What Is Theme, and How Can We Use It to Engage Our Readers?

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now, here's your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. Episode 29. Today we're tackling one of the most misunderstood but vital elements of writing fiction. Today is all about theme. What is it and how do we get it working in our story?

Welcome back to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. My name is Brad Reed, and I'm really excited to be bringing today's topic to you. It's one of those things that might give you unpleasant flashbacks to that high school English class where the concept of theme was one of those elusive, confusing pieces of literary technique that never quite clicked for you.

So if that's the case, you're not alone. As a high school English teacher myself, I watched students come into my class with the same glassy-eyed hesitation when I start talking about theme that you may have had. But the good news is that they leave my class understanding what theme is and why it's so important in a piece of writing. And that's what we're going to be doing today.

So we're going to take it a step further today and go beyond just finally understanding what we're talking about when we're talking about theme and begin to explore how we can use theme to make our writing more relevant, more powerful, more compelling for our readers. But before we dive into theme today, I want to mention that the real-time revision video that we uploaded on this last Thursday, I think that's video 24 in that real-time revision series, it's all about theme. So if you find that after today's episode, you'd like to see how I identify and implement theme in my own writing, check out that video. It's part of our free to everyone Patreon rewards, and you can find it either on the podcast website at bradreedwrites. com or on our Patreon page at patreon. com slash bradreedwrites.

And again, we've made all of our resources over there free for everyone, whether or not you're a Patreon team member. So if you find value in what you find there, we simply ask that you consider throwing a few bucks a month our way to help keep the show up and running as part of that Patreon team. I also wanted to remind you this week about the opportunity you have to be a guest host on the podcast. I've talked to some of you guys about this already, and I'm finding something kind of interesting, that a lot of you don't feel like you have the expertise to submit a short audio segment for use on the show.

So if that's you, I want to dissuade you from that notion. We are all on our own unique journeys as writers. We all become experts in some things and can somehow still remain novices in other things. We all find those techniques that really click for us, and we dismiss others that just don't work with our writing style.

So this opportunity to be a guest host is really about just sharing what's worked for you as a writer, regardless of what level of writing you're at, as if there is such a thing as levels of writing. Basically, it works like this. Record yourself teaching an element or technique of writing that you are especially passionate about for about 15 to 20 minutes. And teaching is maybe even too heavy of a word there. You're just sharing something that worked for you.

Now, this could be on your own. You could do this solo, like I usually do the podcast, or you could team up with a partner and talk through this technique together. I only ask that you try to use a decent external microphone so the sound quality is good. That'll help us get your submission on the show.

So it's really just you sharing something that works for you that you think others might benefit from. So once you've recorded that, it's about 15 to 20 minutes, send us that file as an MP3 file to bradreed at bradreedwrites. com. And you just might hear that segment on a future show. You know, I'm thinking of this a little bit like the way talk shows used to work on television, like back in the era of Johnny Carson.

So when he went on vacation or he had to miss a day of taping for whatever reason, they didn't just run a rerun like talk shows do now. They had a guest host come on for that show instead. So they were always creating new content. And that's kind of the model that I'm looking for. You don't have to worry about producing the whole show, right? You're not doing an intro and an outro.

You're not coming up with wise words or weekly challenges unless you want to add that as part of your segment. We're going to take care of all of that stuff. It's really just a chance to play host for a day and share what's working for you with other writers. You could think of it a little like submitting a guest blog post for a blog, only this is a piece of recorded audio.

Now, just like any submission, there's no guarantee that we'll end up using your audio on the show, although we're going to do our best to find a way to get all of them out there. We may even do smaller bonus episodes for some. And also, at least at this time, there's no compensation for audio segments. That's something I'd love to have in the future.

But you can feel free to mention your website, your Twitter handle, any books you currently have available, anything along those lines, as long as promotion isn't the focus of your segment, as long as the focus is really sharing a technique and element of craft that really works for you. So if you have any questions about that, please don't hesitate to give me an email. It's bradreed at bradreedwrites. com.

Now, last week, we explored the concept of writer's block on the podcast. And I asked for your feedback about the show, about some of the claims that I made, and especially for you to share any techniques that you might use to push past those roadblocks that we hit when we're writing. So listener Jesse Hawley called our message line and left us some thoughts about something that works for him.

