Beyond the Message: Why Advanced Writers Must Let Theme Emerge, Not Dictate
As writers, we often feel this burning need to say something important. We’ve lived. We’ve lost. We’ve witnessed. We’ve studied the human condition, wrestled with pain, and collected moments of truth we feel everyone should know. We feel impassioned. We want to take our work to the next level. We want our work to mean something. We want to create a legacy. And now, armed with this experience and wisdom, we want to sit down to write, and what comes out, horrifyingly, is not meaning but rather some page from some dogmatic gospel.
Here's today’s Success Point: Your theme, that passion that is burning inside you that you want everyone to know, the one that is going to win you a Pulitzer, should never, never, be louder than your story. Your story is always, always, the priority. The message must play behind it.
The reason emphatic people aren’t always the best teachers or speakers is the same reason that emphatic writers are not the best writers. Preaching at someone gets you nowhere and grows old fast. The moment you start writing at a reader rather than for a reader is the moment that you stop being a storyteller and start being a lecturer. This is no way to build a legacy. Even if your message is spot on, even if it is beautifully written, even if it could change the world, a message delivered like that (at the reader) stinks. It’s dead in the water.
Theme is not something you press onto your story like a brand on a cow. We had cattle when I was a kid, and some neighbors branded theirs, but we never did. I hated the practice. The cattle that got branded didn’t like it, either. I hate it when a writer does that to an otherwise brilliant tale. The story can’t hold the pedantic weight.
Theme is not something tangible, like a log. You can’t hit a reader over the head with it and expect them to like it. Instead, the theme is like the smoke rising from the log, emanating from the story and the fire you built with your narrative. It’s what the readers inhale after you’ve lit the match of character, setting, plot, and conflict. It’s what they feel when you let people fail, then let them try and fail again.
Letting the theme emerge rather than dictate means trusting your characters to successfully wrestle with the same questions you have, the ones you want to include in the theme. It’s the questions that constitute the theme, not the answer. The question is more important than the answer. If need be, it even means letting your story ask the questions but never answering. It means being brave enough to explore and understanding sufficient to trust your readers.
Sometimes, when we go overboard—and I’ve done it—it’s because we’re afraid that the reader will not get what we’re trying to say and will not, maybe, be swayed to our point of view. Here’s the thing: If you’ve done your job right, if your story rings emotionally and intellectually true, then your reader will get it. And it will be even better because it will come from them, not from you, from within themselves. Maybe it won’t come in the exact words that you would use. Perhaps it won’t have the precise intensity. But they will feel it, and then they will think about it. And this, rather than preaching, is more powerful than ever telling someone else what to think.
Today’s Success Point is simple. Go back to your current work-in-progress with dagger in hand. Look for the scene where your theme is trying too hard, where you’re hitting it on the head. This might be a speech, a little exposition, or maybe a moment between characters that is too on-the-nose. It may even be a line that you’ve beautifully written and adore too much. No matter what it is, it must pass the theme litmus test. You must know without doubt that how you present the theme will let the truth rise organically rather than being forced. If this is not the case, cut it. Or better yet, rewrite it through action, conflict, subtext, or backstory.
The story is the thing; it is the only thing. Let your story whisper truth. That whisper—that calm, quiet voice—will carry farther than any shout.
The best stories don’t deliver a message.
The best stories encourage readers to explore themselves. We do that with a laugh or cry from a character.
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