You've read through what you've written---your first
few scenes, your first chapter, your completed
novel---and you've discovered that your words don't move
you. They don't make you want to keep reading. They
don't make you laugh or cry. If writing is bleeding on
the page, well, you might have scratched yourself, but
you don't need a transfusion. And you don't know what
went wrong.
When you started writing, did you know what story you
were telling? This is trickier than it sounds. You might
have known your characters, you might have known your
world, and you might have known your plot...but even
with this much planning done, it's entirely possible
that you had not yet located your deep layer, the heart
of your story, the engine that drove you to write it in
the first place.
Odds are very good you did not know your theme.
Your theme is nothing more and nothing less than the
heart of a novel. It is not a grade-school exercise in
tedium, that single droning sentence you wrote that told
your reader what you were going to tell him. In a novel,
your theme is a living, vibrant, critical thing. It is
your particular passion in this particular novel summed
up in a handful of words. It is what you need to say.
Need. That's the critical thing in a theme. If you're
writing novels, if you are doing something this complex
and challenging, you're doing it because something in
you needs to write. You have something to express, some
particular point of view, some set of life experiences,
some driven hunger that you must put down on paper. You
NEED. And you need to say what you need.
Maybe it is: In spite of having survived heartbreak, I
believe in true love. Or: I believe good can triumph
over greater evil. Or: If I were King of Everything,
this is the way the world would be.
Your plot is the map of your story. Your theme is the
map of your soul, and it is where your characters will
find their direction, their flaws, their hungers, and
their own passions. They only breathe with your breath,
and they only bleed with your blood. Your plot may be
Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl, but your
theme---your take on the world based on your life, your
own hopes and aspirations, your own beliefs---might be
Chubby Bald Guy Deserves the Love of a Wonderful Woman.
You have themes in you. You've built them from love and
courage, but you've built them from anger and fear, too.
You live with them every day, when you're muttering that
argument you had with your spouse or colleague,
designing better comebacks; when you're watching the
boss cheat someone and you're getting furious about it;
when you're watching a disaster and telling yourself,
Someone could have prevented that; when you're hearing
the latest political garbage and thinking, This is not
the way the world should be.
I could do this better. I WOULD do this better.
And so you write.
You have rich, powerful, compelling, passionate themes
boiling inside you. You have something worth saying. Now
you just need to know how to figure out what it is, and
how to get it on the page.
In Part II: How To Find Your Novel's Pulse, you'll learn
how to identify your themes, and figure out which are
worth pursuing.
Holly Lisle is a full-time novelist who also writes extensively about writing. You can find her website here: HollyLisle.com and sign up here to receive her free newsletter.
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