Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

by Chuck Wendig

  The point is that The Hunger Games is saying something. It has a message. It has a distinct point of view, and you can, with some effort on the part of your squishy brain bits, envision that point of view.

  So that’s the first exercise. Now I want you to reverse it.

  Exercise 2: Invent a Brand-Spanking New Theme

  Think up an independent theme, unmoored to any story. Imagine any argument you care to make. One sentence, the shorter the better. It could be framed as a question, though it’s better positioned as a statement. Here are a few I came up with:

  “To defeat evil requires sacrifice.”

  “Family will always be there for you.”

  “You really should try to pee before any long car trip.”

  (That last one is both a theme and really good advice.)

  You could even take clichés or other sayings and turn them into themes: “Home is where the heart is,” or “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” or “Actually, the best way to a man’s heart is with a posthole digger through the breastbone, but if that should fail, consider the romantic power of a reciprocating saw.” Pretty sure that last one is from a Hallmark greeting card. Really, any overarching argument or idea—no matter how deep or how twee you want it to be—can work as a theme.

  It can be as simple as “True love defeats all,” or as complex as “A society cannot truly succeed until it demands equality for all of its citizens, especially those who are most marginalized.” A theme can tackle questions about war, heroism, love, hate, sex, revenge, equality, gender, power, travel, identity, bees, spiders, coffee, why that jerk just cut me off in traffic, naps, Lando Calrissian, and—you know what, I’m going to stop now because I think this has really gone off the rails. Point being, when coming up with a theme, it’s good to aim for a way to wrestle big topics into alignment with your argument. You’re trying to talk about Big Stuff using a Small Story.

  And that leads us to …

  Exercise 3: Build a Story from Theme

  I want you to take one of the themes you identified in the prior two exercises. It can be a theme you found in a preexisting story, or it can be a theme you just made up out of thin air.

  Now, take that hand-selected, small-batch, locally sourced artisanal theme and use it to come up with a story—a story that highlights the theme and roughly attempts to prove it. When I say, “come up with a story,” I don’t necessarily mean sitting down and writing an entire novel or film script based on it—obviously, if you want to do that, hey, rock out with your Spock out, you crazy diamond. We’ll be here when you’re finished. But if you don’t want to roll quite that hard, just come up with a short logline (i.e., a single sentence) or short synopsis (one to three paragraphs) that gives the overall cut of the story’s jib. We just want a sense of what the story would be, what it would look like, maybe who the protagonist is. Quick cuts.

  If you want to get really sassy,3 do this two more times. Come up with two more entirely different stories built around that central theme.

  I do this exercise in a lot of my writing classes and talks, in part because I am a fundamentally lazy human being and the more work you do is the less work I do, and that is a win-win for me. While you’re off noodling about themes and story, I’m dicking around on Twitter.4

  In a seminar, the class lists a bunch of made-up themes, as you have done here. Then, collectively, we choose one to work on. Everyone sits down and comes up with a story around that chosen theme.

  My favorite part of this exercise in a classroom environment—and it is a consequence you can imagine right now, using the magical movie theater that is your mind—occurs when writers around the room give the thrust of the stories they come up with. Because no one story is the same. The theme is the same—as in, everyone is working from the common platform of a single theme and singular argument. But the stories that result vary wildly. Science fiction here, romance over there, one is a tragedy, another a comedy. Different characters, different situations and problems, different stories.

  And that’s a beautiful thing. It suggests that theme is like a prism—it breaks a single beam of light into several more colorful ones.

  THEME PARK: THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN THEME AND CHARACTER

  Let’s just get this out of the way right now:

  No, you don’t need to worry about the theme of your book.

  It can be a thing you grant literally no thought to, and your book or movie or interactive diner menu can still be good, great, even amazing. All of this theme stuff can hit your brain, and your brain is free to recoil as if it has just licked the back end of a feral cat.

  It is, strictly speaking, unnecessary.

  Theme is just another tool in your toolbox. Some jobs require certain tools, and other jobs will be complicated by using the wrong ones. Every aspect of writing and storytelling is a thing you must test in your hand—you feel its heft, you test its grip, you look to see what it can accomplish for you—and then you either put it to good use or you throw it over your shoulder and hope you don’t accidentally hurt somebody.

  Here you ask, though, Why would you use theme? Why care?

  (And why the hell did I just provide three exercises on theme for you to complete, if it’s so unnecessary?)

  Well, the reasons pile up if you care to stack them: Theme helps you form a deeper connection to the story, it helps you with a through-line that you can grab hold of to pull you (and the audience) through the tale, it can give the story more meaning, it can be a useful distraction that aids in that most fundamental authorial task (aka procrastination).

  But the greatest reason is this:

  It grants you additional context for the characters in your story.

  Just as the characters are the drivers of plot, so too are they the drivers of theme. They’re the ones on the page proving or disproving the theme. (Or, less charitably, they are the rats in the emotional and intellectual maze you have created for them, ha ha ha, poor suckers!)

