In this week’s episode, JP and Crys continue their conversation from last week about finding your theme. They discuss how to go about digging into existing work to figure out what themes you have included.
Question of the week: Tell us about your themes! Share your answer here.
Show Notes
Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
Transcript
Crys: Hello, friends and welcome to the Write Away Podcast. It is February 3rd, 2022 as we are recording the 81st episode of this podcast. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: Hello, how has your writing week been?
JP: It’s been good. I apologize if I sound a little quieter today, I am at a hotel and it is 5:30 in the morning.
Crys: I was actually going to say you’re a little too close to the mic and it’s a little too loud, so you’re not too quiet.
JP: I’ll back away. Is that better?
Crys: A little bit. Yeah.
JP: Okay. Yeah. So this week I’ve been in a hotel and I will be for the next week as well. And I’ve actually been super-duper productive. So I submitted one of my manuscripts, the nonfic one. Already there’s been some comments and I’ll be taking it back to retweak the backend of it, just to format it to a little bit of a different style than it currently is. But that was something I wouldn’t have known without submitting it so that was a plus and a positive direction.
And in book three of the series that I’m working on, it got done with the first round of edits and I am streaming through this round of edits. I think I’m on like chapter seven at this point and I started two days ago. Usually it takes me like a day to get through a chapter. So it’s been it’s been really nice.
And, sorry, I have a lot of ands today. Book one, we have our editors, our copy editor and our proof editor. So we are like lined up. We’re ready. We’re ready to get that thing published. And it’s cool to be at this back end of the process. Yay.
How has your writing week been?
Crys: I have not. I have been having meltdowns over buying school supplies for the kid starting school on Friday instead. But that’s basically all done. So he starts school for reals, his first day of actual school is tomorrow.
And yeah, that’s where I’m at. I did however, have this finally clear idea of some kind of story I could tell on TikTok, a serial basically on TikTok. Because Priscilla’s new job is she works for a cleaning company. So we’re like getting all the backend gossip of a cleaning company and like notes of who can’t work with each other. And like the guy who called in to reschedule his clean, because he was waiting for 911, and just like all sorts of fun, little like daily dramas. And I was like, yeah, what if this was like a magical cleaning company? Clearly, boom, there we go. Now that’ll be fun.
So I’ve been jotting down notes for that. And like those little episodes will be so short because I want them to be like, probably like less than a minute on TikTok. And I’m excited to start doing that.
JP: It sounds like so much fun. I love it. I love it. You must share the link when you so choose to do that.
Crys: For sure.
This week we’re continuing our conversation from last week. So last week we talked about finding your theme or your armature more in the beginning stages of your writing process. But say that you are the antithesis of a plotter and you can’t even think about any of this, or you just didn’t know about it until you finished a whole manuscript, or five.
How do you go about digging into existing work to figure out what themes you have included? Because you have included some, I don’t care who you are. It’s okay, Lon. Our friend Lon hates the idea of themes and tries to write against them. But I’m sorry Lon, you have themes, we’re just not going to tell you what they are so that you can keep writing.
JP: Yes. Yeah. Do we just want to dive right in?
Crys: Yeah, let’s dive right in. We had a good coverage of what we think themes are last week. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, I definitely recommend listening to that one before this one. And then we’ll continue the conversation today.
JP: Definitely. I think for me when I am trying to dig out the theme that I’ve written and I hadn’t written to theme, I like to just think about all the other aspects of the story. So especially, and this works a ton when doing Serial Fiction Show and looking at those first serials, I will read through it and then afterwards I’m going to reflect and I’m going to be like, okay, what was the story about? Can I reprocess the plot in my head?
And then that will start to infer like, okay, then what was that character’s motivation? And so I’m like starting to drill down from like, what was it about to what was the emotion during it? And then that’s where I can really pull that theme from. And that seems to work out the best for me.
Crys: Now, I’m curious with the serial fiction, because you only have the first episode. Do you find that reflects what the greater story is going to be already in that first episode?
JP: It’s really funny. So I want to say that probably about 75% yes. We’re almost never spot on with the exact theme that someone has and it’s because we approach theme as like a sentence. And so if you approach it in that sense, there’s so much variety.
However, like we almost always hit on the same topics. So like feelings of isolation or like love in some explicit term. And in that sense, we’re able to near the target. But there’s been enough times that we’ve hit dead on the target for the entire series that it really suggests how much one episode can even infer the theme.
Crys: Okay. So I think a good place to start with is what topics do you cover for sure. And we talked about that last week. So in your story, what topics have you covered? And write those down. I’m a fan of having things written down because my brain is like a sieve. I don’t keep things in my brain. We keep them on paper.
