Tuesday's Writer's Tip - Using Theme To Solidify the Plot #MFRWAuthor #BWLPUblishing #Theme #PLot

Theme is identified as the basic melody in a musical composition. What does this have to do with writing? Theme becomes something that is repeated throughout the story.

While writing Code Blue, I realized the story fell around the various obsessions of the characters. The heroine's obsession of not falling into a controlling relationship with a man again. One character was obsessed with gossip, Another with drugt. Two with particular men. The villain became obsessed with revenge. When I began he story, I didn't realize this but suddenly the theme became clear and I set out to strengthen it.

Other stories have different themes at the center of the story. There are so many but each one should mean something in someway to the characters in the story.

The themes are major issues like betrayals, obsessions, protection. There are many of these broad themes to explore. So when writing your story, think of what the underlying theme can be.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - What About Theme #MFRWauthor #amwriting

Remember those days in college Literature classes when the professor wanted you to identify the theme of a story? The theme was supposed to come to a conclusion as to the meaning of the story. I will admit that I failed every time. Sure many of the stories spoke to me but not because I searched for an underlying theme.

I have friends who have a theme in mind when they begin their works. They feel unless they know their theme they can't write the story. Never worked for me but it might for you. Oh, I could understand a general thing like "Love conquers all" or "Crime doesn't pay." These are general themes that are kind of universal.

While reading Structuring Your Novel: From basic idea to finished manuscript by Meredith and Fitzgerald, I came across this bit of wisdom. This is about a writer stating his theme before beginning the story. They felt "It is our belief that to do so makes both the author and his characters the prisoners of such a thematic statement." What they advise is making a statement of purpose that involves the characters, the plot, local and all other fictional elements.

Seemed to me the theme then grows from what the writer writes and the story he or she tells. So to write down your theme before you begin or not? this is a question for each writer to answer.

Tuesday's Inspiration - Good Fiction - thoughts by Janet Lane Walters

"Good fiction does not deal in codes of conduct. It affirms responsible humanness." This bit from John Gardner's On Becoming A Novelist set me thinking. I have a BA in English and sat through several courses where I was to find the Theme behind the stories. For me this was the hardest thing to do. The teachers seemed to be looking for that "code of conduct" to make the story valid.

For me the most interesting part of the story belonged to the characters and how they acted and reacted to the events in their life. I didn't fail the courses. I did fairly well but every analysis of the stories in class found me on the opposite side from the teacher. Was this because I was already a writer when I went for this degree. Probably. One teacher told me finding the theme wasn't the writer's responsibility. Their purpose was to write  characters who engaged with the problems they faced and to show what they were facing.

I only once wrote a story where there might be a theme but not really. When writing Code Blue, I finished the book and was asked by an editor to let her know what the theme of the book entailed. This wasn't my current publisher of the book but one many times ago. The only thing I could come up with was many of the characters had some kind of obsession. But this is a very general theme. So is Love, Murder and other areas writers write about.

The real thrill of a story for me is how the characters walk the road called plot and how each deals with what happens in their lives and the lives of the other characters.

Wednesday, On Plot

More types of the mosaic kind of stories, those that don't follow the traditional plot line.

Slice-of life stories. A bit different from character sketches because the character or set of characters aren't the really important thing about this kind of story. The character of characters are used to show social content and situations. They look at economic and other like situations by pitting the characters against the social events of perhaps an era. The danger lies in not having a plot to drive the incidents from event to event. This can make the reader yawn.

Theme and Variation is another type of story that doesn't depend on plot to carry the story. Here a single concept is the focus of the various scenes in the story. Here, choosing scene, character and details are most important. Because these stories seem abstract, they are hard to pull off. I've only tried this once and fortunately there was a suspense plot underneath the action or I don't think I could have pulled it off. In this type of story, the incidents must be vivid and the meaning subtle. The stories are often shown by opposites. The opposites can be just a shade different from each other, not the good or the bad but the focus of the good or the bad.

Theme and the writer -- Inspiration

When I was working toward my degree in English most of my courses were literature courses. Since I had published several books they gave me all the basic writing courses. One of my professors was bit on finding the thrme in the stories I wrote. I did not do well here but at least I did ace the tests. I could tell if a story was a good one or if it wasn't. He gave us several to read that weren't in the book and I was spot on but ask me to find the theme and I blanked. Then I began to worry. Did my stories have themes? The teacher found them but they were not purposely put there by me. What I was doing was showing a character or characters who wanted something and set out to get their desire no matter what the obstacles in their path. Not all of them won their object but because I like happy endings, most of them did.

There's only one story of mine that I was able to discern the theme and this was explored on many levels. But I never realized there was a theme until i started to search for a title. Started as Code Blue but that wasn't really what the story was about though that was the jumping point for the suspense. I finally came up with Obsessions. All of the main characters in the story had some kind of obsession and this obsession effected their lives in different ways.

What I've decided to do is leave the idea of theme and philosophy to those who teach and tell stories about people who want things and try to find a way to win their desires.