Welcome to How To Theme, chapters posting Tuesday/Thursday weekly, available now for pre-order in print, in ebook, and on Amazon. All chapters are also up on Patreon, including the bonus information on genre-specific themes that’s in the final book, but won’t be appearing here on the blog.
Chapter Four Part 2
Okay, so that’s the story,* for those of you who haven’t heard it before or needed a refresher.
* I mean sort of. The shape of it is right. I probably might have, um, embellished a few things. But it’s still ‘The Hare and The Tortoise’, okay?
So now my question for you is, what’s the moral of this story? Take a second to think about it before you turn the page. If you’ve bought this book in paper, you could even (gasp) use the margins to write your answer, or a couple of answers, before turning over. (Only do this if it’s your book though, obviously. Librarians and book collectors get cranky if you write in their books.)
If you are a relatively average human being (which is in no way an insult in this context, I promise), you’ll have written (or thought—I know 99% of you did not write anything down) something like one of the following:
Slow and steady wins the race.
A good work ethic wins in the end.
Don’t sleep on the job.
Don’t be cocky.
If you identified something like any of the above, congratulations! (If not, just sit tight for a couple of paragraphs; I got you covered.) You just conclusively proved to yourself that you are an expert theme finder!
What? you say. All I did was figure out the moral of the story!
Yes. That is exactly right. Because the moral of the story is the theme.
And remember: The theme is never, ever just one word.
You’ll also notice something else important: these statements are all comments on how we should live our lives, or ways to live a better life; these statements are offering advice and guidance, opinions on how we should live.
This is why themes are important, and why stories are able to teach us how to human.
Now, if you didn’t identify something like the morals (themes) above for the hare and the tortoise story, take a moment right this minute to go back and reread the story so you can see how we arrived at these ideas. If you didn’t get it, that’s perfectly okay. It just means you need to practise the basics a little more before moving on.
Go on. Go reread the story, and think about how I figured out each of the ‘moral of the story’ statements.
I am literally going to wait right here while you do.
…
…
…
Okay. Done?
Promise?
I’m trusting you here.
So, especially if you struggled a little with this activity, but even if you didn’t, I highly recommend browsing online through Aesop’s fables or suchlike, and practising identifying the moral of each story. Not only will you get better at quickly identifying the moral of each story (the theme, remember), the whole exercise will also reinforce to you what I said about stories stating their points outright, and you’ll probably start to notice a pattern: a lot of fables do state their theme outright, and a lot of them do it near the end of the story.
As it turns out, this advice holds across most story types; whereas in an essay or similar piece of non-fiction you look at the first line to figure out the point (the thesis), in a story, you look at the ending. And if you happen to be consuming a story that doesn’t neatly lay out the theme for you in a quotable quote (ha), the ending is where you’ll find the keys to unlocking the point of the story.*
* Incidentally, most commercial films follow the same standard structure or pattern (which varies a little by genre but remains pretty consistent nevertheless). A key part of this pattern (called ‘beats’) is the ‘statement of theme’ beat, which happens right up front in the second scene. If you’re paying attention, this is where a character—usually not the main character—will either make a statement or ask a question that turns out to sum up the main theme of the film.