Of Befuddlement and Theme

It’s not enough to know how to do something. You have to know how to speak and/or write it, meaning that you use the correct vocabulary. And then, if you know how to communicate it, you can teach it to others.

When I taught 4^th and 5^th grade, mastery of multiplication included vocabulary words like factor, multiple, and product. Easy!

No one asked me to teach calculus. Reason #1: I didn’t know how to do calculus. #2: I didn’t know calculus-ese.

For the last year, I’ve been focusing on mastering the concept of story structure.

This should be straight forward. Stories have been around since people formed language, and much of what the ancients wrote about story—Plato and Aristotle, for instance—is still true today. Good stories share common attributes.  And there are lots and lots of books out there to teach me everything I need to know.

A smidgen of frustration (understatement) entered my quest for knowledge because people who write about writing, don't use the same vocabulary. For instance, there's "theme." Theme influences character arc and the internal and external conflicts of a story. In fact, theme should influence absolutely everything in a story.

Again, talking about theme should be straight forward.

It’s not.

Especially if you read more than one book on the subject. Maybe I should have been a mathematician, specializing in elementary math skills. There’s not an ounce of ambiguity about the definition of a sum or what a rhombus looks like.  (Polygons rule!)

But I’m a writer. I should have read ONE really good book about structure and been satisfied. Instead, I read five, which has landed me straight into the category of befuddlement. (The Category of Befuddlement would be a great book title. Dibs!)

I’ve experienced this befuddlement because each author presented different definitions for theme that were enough alike that I could eventually say, “Ah-ha! They’re talking about theme!” But two of the authors gave theme a new name. 

Is theme a bad word?

The first book I read, of course, was John Truby’s book, The Anatomy of Story, strongly suggested by Bonnie. Truby says at the beginning of the “Moral Argument” chapter that “a great story is not simply a sequence of events or surprises designed to entertain an audience. It is a sequence of actions, with moral implications and effects, designed to express a larger theme.”

I get that. Tell me more!

Theme is the author’s view of how to act in the world. It is your moral vision. Whenever you present a character using means to reach an end, you are presenting a moral predicament, exploring the question of right action, and making a moral argument about how best to live. Your moral vision is totally original to you and expressing it to an audience is one of the main purposes of telling a story.

This was a new way for me to look at theme, but it made sense. When I tested the idea against stories I’d read, it worked. Suzanne Collins must believe that personal sacrifice is the highest form of love. Lisa See believes traditions can tie a family together and rip them apart. Anne Tyler believes that what we may think is loving, others see as belittling and settling.

Alan Watt in The 90-Day Novel comes up with his own name for theme. He calls theme the dilemma.

There is a dilemma at the heart of every story…It is the core struggle around which every character in the story revolves. Some people call this the theme (Thanks for the hint, Mr. Watt.) or the dramatic question. It is personal to the hero yet universally relatable to the reader.”

Most recently, I picked up The Moral Premise by Stanley D. Williams, Ph.D. He’s talking about theme as the moral premise. This is how he introduces moral premise:

Every…physical obstacle that the protagonist confronts is rooted in a single psychological, spiritual, or emotional obstacle. And to overcome the many physical obstacles, the protagonist must first overcome the singular psychological obstacle that his journey…is really about…Moral Premise—a statement of truth about the protagonist’s psychological predicament.

These authors are saying very similar things about theme. It’s up to me to create a working definition of theme for my writing. I’m very tempted to go back where I started, with Truby—“theme is how the author believes the world should work.” While these other writers on theme have deepened, corroborated, and expanded my understanding, I prefer this simple yet widely applicable definition. 

Distilling down the themes of books you’ve read—or written—is a great exercise. I’m a bit tardy, but I’ve done just that for my novels, plus my work in progress:

Like a Watered Garden: Expanding our perception of others allows us to grow and gain independence.

Always Green: Friendship is the best foundation for romantic love.

In Every Flower:  Being a family requires more courage than love and the ability to bend and stand against resistance.

The Queen of Sleepy Eye: Harsh judgment of others leads to self-incrimination. Forgiveness leads to personal growth and deeper love.

Seeing Things: We hang on to those we love by surrendering our desire to control them.

Goodness & Mercy: Running away from guilt only brings us back where we started.

Ring!: To free ourselves from regret, we must live without excuses and embrace living in the present.

Notice that theme is not the storyline (plot) or premise (one sentence that tells what happens to start a story and what the protagonist is going to do about it). Theme is the underlying truth of the story from the author's perspective.