  If we pick a theme I made up above—let’s say, “To defeat evil requires sacrifice.”—then it’s easy enough to see who exactly is going to be demonstrating and/or challenging that theme on every page. Spoiler warning: The theme will not be performed and proven by a lamp, or a swatch of wallpaper, or the color blue. Characters will be the ones sacrificing. They’ll be the ones affected by the sacrifices of other characters. Characters will embody the lesson. They will fight against the lesson. They will learn the lesson and suffer from it. In The Hunger Games trilogy, the themes—whatever you believe them to be—are forever contextualized by Katniss and, to a lesser degree, by the other tributes, by Snow, by all the citizens of Panem. Different characters may show different facets of a given theme. (In fact, if you try to prove a theme and your proof does not include the character’s actions and words, you will have failed to provide that proof.)

  The value of theme for you as the storyteller is that it gives you a constant touchstone as you tell the tale. When you’re writing a scene, it affords you the chance to ask, Are these characters acting in a way that reflects the theme? Keep in mind, the characters are not mouthpieces for theme, but they may be working through the practical realities of it. If the theme is about the costs of heroism, then it’s good to write the characters wrestling with that in terms of thought, dialogue, and especially action. Characters should struggle with the ramifications of the theme, even if they don’t give voice to it. Just as we don’t need to describe the emotion—we can show it, instead—we can show them grappling with thematic implications rather than explaining them. (Or worse, preaching about it. Storytellers sometimes fall into the trap of overindulging theme and making the book into a lecture. Your book is not a soapbox.)

  That’s also not to say that characters must constantly be wrestling with theme, either. Characters are not slaves to it. They have their own lives, and they do their own thing. But theme provides handholds for you to use as you write the story—and those handholds are for readers, too, as
they climb through the narrative.

  Look at it this way: We give each character a problem, right? That problem could be anything from the kidnapping of a loved one to, I dunno, being besieged by bears. Or, hell, maybe the loved one was kidnapped by bears. I’m not writing your story, so I don’t know.

  This problem is a more literal, physical problem. It’s not figurative. It’s not metaphorical. It is an actual problem that the character possesses and must deal with.

  The theme, however, is like a hidden problem. It’s not metaphorical, not exactly, but it is more abstract. So, they have the real problem, the one they know about and are in pursuit of … and then they have the hidden, thematic problem, too. It’s a problem they may not even be aware of, but just the same, it’s one they must pursue. (Or one that will pursue them.) Scene after scene, the theme can rear its head as a problem the character struggles with. And at some point in the story, the character will not only face it—she will face it down for the last time, either confirming the theme or denying it. (And that denial generally means that the theme you thought you had wasn’t actually the theme, and that the actual theme was the opposite all along. Which, by the way, is totally fine. Storytelling isn’t an act of carving messages in stone. It’s writing truth in wet sand, and sometimes, well, sometimes the water comes and washes your truth away in a tide of its own.) Theme provides us with a Grand Unified Theory.5 It’s like duct tape at a bondage orgy—it binds the whole thing together.

  Here’s an example: Let’s say that the theme of The Hunger Games series is that “war demands a greater sacrifice from those with little power.” It teases out a bit of the inequality vibe we were talking about earlier, but also factors in war. Now, on the surface, the theme is obvious and it works: Clearly those in power are not the ones committing the greatest sacrifices in the games, in the revolution, or in the war that follows. Not Snow, not Coin. The sacrifices are made by the abused and enslaved. Thing is, that’s not Katniss’s personal problem, nor is it one she constantly opines about in a theatrical, dramatic way. But it is a problem she wrestles with internally. Her initial (personal) problem is that she wants to save her sister’s life, and so she steps in and replaces her little sister in the game—but even there, she’s setting foot on a path that eventually leads her to war. And the result of that war is one where her sister’s life is sacrificed as a result—so, the cost of war is paid, and by someone who had very little power throughout the story.

  That’s something that doesn’t really drive home for Katniss until the end. The theme remains hidden—

  Until it’s not. And then it’s nearly impossible to ignore.

  And now, the FAQ.

  FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THEME

  I’m framing this as an FAQ because whenever I do a talk on theme, I get, well, questions. And a lot of the questions tend to be the same. Yes, I do groom my beard. Yes, my beard is made of sentient cilia and/or bees. Yes, I would like to eat a taco right now, thank you. And those aren’t even the questions about theme. I felt that the theme-related questions deserved their own section of this book because this is a sticky subject, one that requires some back-and-forth. It often earns me a lot of questions, so this is ideally a good way to explore the topic.

  So buckle in, and let’s A some Qs.6

  Do I need to decide on the theme of my story before I begin writing it?

  Nope, not at all. A theme can be engineered, or it can be unearthed—and that’s true of most aspects of storytelling. Sometimes the story is just the thing you tell, and it’s only after you finish it that you see all these glittery bits and bobs right there in the dirt. Alternatively, you can enter the story right at the fore with an idea of a theme in mind, and that theme can give your story and its characters focus as the tale unfolds.

