Okay this part is a little trickier to wrap one's head around, but it is vitally important. I admit I gnawed on the material below for a good week back in the day when I was thinking about pitching my book to agents. I just wish I had learned about how important this was before I wrote my book, would have saved me several days of terrified fretting that maybe I had wasted several years of my life. (I didn't, luckily, but still, it would have been a lot easier to have learned this first and have the advantage of writing with this in mind.) I have no idea why this part of writing isn't made into a far bigger deal; perhaps is because it is cumbersome and abstract, making it difficult to come to grips with. However, despite its vagueness, sooner or later writers have to think about theme, so that's why this chapter is at the front of this book and not at the back, where it would be pretty useless if you are thinking about pitching to an agent and haven't yet heard of the importance of your book's theme.
So, why do we need to think about theme anyway? Why does it matter?
The easiest answer to that question is this: When you have to distill your book down to a five hundred word pitch to an agent (called an elevator pitch), or worse, a twelve word logline, you better know what your theme is or you are going to be in that terrible place where you realize maybe, just maybe your book isn't really a book at all...
The cold hard truth is that theme is what makes or breaks a book. If we were to compare a book to a house, then the theme is the frame, everything is built on it. EVERYTHING.
The excerpt below is taken from WriteOnSisters.com who do a brilliant job of explaining the importance of theme, so I'll just hand the mic over to them for the rest of this post (the link to the original post is included below, just click on the words External Link just above the comments - link only viewable on desktops, however).
'Theme is like a truffle – it has to be there, just under the surface, but one must snort through much mud to unearth it. A most unpleasant process I've been stuck in for the last few months. So why do I keep at it? Won't the theme of my book just magically appear once it's written? Won't a reviewer or professor or reader interpret the theme for me? Why do writers need to know the theme of their novel?
Simple answer: to make the book the best it can be.
First, some definitions...
a) Theme is what the story is about.
b) Theme is the moral of the story.
c) Theme is the lesson learned.
d) Theme is the story's ultimate meaning.
And that's why theme is so hard: our notions of it are vague. People say, "My novel is about unconditional love!" Or death, or forgiveness, or second chances. All broad ideas claiming to be theme. But a theme must be more than that to writers, because vague notions do not help us write powerful, meaningful or impactful stories. We need to get more specific, and it doesn't get any more specific than what some refer to as "The Screenwriter's Bible"...
STORY by Robert McKee is a beast of a book, all 455 picture-less pages of it. It's very detailed, but that's exactly what we need to figure out an ambiguous notion like theme. McKee writes, "A true theme is not a word, but a sentence... describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end."
So a complete theme needs change. And that change happens to something humans/readers/heroes inherently value, like love, life, justice, truth, hope, equality, etc. And that value is changed because something caused it to change. Like this...
THEME = VALUE changed by CAUSE
This is what I call "Theme" with a capital "T". McKee calls it "The Controlling Idea." Others say "Thematic Statement." Some label it "Central Theme" because they have many themes but know that one theme must rise above the rest and unify the whole story.
How To Find Your Theme
1) Figure out the VALUE. The value is, broadly, what's at stake. In love stories, the value is obviously "love." In crime novels, the value is usually "justice." Often people equate value with theme. They say, "My novel is about justice!" but that's not a complete Theme. They only have part of the equation.
2) Determine how that value will CHANGE. Most stories begin negative (injustice) and end positive(justice is served). If the novel is a tragedy, it will start positive and end negative.
3) Find the CAUSE. Why does justice prevail? This is the hard part. Hint: the answer lies within the protagonist. After all, the protagonist drives the story. I'll give you two examples:
i) Justice triumphs because the protagonist is more violent than the criminals.
ii) Justice triumphs because the protagonist is smarter than the criminals.
Both Themes are from two different crime stories, and they're exactly the same except for one word – the CAUSE. The first applies to the movie "Dirty Harry", the second to Sherlock Holmes.
To break it down... Justice is the VALUE, triumph is the CHANGE from negative to positive, and violent/smarts is the CAUSE.
Get it? I certainly didn't at first. It took me months of snorting through muddy plots and unearthing lumps of crap to finally find the Theme of my novel. In fact, I just nailed it a few hours before writing this post! But now that I've got it, I realize I led you all astray in my last post where I said that the theme of The Hunger Games was "rebellion". Of course, now you and I both know that's not a Theme, it's a vague notion!
So, what's the Theme of The Hunger Games trilogy? I'd sum it up like this:
"Freedom is gained because Katniss rebels against tyranny."
The value is freedom, because ultimately that is what Katniss and the people of Panem strive for and value. The cause is rebellion, because without that nothing would change. And the change is positive, because they go from being complete slaves in their districts to... well, I won't spoil the ending, and it wasn't all hunky-dory, but things changed for the better.
The central Theme is the moral, the lesson and the ultimate meaning of the story. It ties everything together.
"Theme has become a rather vague term in the writer's vocabulary. ... I prefer the phrase Controlling Idea, for like theme, it names a story's root or central idea, but it also implies function." STORY by Robert McKee, pg. 115
So, let's refer to Theme as The Controlling Idea. To review, this Controlling Idea consists of a value at stake (like love, justice or freedom) and a cause that changes that value from negative to positive (or positive to negative) by the end of the story.
CONTROLLING IDEA = VALUE changed by CAUSE
For example: Justice (VALUE) triumphs (the change) because the hero is smarter than the villain (CAUSE).
As stated in McKee's quote above, the Controlling Idea implies function – it doesn't just exist as the end meaning of a story, rather it works to build the story towards the end meaning. And if you know how the Controlling Idea does that, you can write a stronger story.
Using The Controlling Idea To Strengthen Your Story
1 – Define the Conflict. Just like every hero needs a villain, every Controlling Idea needs a Counter Idea. So if the Controlling Idea is Justice triumphs because the hero is smarter than the criminal, then the Counter Idea is Injustice reigns because the criminal is smarter than the hero.
2 – Create Dramatic Tension by making the Controlling Idea and the Counter Idea fight! In great stories, these opposite values battle for supremacy – in one scene Justice looks like it will prevail, and in the next scene Injustice seems poised for victory, and back and forth. Make the Controlling and Counter Ideas so well matched that it is unclear which will win until the very end. A fantastic example of this is the BBC series "Sherlock" – we expect Sherlock Holmes to solve the case and justice to triumph, but the show is so well written and the villains so brilliant that we really do doubt right up to the final moment whether Sherlock will succeed.
3 – Cut Meaningless Scenes. All scenes must argue for or against the Controlling Idea, otherwise the story loses dramatic tension. Take The Hunger Games series, for example. Every scene presents freedom from the Capitol as attainable or unattainable. Each time something goes right for Katniss we think, "Katniss and the citizens of Panem will get their freedom!" and then something goes wrong and we think, "Oh no, the Capitol is going to rule them forever." The Controlling Idea doesn't have to be obvious and in your face, but it must always be there, informing everything the characters do and everything that happens to them. If it's not, cut the scene.
And that's how to use a writer's theme (aka Controlling Idea) to write a dramatic tale full of conflict, tension and meaning.'