What are the themes from your stories? What frustrations have you come across as you’ve learned the craft of writing? Is there a danger in reading too many writing books? What contradictory advice have you been given either by a teacher or in a book? And by the way, if I've got this theme-thing all wrong, tell me now!

Shining a Light on Monsters

OOPS! I skipped a chapter in our discussion of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird last time. Here it is! Jump in whether you've read the chapter or not. Also, is there a writing book you would like to discuss together here? We're almost to the end of Lamott's book.

Lamott's chapter, "Finding Your Voice," opens rather predictably but wisely about how new writers tend to emulate their favorite authors:

It is natural to take on someone else's style, that it's a prop that you use for a while until you have to give it back. And it just might take you to the thing that is not on loan, the thing that is real and true: your own voice.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Early in my writing career, I read everything by Elizabeth Berg. I LOVED her voice, the truth of it, how I felt connected to her characters, with her. I loved her writing so much I attended a writers conference where she was a speaker, hoping to meet her. The poor woman was at the tail end of a book tour. She looked like she'd slept in motel rooms lit by strobe lights for weeks. The good thing for me? She was weak and easy to stalk. I wrangled a picture with her, a few words that I don't remember, but it didn't help me sound just like her.

As much as I wanted to write in her voice, I wasn't Elizabeth Berg. I hadn't lived her life, wrestled her monsters, eaten her breakfast, argued with her husband over moldy towels. My voice is my own, a product of all that is dull and magnificent about me. It's what I fantacize about, tremble over, do in dark rooms with the shades drawn. Oh my! My voice is also what swells my heart to love, rejoice, and worship. There's no getting around it, I can only write from my own core.

This, according to Lamott, means getting in touch with our monsters.

Really?

Oh yeah.

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when pople let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we've all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition. We don't end up with a brand on our forehead. Instead, we compare notes.

I worried about myself even as a child. We had exposed aggragate stairs to the second floor that sort of floated. No risers. Somehow, I had gotten into my head that if I stepped on the third step from the top, a monster would reach between the steps, grab my leg, and pull me into the 5th Dimension where unspeakable torments awaited children. My maturing brain knew this couldn't be true, but the self-doubting part of my brain kept up this practice for an embarrassingly long time.

No one ever knew.

Until, in an unguarded moment, as an adult, I told someone I hardly knew. As it turned out, she had rituals that kept her safe from monsters in the bathroom--touch the hot water knob, the cold, and tap the faucet three times. No monsters in the bathroom! And so, as Lamott suggests, my new friend and I compared notes. And that's what our readers want to do, compare notes. They don't want to brand us, banish us, or beach us (in case you're a whale). They share our need to know we're not as weird or damaged as we thought. We're not alone.

Recently, the gifted and gorgeous Katy Popa suggested a book to me: The 90 Day Novel by Alan Watt. The author took me by the hand to lead me through the process of structuring and plotting my work in progress through daily writing exercises. Some of the writing prompts took me aback. He made me write about my biggest disappointments, tell things that no one knows about me, and what the source of my greatest shame happens to be. I've filled five notebooks with entries for myself and my characters.

Somewhere in the process, I thought to myself, "Wow, my character's voice is changing. She's real." I'm not sure how my subconcious accomplished this (Bonnie!), but shining a light on my monster has deepened my voice, made it more unique and infused it with truth. It's more me.

Lamott summarizes that telling the truth in our own voices is our nature. "Truth seems to want expression." I'm not sure it's our nature to tell the truth, but I do agree that truth wants expression.

Fortunately, not all truth is a cold, cold lake we have to plunge headlong into. Perhaps your truth is that there is so much more to life than what can be seen. Life is mysterious, wondrous, and its Creator is good. Lamott includes a quote toward the end of the chapter that took my breath away. Stephen Mitchell wrote about Job, saying this:

The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama is delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.

Let me dare to summarize this seemingly disjointed discussion on voice: While we are in the toddler stage of our writing, we will emulate--or try to emulate--our favorite authors. It's possible this sort of play will lead us to our true voice. But it usually doesn't. What does strengthen and develop our grown-up voice is courage--to face our monsters and to "expose the unexposed." All this work will give us a truer voice, and truth will connect us with our readers like nothing else.

There was Interview With a Vampire. How about Interview with [fill in your name here]'s Monster? If you dare, interview your monster and see how the experience influences your voice. Be sure to report back! Are you buying this? Is it necessary to face your monsters to develop a strong, unique voice? Have you laid a book down because the voice wasn't true? And what about this kinship with truth? Have you experienced that with an author? Here's one sentence from this chapter that could start a great conversation: "Write as if your parents are dead." Let's not waste it!