  I wrote a book called Blackbirds about a character, Miriam Black, who can see how you’re going to die just by touching you, and—though I don’t care to spoil the book—I’ll say this: I went and spoke to a very gracious class at Penn State University Erie about the book. It was a Women in Superhero Fiction class, so the students had read the book, and one student in particular brought insight to the book that I had never considered. And it wasn’t just that she was bringing up aspects of the book and I was like, “Yes, that’s very nice, very insightful, but incorrect.” It was a case of her being spot-on about certain aspects, and I just never had it crystallized like that for me before. It was as if I’d been wandering around with my eyeglasses on the top of my head for a long time until someone pointed out, “Those should go on your face, preferably over your eyeballs.” It was a moment of clarity where I wasn’t even the one unearthing something interesting about my book. It had been left to the audience to surmise, and in this case they did an even better job than anticipated.

  So that’s okay, too.

  It’s all okay, and that’s what makes it all so much damn fun.

  Do I need to have a theme at all?

  Nope.

  I mean, you probably do have one in there. But you never need to name it or even think much about it.

  Do what’s best for you and your story.

  Can I have multiple themes?

  Sure can.

  Here are a few ways:

  HAVE MULTIPLE THEMES. There. Wasn’t that easy? Okay, fine, I’ll give you more. The goal here is to have multiple ideas providing fuel for the characters and the plot they create. It’s vital that these themes do not clash. In recycling some of our earlier terms, it is far better that the themes run parallel to each other rather than intercut at perpendicular angles—if themes intersect and counteract each other, the story runs the risk of not even having one cohesive theme and of feeling at odds with itself. Because it is at odds with itself. It’d be like writing a term paper where you’re simultaneously trying to prove that vampires exist and that vampires also don’t exist. You’d have to be pretty savvy to find a convincing middle ground there.

  HAVE ONE GOVERNING THEME, AND THEN SEVERAL SMALLER, SUBORDINATE THEMES. Just as you might have a single plot and several subplots—or a single character problem that drives other smaller problems—you can have a larger theme that creates thematic offshoots of itself. So, if you were to say, “To defeat evil requires sacrifice,” then a subordinate theme might be “Evil is championed by the selfish,” or “Selfishness is the root of true evil,” or perhaps “Evil arises during times of comfort.”

  ASSIGN THEMES TO INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS. I mean, you probably don’t need to assign any to the most meager of your characters—that taxi driver who gets a single line of dialogue needn’t be a mouthpiece for some big idea. (Though he also can be, as a sneaky aside.) Let characters support different ideas and arguments. And here, contrary to the above, it’s okay for your themes to run counter to each other because often characters run counter to each other, too. And which characters triumph and which characters fail will then say a lot about where you and the story fall in terms of which themes are true and which themes fall to the dirt in Thematic Thunderdome.

  How hard do I need to hammer home the theme?

  Not at all! Don’t hammer it home! Remember: This stuff is supposed to be hidden behind the walls. Theme is not a giant banner slung above the door—it’s a gentle tapping against the pipes, it’s a faintly buzzing conduit, it’s the skitter-scurry of mice through the ducts. A story ceases to be just a story when it preaches. The audience recoils when they feel like they’re sitting down for a lecture. Your goal is not to force them to think, but to gently urge them into thought—not to bludgeon them about the head and neck with A BIG MESSAGE, but rather to whisper it in their ear while dreaming. You’re not writing a gospel. You shouldn’t be writing an allegory. It’s just a story, where characters do things and say things and maybe, just maybe, hidden between the lines and buried beneath the text is an idea, an argument, a message.

  That said, here’s a trick.

  It’s a little magic trick that sometimes screenwriters use, and that you can use
in your story no matter its format.

  Once, just once, a character in the story can utter the theme out loud. This shouldn’t be done in a heavy-handed way—it’s not them stepping up to a podium and staring at the audience and saying it in a big booming voice. It happens subtly, in a conversation or as a part of a larger talk. And it happens not in your voice, but in the voice of the character, so it sounds like it’s their idea and not yours.

  Consider: Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park when he says, “Life finds a way.” It’s an idea persistent throughout the work, even to the point where two “female” ended seatbelts don’t fit together, so Alan Grant ties them together anyway.

  Or, in Seven (sorry, Se7en), when Somerset speaks this last line of the film in a voice-over:

  Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” I agree with the second part.

  What’s interesting about that one is that it takes a literal Hemingway theme and adds its own spin on it.

  I’m having trouble figuring out my theme.

  That’s not a question, imaginary reader, but fine, I’ll respond to it anyway, despite your flagrant breaking-of-the-rules.

  Let me offer some help triangulating your theme.

  Ask yourself three questions.

  What is this story about?

  Why do I want to tell it?

  Why will anybody care?

  Answering those three questions will show you the margins to the work—meaning, you will see its shape form, like something emerging from a bank of fog. Maybe it’s a moose. Maybe your theme is a moose. Did you ever think of that? I bet you didn’t.7