What I mean to say is I’ve found identifying and developing ‘theme’ makes me swear like a sailor. Theme is that tertiary-level ‘aboutness’ that often makes a fiction novel more thought-provoking, more cohesive, and more enduring after the plot’s surface-elements recede from our attention. So, if you’ve got theme(s), ‘good’ is your four-letter word. But if they’re scurrying just out of reach, ‘hate’ might be the first of many four-letter words that come to the author’s mind.
Fiction’s Necessary Elements: Plot, B-Story, Theme
Genre writers (like me) and debut writers (again, me) may struggle the most with themes. We’ve got a story in our heads. That story is plot-driven, action-oriented, suspense-packed, wit-brimming, and trope-bending. And isn’t all that just hard enough to pull-off?
But wait, good fiction also needs a protagonist’s B-Story: the inner mis-understanding, self-sabotaging flaw, or false constraint. This flaw complicates conflicts, deepens emotions, jeopardizes plans, and even invalidates goals. Readers seem to love when the flaw looms as an existential threat to our hero. Harry’s aloneness bordering on suffocation under the Dursleys’ muggl-ization, for instance. Fine, you say, I’ll add a relatable flaw the character must overcome (else be crushed beneath) before the final scene. Not always easy.
(B-Story can be simple, but epic ones aren’t. Luke had resigned himself to being a powerless, whiny moisture-farmer, but then learned he could be more, could trust his inner voice, and thus boom! goes the Deathstar. Luke initially told himself a lie. The inner-journey-heavy B-Story is where such lies get confronted and dismantled, and that’s its hard part. I’ll just write “B-Story” not “lying B-Story” below, ok?
But wait again, because good fiction also needs to explore one or more topics related to society, life, or the human condition. Best if the novel explores these topics from multiple angles, at a minimum evolving in depth or nuance alongside the protagonist’s B-Story. Should the non-protagonists grapple with this topic too, especially in contrast to the hero’s way, so much the better.
By the end, the reader should (even subconsciously) have enough exposure to the themes they’ve formed a life-lesson. Yet, heaven forbid you beat the reader about the head in some preachy way (lookin’ at you, Ayn Rand!). Dang! Theme isn’t easy at all.
What four-letter word comes to mind for you here? You’re afraid to utter it, though, lest Good Literature next demand your novel include symbolism, like rain-equals-baptism or something.
What is Theme? A Practical Definition for Novelists
Parallel to the way scenes form a causal-chain (in plot and/or in B-Story) that motivates/forces later scenes, so too could a theme lend consistency to character-arc progressions, plot challenge responses, etc. It gives characters logically cohesive values and opinions. It has the story “add up” to something.
Theme is an aspect of life we see influencing choice, maybe in a way that prepares us, the reader, to handle that part of life ourselves.
In any given scene, you might explore an idea. Repeat the idea a few times, we’ll call it a ‘motif’. Have choice and consequence, ‘theme’. Thus “death” might be an idea, repetition of “so it goes” refrain after several deaths is a motif, but a theme comes from what we say about that idea. Maybe war (and other poorly-rationalized inhumanity) causes senseless death is a theme, or the inescapability of death puts a limit on free-will, or the human spirit dies when fed enough tragedy.
The Origin of Theme: NaturE vs. Nurture
I doubt most (genre-)writers first set out to express a theme, only inventing their story plot as a delivery-vector thereof. Instead, writers often get pretty far into their draft only then to notice (or hunt for) recurrent patterns: the ideas that caused an interaction, or informed a choice, or fueled a conflict. Reedsy has a high-level list of 12 theme-recognition-spurring topics. Multiple sites give guidelines for then pruning scenes of non- or extraneous-theme and avoiding other theme mistakes.
Kurt Vonnegut, in contrast, gave a profound piece of writing advice: Find a subject you care about. That is, a passion that others need to be passionate about too. Such gives your writing life. After all, a writer is first and foremost a teacher.
This implies a lot of Vonnegut’s work started with a theme in mind (an at-birth/nature origin). Slaughterhouse Five sure feels like it had themes at birth. Yet the novel took twenty years to crystalize (perhaps because the author’s war experiences held only unspeakable themes until he himself could process them. Back to a nurture origin). So, I think the nature-v.-nurture answer is yes, both.
B-Story: Nature vs. Nurture?
Okay, say you’ve started with a story (a plot) but now you need to de-trite-ify it by making the hero relatable, emotionally open, and jeopardized by something they need to grow out of. Can writers evolve B-Story as the novel takes shape? Why not? Take a few personal foibles and distill them with some heat.