So let's take a listen to what Jesse had to say this week. Hi there, Brad. This is Jesse from Sydney, Australia. Just giving you a call in response to the recent episode on writer's block. I loved it very much. I think the writer's block is nothing supernatural, insurmountable.

And I thought I'd share a recent hat's cure for it that I've observed. My friends recently started up a book club, and their first recommendation was Ready Player One. I was reluctant to engage, but I did. And starting to read it, I found myself arguing with the author's writing style. I found it lazy and maybe simple.

So my advice to writers for overcoming writer's block is engage with a piece of art that you find a little bit simplistic. And hopefully you'll see yourself coming up with all these different ideas of how you would have done it better. And perhaps it's the sense of competition in my nature, but I found it really drive my creativity. Bit of a negative root, but it certainly worked for me. Thanks very much. Bye.

All right. Thanks so much for your call and for your insight, Jesse. You've hit on a technique here that I've never really thought to try on my own. And it makes sense since so much of what causes what we like to call writer's block actually boils down to a kind of lack of confidence in our own skills.

So it makes sense that looking at a piece of writing that you might consider to be inferior in some way, yet it still found some level of success, that process could help to give us more confidence in our own writing. Now, I haven't read Ready Player One. It's actually been on my to-read list for a while now, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

So I can't really comment on what I think of the writing of the book. But your angle here makes me think about something I heard a few weeks ago. And I apologize that I can't place exactly where I heard it to give credit.

But they were basically saying that if you have a good enough plot and your structure is solid, then readers can look past writing that is less than stellar. But if your plotting and structure aren't good, in other words, your story isn't working on a basic story level, then no amount of good writing, kind of that sentence level prose, will save your book, right? It's about the story first and foremost. And I think that goes hand in hand here with what Jesse is talking about. Whatever it takes for us to get out of our perfectionist mindset and simply into getting words on the page is a good thing.

So thanks for sharing those thoughts, Jesse, and for your support of the show. That means so much to me. If you have comments you'd like to get to us about today's podcast, any other podcast, and especially comments that we might be able to use on a future episode, you can give us a call like Jesse did at our message line. That's.

Understanding Theme in Writing

Okay, so all enough of the introductory stuff here today. I'm excited to get into today's topic, so let's get to it. Theme, what it is, what it isn't, and how we can use it in our writing. Of all the things that English teachers teach, I think theme might be one of the hardest ones. And I'm actually not sure why that is. I think part of it is that there isn't a clear agreement, even across teachers of English, what exactly we mean by theme.

But it also has to do with how many other ways we use that word theme. I mean, you could have a prom theme, right? Maybe your prom was under the sea or night beneath the stars or a hundred other kind of tacky prom themes.

But we think of theme that way, right? You could also decorate your house with something like a country theme. You could compose a theme song for a is simply a concept or whatever thing is under discussion.

Now, a topic is almost always one word or maybe it's a short phrase that sums up a single idea. Now, books usually have a huge number of topics, which are basically just things that the book is talking about. So, for example, the book I'm writing right now is talking about things or topics like earthquakes, survival, family, love, loss, religion, faith, trust, danger, hope, hopelessness, fear, and a bunch of other things.

So these are all topics. They're not themes. In fact, let's use Harry Potter as an example again, since we all kind of share that story in common, I hope.

So what are the topics of Harry Potter? Well, you have things like magic or friendship, education, good and evil, family, love, adventure, loneliness, and on and on. You could generate a huge list of topics that Harry Potter is dealing with, but none of those things are what we're talking about when we're talking about theme, even though you might've been taught that they are.

So forget all that nonsense. It's not helpful. So we already have a word for those things, and those are just topics, not themes.

From Topics to Themes

But what we are going to do is to use topics to find or to discover theme. And remember at this point, you still have no idea what we mean by theme, so keep an open mind here, a blank slate. So let's start by choosing one of the major topics of a book.

So we'll continue with our Harry Potter example, since so many of us are familiar with it. And I think it's hard to miss the topic of friendship as a major topic of those books. I mean, the whole adventure revolves around Harry and Hermione and Ron and how they work together and occasionally work against each other to get what they want in the story.

