What’s in a Theme?
Julia Archer
What life
theme might drive a hero – real or fictional?
‘For to me, to live is Christ and to
die is gain,’ wrote the imprisoned apostle Paul to his friends far away in the Greek city
of Philippi.
As
a theme for a life, it’s hard to beat.
Fiction
writer and teacher James Scott Bell may not share Paul’s theology, but he is
just as passionate that life-or-death stakes must drive your fictional hero.
‘The stakes have to
be death – physical, professional or psychological’, he writes at the outset
of His lively and instructive
book Conflict and Suspense. A successful novel, according
to Bell, is ‘the emotionally satisfying account of how the Lead Character deals with imminent death; the character must realise, with full force, before the
midpoint, what the stakes are & spend the rest of the
novel in a full throttle attempt to avoid death’.
J S doesn’t
mess about, does he?
Of course,
there’s a lot more advice in Conflict and
Suspense than that. But right there on page two of the first chapter, Bell more
or less states his thesis, and the rest of the book either proves it, or
doesn’t. Read it and decide for yourself.
It is at the least highly entertaining and packed
with illustration.
My current
story certainly improved with edits inspired by careful reading of the whole
book.
But his take on theme and conflict proved to be the most helpful to me. Set your
theme early, he said, and make the lead character’s conflict inherent in it.
Hmm.
So I thought
for a few days, and came up with a working theme.
‘Battle to win respect and take your place in your community v quit and remain an outsider.’
Surely
this is the theme of countless stories since the dawn of time, but it also grew
out of the story I’d written so far. I didn’t impose it.
However,
once I had the theme, I read my work with different eyes, asking different
questions. Does this scene power the theme forward? Can I rewrite that subplot
as a variation on the theme? Does this page have conflict-in-dialogue that expands
the theme?
Never
mind does it show Our Hero in a ‘full throttle attempt to avoid death’.
This
is not to suffocate the story in a straitjacket, but to give it coherence and a
constant drive forward to a satisfying conclusion.
I
am still working out the implications of having a clear theme for my story, but
I also wondered, does it apply in real life?
The
apostle Paul had a life theme. In fact, he writes a few variations on the one
quoted at the top of this post.
But
he is not the only biblical character to have one – stated or implied.
Often
displayed in Christian homes is the punchline of Joshua’s farewell address to
the Israelites, summing up his long and adventurous life; ‘As for me and my
household, we will serve the Lord.’
Ruth’s
theme burst from her lips in a scene of high emotion. To her mother-in-law
Naomi the young Moabite woman vowed, ‘Your people will be my people and your
God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.’ That theme
governed the rest of her lovely and gracious life.
Job,
we are told, made his life choice – his theme – to be “blameless and upright;
he feared God and shunned evil.”
The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eleventh
chapter on faith, gives us a wonderful list of life themes of the ancient
Hebrew heroes.
‘By
faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to
save his family.’
‘By
faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his
inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.’
Moses
‘chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the
fleeting pleasures of sin.’ (All quotations from NIV translation of The Bible.)
The
apostle Peter said to Jesus, “We have left all we had to follow you!”
And
quoting a hymn of the early church in his letter to the Philippians, Paul
describes the theme of Jesus’ life, as best a human being can describe it.
So,
in each work of fiction we create, in our devotional pieces, our memoirs, poems
and other writing, what theme are we building with our words?
What
theme might describe our lives as servants of Christ?
Though
chained in a prison cell Paul wrote, “I press on towards the goal to win the
prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
“Full
throttle”, as J S Bell would say.
https://khan-sharif-chronicles.com/
I love how you've expounded on theme both in writing and in life, Julie. I think you've nailed it! I shall be contemplating this more - at both levels. Thanks for all the wonderful examples you've offered from the scriptures. Great, meaty stuff to chew and ponder.
ReplyDeleteYes. What a thought provoking post, Julia. When I was growing up my family had a motto (theme) based on Robert the Bruce. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try and try again. Good theme for an author :). As for my fiction. Sometimes the theme doesn’t appear until I’ve written a draft but by then it’s usually apparent and is a great focus for editing the draft.
ReplyDeleteHi Julia, I love your theme, which surely applies to every single writer along with what we write. I remember once hearing the theme of a story is like the onion in the soup. It's not a showy, in-your-face ingredient, but does add plenty of flavour in the background which we'd miss in its absence.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Julia. Love the way you've explored themes and shared your musings. I think it's good for us to have a theme for our lives and then a theme for our writing lives. Perhaps God's theme is John 3:16? Love how you have ended your blog too - about going full throttle for Jesus. Thanks for your questions and for making us reflect on our writing and our lives.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Delete