And then for me, it’s looking at what lies your characters believe at the beginning of the story and what they’ve learned by the end of the story. So I’m trying to think of some kind of example I could pull up. And of course, every book I’ve ever read just flies out of my brain. Lord of the Rings. We’ll use that as an easy example.
So at the beginning of the story, I would say that one of Frodo’s lies is that he believes he’s not meant for adventure. And I don’t know if that’s as fully true for him as it was for Bilbo originally. And that he’s just meant to be a hobbit, that he is meant to stay the same all his life.
By the end, he’s learned that he is capable of so much more, but it does come at a cost. So you could say that things worth having will always cost something or things worth having have a cost might be a theme of Lord of the Rings if you look at it.
And then you could check, does that play out against other characters stories as well?
JP: Yeah, definitely. Even when I think of things like Wizard of Oz or like Star Wars, things that everyone knows the stories about, like those themes usually revolves around the growth of the character and how they change at the end of the story.
And that’s the whole point of theme is like, what’s the over telling message and how is that impacting your character? With Star Wars, one of the themes is all about his faith in the force and his ability and willingness to let the outside power guide him. In the beginning, he is so reluctant against that. And as he progressed throughout the story, he has some moments where he believes in it and he’s able to lift a ship out of the water, and then moments where he doesn’t believe in it and the empire starts attacking him and the empire starts to win.
And then it comes to the end of the story where he has to make that choice. Do I believe in the force? He does and then boom, he blows up the star ship. And this is, I think Empire Strikes Back Episode Four.
And then with Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy lands in Oz, she has no belief in herself, no courage. And everyone helps her. Everyone treats her like a child. And it really isn’t until she starts moving along this path and she realizes that she has her own voice and her own friends, that she came, like, hey, you guys actually do have a heart and a mind.
It isn’t until she realizes those facets that she then has the tools to take herself home. I have opinions about the fact that Glenda didn’t just tell her, but at the same time, it was almost like a lesson in believing in yourself and knowing that you have the tools to save yourself instead of waiting on someone to take you away in a parachute.
It’s not a parachute. It’s a hot air balloon.
Crys: Yeah. And something like the Wizard of Oz, also says its theme right out loud. Cause one of the themes is ‘there’s no place like home.’ And that is a chant, that is a mantra. Some stories are very oblivious with what one of their main themes are. And that’s actually an extension of what I think one of the themes, or like an echo of one of the themes of Star Wars is ‘what you need is inside you already.’
So like the cowardly lion, the tin man, the scarecrow, they all had what they needed inside them. They just didn’t see it. And Dorothy as well. And that’s where I think, where you look at the main character and say, okay, what is the thing they learn? And then say, okay, is that echoed by other characters?
And this does two things for you. One, it simply confirms what your theme is. Or two, and honestly more likely at this point, it tells you where your story is going a little off track. If the other characters do not reflect some facet of your theme, but you’re still pretty sure that’s the theme, like maybe most of the characters reflecting it but a few aren’t, that gives you a really good guidepost to your editing process.
JP: Definitely. And that’s actually been one of the things that I’ve mentioned with clients is we’ll come up with that theme or armature, and then we’ll point out a scene where it seems like it’s either slower or they brought it up saying, this doesn’t feel like a good scene and I don’t know why. Or I bring it up and we talk about it and then we relate it back to the theme. And we see that while the character isn’t really making a choice in comparison to this overall point or message that you’re trying to make.
And that can really make a strong hit when you’re able to look at what that theme is and be able to look at a scene and be like this isn’t working. And then be like, how does this flow with my theme? And then almost realign it. That seems to work. It seems to be the way that I would highly recommend using theme, especially during the revision process.
Crys: I agree. Any other tips for finding theme?
JP: There’s a couple things I’ve been playing with in my mind, because I really want to write a non-fiction about theme using like story hypothesis and whatnot. And the Hierarchy of Needs, the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I think that ties into how to figure out your theme.
This is still an ill-formed thought, so bear with me. But when you think about things like post-apoc fiction, you’re not going to hit those higher themes. And just for a reference, this is how you can survive based on what’s available to you. So we’re talking about base level needs, like food, shelter, water, and then you move up the scale to like things like emotions, like love and et cetera, all the way to the top where it’s like self-actualization.
So based off of what is available as resources around you, you can move up in this pyramid. Post-apoc fiction is all within that bottom three, more or less. And that’s just because of the availability of resources, post-apoc is usually limited resources.