So friendship is a huge topic in the book, but it's not a theme of the book. We wouldn't say that a theme of Harry Potter is friendship. We'd say a topic of Harry Potter is friendship.

So let's choose that one. Now that we have our chosen topic, let's discover how to turn that topic into what we're going to call theme. And it's as simple as completing a sentence. It goes like this. The creator of the Harry Potter stories believes that friendship is what, right? Blank.

Complete that sentence. Now, knowing the story, how would you fill in the rest of that sentence? I might say something like this. The creator of the Harry Potter stories believes that we need the help of our friends to overcome great challenges.

Now you might come up with something different, but I think it's clear that we could all come up with something, right? The, the author J. K. Rowling is definitely saying something about the importance of friendship. The books and the films too have a lot to say about it.

So we are almost there with theme now. All we have to do now is chop off the first part of that sentence. So the first part was the creator of the Harry Potter series believes that. And we're literally just going to chop that off of our sentence. In fact, when you're working with your own book, I encourage you to write this sentence out. There's something about that process that helps you more clearly identify your theme.

So we're crossing out now. Imagine we've got that written on a piece of paper and we're going to cross out the first part that says the creator of the Harry Potter stories believe that. So we've crossed that out and what we're left with is this. We need the help of our friends to overcome great challenges.

Now that's a theme. We need the help of our friends to overcome great challenges. Notice that it's not a single word or a single concept, right? It's a statement of belief.

Now, some people are tempted to call this a moral, but I like to stay away from that word because it's just a bit too loaded and it gets kind of into this good and evil right and wrong thing, which doesn't have to be a part of theme. Morals, when we look at theme that way, it starts to sound like it's something that's preachy. And I'd rather think of it simply as a statement about one way to see the world.

Checks for a Strong Theme

Now, before we decide that that's our theme, there are a couple of quick checks that we can do to make sure that we've identified that theme well, that we've got a strong one. And the first check is to ask a simple question of your theme. Could someone argue against it?

So let's try it. Is it possible for someone to believe that we do not need the help of our friends to overcome great challenges? Sure it is, right? Absolutely. There are a lot of great stories, both true and fictional, about how important it is to go it on your own, right? To not rely on anyone else for the things you want.

So this is an important aspect of theme. It has to be arguable. In other words, we're kind of getting at an opinion on a topic. This is one of the reasons a topic can't work as a theme. Could you argue against the single word friendship or war or love? Well, not really, right?

And sometimes my students will say, yeah, you can. You could definitely argue about war. And I'm not saying argue about war. I'm just saying, put that word out there, war. Is that an argument? Is that an opinion?

No, it's not, right? It's just simply a topic that you would have to bring opinions into to turn that into some kind of topic or statement of belief. So difference between topic and theme, huge here.

But that, so that's the number one check, right? Do I have a good theme is, is it arguable? Could someone reasonably disagree with the theme that you've identified?

Now on to check number two. Can you back up your theme with evidence from the story? So in other words, does the book or story really say that? Can you point to specific things, specific scenes that suggest that that theme is true or that at least the author, the creator of that text is putting forth that that theme is true?

So let's take Harry Potter again, for example. The books are filled with specific moments where without the help of Ron and Hermione, Harry wouldn't have been successful, right? He probably wouldn't even have survived for that matter.

So yes, our theme that we've come up with stands up for Harry Potter. So one, it's arguable. It's a statement of opinion. And two, you can back it up with evidence. And here's the thing. A book can have a huge number of themes.

Virtually any topic you've identified could be extrapolated out into an effective theme, as long as it's arguable and as long as it can be backed up by evidence. Now, some of you guys, I can feel it right now, are you're having flashbacks to your high school English class. I mean, what does proving a theme with evidence have to do with writing our own books, right? That feels like something we had to do in a writing assignment in high school. Well, it actually has everything to do with writing because our goal as writers is to show our readers another view of the world, a compelling, interesting, authentic view of the world. We want to give them a new way to process what's going on around them.

Weaving Theme into Your Story

So in other words, our books, whether we intend them to or not, are expressing themes. Now, they may be doing that very badly, right? If we're not being intentional about it, but they are doing it. They are expressing themes.