The heroine is an oddly finickity eater, say. Why? She’s set in her habits because exploring new things has proven unsafe? Or because she’s had her tastes imposed on her by those seeking to control her? Or because she can’t see past the ‘best practices’ of a world that no longer exists? By having her run through her thought processes before various decisions in the novel, you start to decide which of those deeper issues (fear, subjugation, calcification, …) exist. And thus how those issues must be overcome before the heroine can win her true goal.
(The Greek word ἁμαρτία is used in Tragedy to indicate a character flaw or other judgement lapse that leads to downfall. It’s also the word the New Testament translates as “sin”. Let your creative brain mull that awhile!)
‘Essential’ Fiction Elements? Too Strong a Word?
Okay, let’s be practical about B-Story. There you are, writing your series (and who isn’t?) and … what, pray tell, are you going to give Jack Reacher for his character flaw in book 29? A 29th flaw? And how do you explain all these? Are they serial or parallel? I mean, starting out life with 29 fatal-flaws would make Jack an utter basket-case! Jack, I suspect, has much the same texture to his personality book-to-book, e.g. in how he relates to others. We don’t expect any book to ‘fix’ those personal foibles, just build identity with them.
But no flaws? No inner-conflicts? Do we like Mr./Ms. Perfect? Well, I dunno, I mean I did rent The Chronicles of Riddick and Captain Marvel, but would I say I felt a rapport with their heroes? … Meh.
Can you also get by without any/distinct theme(s)? Well, they’re going to appear, whether you intend them to or not, and the series will probably repeat some evergreen themes. Maybe Jack Reacher always brings some justice-vs.-law explorations, always an individual-vs.-the-system commentary, etc. But you may find you need to prune or reframe some of your novel’s ideas so the book’s not scattershot with shallow asides. ‘Kill your darlings’ may be about more than purple-prose and unmotivated/ing scenes.
Theme & B-Story in ‘The Curse of the Unholy Grail’
Alright, the abstract theory out of the way, how am I applying this to my upcoming novel, The Curse of the Unholy Grail? First and foremost, as mentioned up top, my aim was a page-turning, nail-biting, popcorn-eating, fun story. But now I need to check its nutrition label.
The B-Story is protein-rich. FBI Agent Nicole Lange specializes in arms-trafficking and terrorism-funding crimes, fields she’s chosen after a terrorist took the lives of her parents twenty years ago. One frustration all this time was finding the man responsible, and it’s driven her to the edge of burn-out, resentment and guilt. Until she learns she’s already been investigating that villain. At once, her raison d’être morphs from Justice to Revenge.
This flaw motivates several plot-decisions. Most notably, it lets her so eagerly accept the Faustian bargain to be remade a dhampir. Additionally, she can’t bring herself to make strategic choices that are at odds with saving innocent lives, even if it paints a target on her back. Making choices that put friends in danger, though … Making choices that sacrifice legality (and her FBI Agent self-identity), …
Revenge, it seems, is very debut-novelist-friendly. This was 70% nature (chosen upfront), 30% nurture (discovered, revised in medias res).
Will Book Two have a ‘Lying B-Story’ (assuming I ever publish Book One)? Maybe. Not one so high-stakes, though.
The book’s themes offer some good micro-nutrients, too. Identity is a major subject (as teased in Your Next Read Should be About Dhampirs). On this, we explore questions such as are ‘heroes’ always paragons of light, or are they the ones who do what’s called for? Can a person balance light and dark aspects of their nature, or must one side surrender to the other? Are being a ‘monster’ and being ‘inhuman’ really independent concepts?
Even the notion of vampire is explored. There are humans in the story who derive their sense of self from stifling the full potential, agency, and ‘innocence’ (sort-of) of our heroine. A hunger to disapprove. Someone who grows in strength by taking another’s strength. A ‘vampire’. We also have actual vampires whose patron (see World-Building in the Unholy Grail) is a (redeemed fallen-)angel, and they fight alongside Nikki to save the world. So, … is how you behave more important than your biological phenotypes?
Those were like 45% nature, 65% nurture! Very humbling, but apparently not uncommon for writers. Theme, it seems, comes from attention more than intention.
Wrap-up
We’ve touched on some of the second-order qualities that make a story an engaging read: B-Story and Theme. And I’ve confessed that when first asked “what themes do you explore”, the question gave me hives. But it’s rare for authors to have themes in mind at the start. More often themes are discovered as you go (or as you re-read) and you come to feel the story would be made stronger by referencing or expanding/emphasizing those ideas in revision. You don’t have to have a profound observation or inviolate stance, in fact leaving room for the reader’s conclusions works best.
If you’ve thoughts or experiences here, please do leave a comment below. And thanks for reading.
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