So one, your story kind of sits in that lower field. And then I think looking into those things. So if we look at base level survivable and a need for food, shelter, water, then your themes are basically survival. Your theme is how to make it through a decimated world while being able to provide for yourself or provide for your family. And so those are the questions that you’d have to hit.
Now, if you were able to move up in those levels, all of a sudden you have something like that aspect of love. Now, I think that’s where the road kind of sits is in that third level. It’s that parental love for a child and being able to let them go when you realize that your time is up.
And I think that’s where the road kind of hits. The road doesn’t go any higher than that on the Maslow’s pyramid because it’s post-apoc. It can’t go higher than that. And so I think that there’s a way of looking at the different levels and that hierarchy of needs and being able to pull out a theme from that.
Crys: One, I think next week might be a good rant, a good place for my rant against Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, but also a discussion on the alternative discussions of needs and spectrums of needs. So maybe that’ll be next week’s topic.
But two, I also want to just clarify for our listeners that as you’re talking about survival, that would be the topic. So you’re looking in that topic for what your theme sentence is. So your theme sentence might be something like survival is dependent on support from others around you or it could be the complete opposite, attachments make you weak. Those are two separate themes that could be found under their survival topic.
JP: Yeah. That’s what you kind of need to approach in creating theme is having that statement, that one thing infers another because that’s like a declarative statement that you can make and argue against. So this is just a reiteration towards my opinion towards theme.
It’s not just an idea, like love and survival. It’s a statement, a declaration you’re making that you want to argue against. And I think that’s how writers can use theme. If it’s an idea, it’s not as to usable.
Crys: Now I will say, as someone who does a lot of their thinking through writing, that sometimes I will write to a theme that I’m not sure I believe. So, we talked about last episode that a lot of your themes are going to be things that you deeply believe. But sometimes I will pick a topic to explore what I think about something and I will write to the topic and then look to see what themes developed out of my unconscious beliefs after that.
JP: Definitely. And I think that is an excellent approach and it’s a way of figuring out what are the things that you like to talk about and how does that correlate to your other writing too.
Crys: Another way you can do it is to pick a belief that you don’t have, that you don’t understand, and do your best to write to that theme. For instance, a theme I would not believe and if I wanted to explore what it meant to others, like why others would believe it, would be that attachments make you weak. If I wanted to explore the kind of person who believed that, like I could say, hey, that’s my theme. I’m going to write a story to that.
Inevitably, because I don’t believe that and even though I’m working to understand that mindset, I would end up writing a story that’s the opposite of that because of my conscious and unconscious beliefs. But if I set that as the theme I was working toward, I think that would drive me deeper into the opposing viewpoints and make my story richer, even though I would not succeed in writing that story.
JP: Definitely. I think a good method when you make these themes out is thinking through a couple of scenes. What does that look like when attachments make you weak? What does that look like when your character needs to make an attachment? Because they have to, that’s the choice they need to make in that scene. And what’s the repercussions of that?
If your theme is attachments make you weak, they’re going to become weaker. So then what does that look like? And then on the opposite, if this is your theme, write out a couple of times where they have to break attachments. What does that look like? Do they become stronger when they break this attachment? And how does that repercussion of those relationships dwindle, basically? Because ultimately this person, we’re arguing that they have no attachments and then they become stronger. So I think being able to hit like all of those questions on the varying levels of your declaration helps you to see like, what could a story look like using this theme.
Crys: Yeah, I like that. Are any other little points that we want to scoop up before we wrap up?
JP: I just think that even if you have a finished piece and like you have no other purpose to go back to it and edit it, it’s still good for you as a practice to go back and pull out the theme. It helps you to talk about story on a more personal level to another person. So it’s a good way of marketing your book as well, but it’s also a good way of figuring out what are the things that you talk about, even if they are subconsciously. Because as you grow as a person, you’re going to have differing opinions.
But also I think that you have some core pieces to you as well. And I think that’s reflected in your writing. And I think that it’s just an excellent plan. It’s a good way of communicating.
Crys: If pulling apart your own work is as too difficult because you’re too close to it, a great way is to start by pulling apart the things you’re reading and watching. And I know that there’s the joke that writers are no fun watching movies with because we figure things out. But that’s part of the joy of being a writer, for me, is when I figure out how somebody does something really spectacular.
Yes, it makes weak stories boring. But I don’t see that as negative. But like it makes those strong stories just so much more fascinating because we’re like, how did they accomplish this really cool thing?
JP: Definitely.
Crys: All right, friends. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you would like to support us in the work we do, you can check us out over on patreon.com/writeawaypodcast.
Next week will be our book club episode. We are reading Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo. We’ll be deciding March’s book club choice soon so that you can join us in reading. Have a lovely week.
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