So let's figure out how to work with theme intentionally so that when a reader finishes our story, they aren't left either feeling like they've been preached at about how they should see the world or that they're left asking themselves, yeah, good story, but so what, right? What does it mean? Now, some of you already know how you're wanting your reader to see their world differently after reading your story.

So you've essentially already kind of got your theme worked out, whether you already knew this concept of how to use theme, or maybe you just stumbled into it, which is very possible, right? Like I said, theme is there whether you intended it to be or not. So the next step is to identify it. Make sure that your theme is saying what you want it to say. And then once you have identified it, that main theme, you want to intentionally weave that into your story so it doesn't stick out like an example in an English textbook, right? We don't want this to be obvious.

We want this to be under the surface so that your reader is discovering the theme for themselves as they're reading your story. So for the sake of this kind of lesson today, we're going to pretend that you don't have your theme figured out yet. So you've got a great story idea. You've either written it or you're planning to write it, but you haven't really given any thought to theme.

So I want you to start by doing the same analysis that we just did with Harry Potter, right? Make a list. What are all the topics of your story? Think of that list that I gave you a little bit earlier of all the topics in the story that I'm working on.

So you want to list everything you can think of. If there's love, if you've got a love story in your story, write down love. If there's a war happening in your story, write down war. If one character undermines another, you might write trust.

So make as big a list as you can. Then start paring that list down to what really matters. So sure, your story has a love interest, but it's kind of a subplot and it's not all that important, so you may cross out love in your list. And yeah, there's one character that's always kind of gaming the others, so trust is definitely a topic, but it's not something that you're all that passionate about exploring in your story, affects the world or how you want your readers to see the world differently through this topic.

So that's the process that's going to lead you to your overarching theme. So this is the answer to the, yeah, so what question that readers sometimes ask after they've finished even a good story that might lack a clear theme. So this is hard, but it's actually really fun work and I encourage you to give it as much time and thought as you need. It's so key to your story that you really want to have this solidly figured out.

So your story, if written well, will change the way people see the world. It will change the way they understand and relate to the topic or topics that you're exploring. So it's worth your time to make sure that it's working the way you intend it to.

So we're essentially skipping a big chunk of work here, right? We're assuming that you've now done the work of creating lists of topics, of identifying your overarching theme, that one topic that is most essential to your story and how you want your reader to come away from your story, understanding it in a new way. So let's move on to how to get that theme working in your story in a way that is subtle enough to not call attention to itself, but it's still obvious enough that it lands with your reader. And by the time they're done reading, they get it.

So this is where some writers and educators disagree. So the best I can do is give you my own technique. And I tend to think that theme is best expressed through characters who believe differently from each other about the theme.

Character Perspectives on Theme

So in other words, I very intentionally give each of my main characters, and sometimes the secondary characters, an opposing view of the theme so that my readers get to watch as each of these characters approaches the world with their own particular worldview and either succeeds, shows it to be valid, or fails, right? Shows that belief to be invalid. So let's start with a really simple example of that just to flesh this idea out a little bit. We're gonna pretend that we're writing a war story.

So war is our topic, right? Not our theme, single word, so it can't be a theme. War is our topic. And let's say that our story is going to follow a group of soldiers who are tasked with an extremely dangerous mission behind enemy lines. And we're going to set it in some future world where military service is no longer optional, just because that's gonna help us get a bunch of different perspectives involved as possible, right? We may have soldiers that don't even believe in war because they've essentially been drafted.

So after really thinking about what we wanna say about war semantically, we come up with this. War is an effective way for boys to mature into men. So let's pretend that's the theme that we're going to be showing. War is an effective way for boys to mature into men.

Now, I'm not even saying that I agree with this theme. It's just the one that I kind of came up with to work with this story idea and illustrate what we're talking about. So what I'm going to do with this story is make sure that I've stocked it with characters who have different takes on that theme.

So I'm gonna have one or more of the characters who are going to agree with that theme, right? They are going to see war as an effective way for boys to mature into men. They're in the military to improve themselves, right? They've joined to become men. And then I might even have an old kind of grizzled military captain who also shares that worldview, kind of that mentor, right? Who's pushing that worldview onto these young soldiers.

