagery can be rooted in theme, creating visual contrasts and parallels with thematic significance.
This might seem reductive, and maybe it is, but it holds true in almost every successful story. I think the centrality of theme in storytelling speaks to something within us. The reason many of us write stories—to ask big questions, to express important ideas, to share profound truths.
I’m a very theme-centric writer. For me, I write most of my stories because of the themes they’ll allow me to explore. I start with a thematic question and build everything around that. But this is just my way, not the way. Some writers don’t think about theme at all when they’re starting to write a story. That’s perfectly fine. Often, even without thinking consciously about theme, one will emerge naturally by the story’s end.
Sometimes, if you start out with an idea of what the story’s theme should be, the story will show you, so to speak, that its real theme is something entirely different.
The important thing is that, whether you had it in mind from the start or not, your story has one central theme holding everything together.
Even if you don’t intentionally give your story a theme, readers will instinctively or subconsciously look for one. We want to find the Unifying Idea of every story. We want to know why this story is being told. What’s the point? What question or message is this all about? Because without one, a story feels arbitrary, piecemeal, and kind of like a waste of time.
Again, perhaps the worst thing a storyteller can do is have nothing to say.
Which is why having a Unifying Idea at the heart of your story is essential. With that central theme, that strong trunk, you can write a story that truly matters to you and your readers.
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– Grayson Taylor
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