What is your Story’s Theme?

Theme is a story’s underlying or central idea: What is the critical belief about life that you as the author is trying to get across in your novel. What is the overall message you want readers to take away from your story?

Theme is the meaning behind the story — and it’s expressed through what happens in the plot — through your character’s internal and external journey.

Plot is WHAT happens in your story — and THEME is WHY it happens.

Usually your story theme is Universal in nature.

Theme — big idea that you want to introduce your reader to.

Your character’s motivation for gaining the THING that your main character desires most in you story — MUST be central to your story’s theme.

I share more about discovering your story’s theme in the video and blogpost below…

It is important that you se up the question — and do so via the lie/misbelief —  that your main character believes.

This means creating a consistent story-long battle between the LIE and the TRUTH.

 

Here are some tips to help you discover your novel’s theme:

1.Why do you want to write this specific story? What is your passion behind the big idea you have for your novel?

So ask yourself, what is the truth that you want to write about in this story?

You had a revelation that has transformed your life for the better… this is Important to write about.

Ask yourself: 

• Will your Main character  overcome his LIE and discover TRUTH in the end?
• Will your Main character have helped others find a TRUTH that the MC  already knows?
• How will your story end — happily or unhappily?

By Answering these questions, you will find YOUR CENTRAL THEME OF YOUR STORY.

2.Turn the truth upside down. Make it a Lie.

This is where your protagonist steps onto the page of your novel.

Every character must have desire, fears and misbelief.

An example from the classic novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Her basic lie is that she isn’t worthy to be loved. But she also believes that she can earn love if she’s willing to enslave herself to others – physically and emotionally.

TRUTH: You are Valuable

LIE: You are Worthless

This is a similar theme in my women’s fiction clean romantic suspense… which will be published in a few weeks.

Lizzie the Heroine — her parents died in a boating accident when she was 11 years old.

Sent to live with her grandparents on Martha’s Vineyard — Lizzie believes that because she was abandoned by her parents that she isn’t valuable and that she doesn’t really belong anywhere.

At the start of the story — when her husband of 26 years dies suddenly, Lizzie is left alone… and again she feels abandoned.

All her married life — she just did whatever it took to please her husband and also to please her friends and her children.

Now, she has to decide for herself and run her own life— and learn new skills. 

 

3.Discover where the lie your main character believers… where did it begin?

What happened in your main character’s past that caused her to believe this lie?

Back to Jane Eyre.

Jane believes she is worthless: Her parents died when she was young. Then Jane went to live with her Aunt, but she was ostracized there. Finally, her Aunt sends Jane away to live in a miserable charity  school for orphans and mistreated there.

Everything in childhood — often becomes TRUTH to a person. Patterns of life experiences from childhood onwards seems to be the way the character will see everything through the lens.

 

4.Look for ways your main character ACTS on their Lie in different situations.

What creates our personalities/and what we believe — isn’t so much what happened to us one time — rather it’s because in our minds we experience that event over and over again.

Habits that perpetuate into the future with no visible end, that’s what shapes who we are… our character traits and identity.

It’s about what we choose to do.

Ask yourself: How does your Heroine cement their misbelief/lie — as truth by acting on it again and again?

By acting on their misbelief/lie over and over again — and repeating this cycle —  this brings your Heroine to this conflicted place at the beginning of your story.

These lies — have been cemented as truth in your Heroine’s mind and becomes part of who she is.

In my women’s fiction story — when she moves to her grandmother’s beach house that she’s inherited. She begins to remake it into an Inn.

She doubts herself and again falls into people pleasing.

Even the two women — Ava and Cecily — who create obstacles along the path to her goal. But, at the start of the story Lizzie still tries to please them.

It will take a MAJOR SHIFT for your HEROINE to SEE THE TRUTH. Something that will obliterate the lie they believe.

 

5.Write down your main character’s epiphany or Aha moment when they finally learn the truth.

Robert McKee in his book titled: Story — says:

“For no matter your inspiration, ultimately the story embeds its controlling idea within the final climax.”

For example in Jane Eyre:

The disaster Jane faces is when there is a fire at Thornfield Hall and Mr. Edward Rochester is hurt by the accident.

This is a pivotal moment when your Heroine realizes the truth. 

It is at this moment that Jane Eyre finally discovers the truth: She is truly valuable and worthy of love.

How will your character arrive at this “Aha Moment?”

First they started out making fear based decisions for years and years — repeating this cycle of misbelief/lies and created a mess/mistakes that will catch up to them.

When it does catch up — your protagonist will realize how wrong they were.

When your Heroine has an “aha moment” — that’s the revelation they need to start them acting on their truth.

In my women’s fiction clean romance… there is a final disaster that ends up giving Lizzie the revelation that she is valuable and worthy of love and that she belongs on the Island. I won’t go into detail, as I don’t want to give you any spoilers… lol 😉

So I hope these tips help you as you go through the process to find your story’s theme.

Happy Writing!