He's not just there to win a war, he sees it as an opportunity to change these boys into men. But then I want some characters who don't operate with this worldview, right? I want a character who absolutely opposes war, even though he's forced to be fighting in it. He absolutely sees nothing redeeming about it at all. And he views it as the worst expressions of humanity. It's turning boys not into men, but into heartless killing machines.

And then let's have another character who sees war entirely different from those two. Maybe he sees war as an opportunity for wealth. So he's consumed with pilfering things, right? Stealing things from captives in the war and basically looting the places that they have attacked. And he's always looking for that angle to either make a buck or make a connection that will help him get rich after the war. And then let's throw another character in, right?

Now we have the peace-loving activist who sees it as his mission to redeem his comrades, right? He is there almost like a missionary for peace, trying to bring others around to his worldview. And I think you see where I'm going here, right? Each character I'm bringing into the story has a different take on the topic. And by doing that, we've created well-rounded characters that feel real to your reader.

Now this can quickly become kind of dangerously preachy, right? What I'm not suggesting is that we have a bunch of scenes where all these characters are sitting around a campfire arguing their own points of this theme, right? What we do see is that in their reaction to conflict, in their reaction to tension, in the way that they phrase their sentences, we begin to understand, oh, this person's coming at this from this point of view.

So your reader is discovering this along the way rather than have you come right out and tell them. Because if you come right out and have your characters just speak these beliefs into the world, that's where it starts to feel preachy, right? We want to see authentic characters who aren't just spouting what they believe, they're living what they believe. And that's where we get to begin to solve that puzzle that you're creating for us.

Exploring Theme Complexity

So your reader really gets to watch all of these competing views on the topic play out in that story world. So from this point, you can make basically one of two choices in how your theme plays out. You can either validate your theme and invalidate the opposing ones, or you can use your story as an open-ended exploration of the theme.

So in other words, you could write your story so that the people who hold views opposing your intended theme fail in ways that show their beliefs to be wrong. Or you could show the complexity of the theme, illustrating positives and negatives of all the various views. And I feel like I didn't say that very well. Let me try to restate that one more time.

So essentially, once you've decided on your theme, you're either going to tell your story as though your theme is right and the way you've set up your entire story keeps proving that over and over again so at the end of the story, it's very clear what worldview is correct. Or you could make the choice to use your story as an exploration of the theme. So not only are you giving opposing views and different takes on it, but you're also sometimes validating those views and invalidating the theme views so that it becomes kind of an exploration.

So this is getting into some pretty deep water here that might be beyond what you're ready to think about, especially if this whole concept of theme is a little bit new. But in case you're feeling good about the work we've done so far with theme, I want to get into it just a little bit more here. So I'm hoping that I don't lose too many of you here.

So my own opinion on this question is that it's always better to leave some ambiguity about where you stand as the author about your theme. This is yet another opportunity for your reader to invest in your story and let them come away with the experience that they find most valuable. In some ways, I think the way we choose to go about exploring our theme is actually one of the main differences between what we might think of as genre fiction and literary fiction.

So genre fiction for the most part, and yes, I'm making sweeping generalizations here, but genre fiction has clearly defined themes that leave little room for alternative views. Like take superhero movies, for example. Good is always good, evil is always evil, and good triumphs over evil, right? And again, generalization, but overall, that's true. We kind of know who is who. We know who's right and who's wrong.

But in literary fiction, we're often left with an unclear take on the theme. In other words, this book has not shown us what's right or wrong, but it's shown us how complex a worldview is and how each take on the topic has nuances of both good and bad. And as audience members, we're left trying to sort through those thematic elements of the story long after we've seen it or read it, and we replay it over and over again in our minds to try to sort it out.

So that's the kind of story that stays with the reader as they wrestle with it after the fact. What appears very complex from the audience perspective is actually pretty simple from the writer's perspective. If you want a clear theme in your story where the audience leaves seeing the world the way that you want them to, have your theme clearly be the correct take on your topic throughout your story.

So have characters who disbelieve your theme suffer the consequences of it. But if the point of your story is to leave your audience kind of chewing on the nuances of your theme, instead, show them the complexity of it. Show them how your theme can be both redeeming and valid, but also at the same time, a bit problematic and maybe even hurtful.

Actionable Techniques for Theme

So before we leave this topic for today, I fear we got a little into the weeds with it. So I want to end with a simple, actionable technique. It's a technique I usually save for revision since my first drafts are really about just discovering who I'm telling a story about and what that story is. It's in revision that I'm putting in these nuances of theme and such.

So here's our nuts and bolts technique. First, discover your main theme, right? That's what we've been talking about and you have those tools now.

So Maybe friends are a liability when you're trying to overcome great challenges because their needs and desires compete with yours, right? So we're just brainstorming this list as many ideas that we can think of, as many worldviews as we can think of that contradict our theme. And then just like we did before, narrow it down to just the most powerful ones, the ones that you actually see in the world around you, the one that actually your readers might hold if they don't agree with your theme.

So now what you have is your theme and hopefully four or five really compelling, valid arguments against it. And then the next step is to make a list of every single character in your story. I encourage you to list even the small parts where maybe they just show up for one scene and then they disappear forever, right? They're gone. And once you have all these characters listed, start brainstorming which view of the topic each character would hold from that list, right?

So you have a whole list of all these characters on one side. On the other, you have your three, four, five different takes on this theme and you're matching them up, right? Once you do that, you're going to find that this is actually a great source of conflict for your story and between your characters. And it's a great way to round out your characters so that they begin to feel real, right? You're going to start discovering ways to imbue your dialogue and your actions with subtext because now you know what's kind of boiling underneath the surface of these characters.

So I can honestly say that this exploration of theme has been one of the most powerful techniques I've used in crafting a story. You may have the greatest plot of all time, but if there's nothing happening under the surface, if there are not great truths being argued about and illustrated, brought to life in your readers' minds, they're going to be left asking, so what? At the end, theme, as we now understand it, is the almost magical element that makes your book matter, that makes it actually say something important and true and compelling. Today's wise word is a short little quote from the author of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood. Margaret says, The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose. Again, that's Margaret Atwood.

The Role of Questions in Theme

And this is essentially what we've been talking about today with our discussion of theme. Theme is essentially the answer to a question that you as a writer are asking through your work. In fact, another great addition to identifying the theme you're incorporating into your story is coming up with an essential question that your theme is going to be the answer to.

So what is the big question that you're exploring with your story? What's truly great about books and films and all kinds of storytelling is that our audiences show up with their own questions as well. Theme provides us the opportunity to meet on the common ground of our story world and explore those answers together. Our challenge this week is not about writing your own story. Great writers must be great readers. And not just that, we must know how to read like writers read.

We have to be taking apart what the writer has done as we're reading, why they've done it, and asking ourselves how effective was that technique that they used. Think of it a little like a musician listening to a piece of music. So yes, of course, they enjoy it. They may even be in awe of it.

But they're also curious about how it works, how it was put together, how it was arranged. That's the kind of reading we need to do as writers. So this week's challenge is, one, make sure that you're reading something. And two, while you're reading, be thinking about this concept of topics leading to theme. Ask yourself as you read, what topics is this book dealing with? You might even want to make a list as you discover them while you're reading.

Then take a little while and see if you can turn one or two of those topics into a theme of that book. What is the writer trying to get you to believe about the topic? Ask yourself if they're successful at it. And are they offering you an opportunity to explore that theme's complexity? Or are they arguing for a more straightforward, this is right, this is wrong approach? Paying attention to how other writers use themes in their work is perhaps the greatest teacher of how you can implement theme in your own work.

Now, I'd love to hear how your exploration of theme in someone else's work goes this week. You can let us know in a bunch of different ways by going to BradReedWrites. com and clicking that Talk to Us link that you'll find there.

So that's going to wrap it up for us this week. Just a reminder that our most recent real-time revision video is an opportunity to watch as I work with the concept of theme in my own work in progress. So it's a great companion piece to this week's topic. And I hope you'll check that out over on our Patreon page.

So until next week, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do and I hope you're off to do the same. Let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again next week for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast with your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.