What's up my friend Abbie here and welcome back to WritersLife Wednesdays. Today we are talking about theme, what it is, why it's important and how to incorporate it effortlessly into your story. I've had a few requests for a video discussing and breaking down theme in a story, so that's what we're doing today.
There's an exact formula that I use to figure out my stories' central theme, AKA the truth I want to teach my reader. This is how I definitely weave the theme into my story so it comes across natural and graceful and impactful, not preachy. The formula is really simple.
I think you're going to love it and I also think you're probably going to need a notebook for this one. Let's get into it. What is theme?
I'll let Google answer that one. The theme in a story is its underlying message or big idea. This belief or idea transcends cultural barriers.
It is usually universal in nature. So theme in other words means truth. Because truth is subjective to every person alive, don't think about that too much or it will keep you up at night, only you know what your truth is, the truth that you want to weave into this story.
That's essentially what theme is, the big idea that you want to introduce your readers to, the big idea that you hope will change the lives of others. So the question now becomes how do we incorporate theme into our stories and make it feel natural and thought provoking, not preachy and editorializing. That's what we're going to dive into right now.
I have a super simple five step process that I use for every story that I write and it works like magic. Literally does the work for you. So let me show you what that process is.
Ready? Got your notebook? Let's go.
Step one. Why does your story matter to you? The truth you want to scream from the rooftops?
This is the very first thing I tell every writer when they first get a story idea and they're not sure where to go from there. Every writer's process is going to look different, of course, but I don't even care where you start or how you start. The better question to ask is, why does this story matter to you?
If you don't know why your story matters to you, chances are you're not going to see it through. Somewhere during the outlining or writing process you will give up on it. Why?
Because you don't know why you should value it. Sooner or later, we all give up the things that have no value to us. That's just a fact of life.
So the first thing you should ask yourself when you're going into writing a story is not what is this story going to be about? Better question, what is the truth that I want to scream from the rooftops? Here's the thing, you know a truth.
You know something for sure. You've had a revelation, a realization, an experience that transformed the way that you think about something and therefore transformed life for the better. An aha moment where you realize, "Holy crap, I was wrong, but now I see the truth and I can change my beliefs and change the way I think and change my entire life.
" Even if it's more of a subtle truth, like a quiet whisper of a knowing that resonates deep within your soul. Everybody has something, there's something for everyone. A truth that matters so much to you, you can't not share it with the world.
So by this point, you might know what that truth is. If it's coming to mind, write it down, preferably in one sentence. This is going to be the central theme of your story.
So once you have your truth, we'll move on to step two. Flip the truth on its head and make it a lie. This is your protagonist's misbelief.
I know you probably didn't see that coming. We just created this beautiful, glorious truth and now we're going to flip it upside down and make it this broken backwards messed up lie. But this is where things get good trust me.
Why? Because this is where your protagonist steps into the picture. And right now we know two things about them for sure.
One, they're going to have an aha moment at some point in the story and realize the truth that you just wrote down a minute ago. And two, right now they believe the exact opposite of that truth. Essentially, they believe a lie.
If you've seen my character creation series or pretty much any video of mine because I talk about this so much, you know that every conflicted character must have these three things, a desire, a fear, and a misbelief. For the sake of time, we're not going to go into the desire and fear inner conflict aspect, but if you want a better understanding on that to check out this video right here. Now let's create this lie.
Shall we? For example, let's say the truth you wrote down was, you are valuable. Obviously I would expound on this a bit more and dig deeper if I was writing a real story, but let's leave it super vague for our example.
The lie for this would naturally be, you are worthless. And if this is the lie your protagonist mistakenly believes is the truth, they constantly think I am worthless. But why does your protagonist believe this?
Aha, step three, find the origin of the misbelief digging into your protagonist's past. I am obsessed with backstory because everything we are is an accumulation of our life experiences. We move through time and space, having these experiences that impact us emotionally and therefore impact our moods, personalities and habits.
And on a surprisingly anatomical level, they impact who we are. So ask yourself what happened in my protagonist's past to create this misbelief? We believe everything we believe for a reason.
We had an experience in the downloading stages of our youth where we accepted something as true, even if it wasn't. This experience could be something traumatic or highly emotional, or it could just be a belief that's ingrained in us subtly through time and repetition. So let's go back to that example.
We have the truth, we have the lie, and now we just have to figure out what caused our protagonist to believe this lie. How about protagonist was abandoned by their parent at a young age, guaranteed to make a person feel pretty worthless. See, we call the young human brain impressionable for a reason.
Pretty much everything said and done to this small conflicted human's brain will be cemented as truth to them. And the pattern of their life experiences from here on out will only solidify this cement of this belief because they're looking at everything through the lens of their lie. So if a specific scene comes to you while I'm saying this, write it down and let's move on to step four.
Look for patterns. Your protagonist acting on their misbelief again and again. Like I said before, what creates our personalities and beliefs isn't so much that something happened to us one time.
It's that we've psychologically experienced that event again and again. This is good, this is so good. You got to get this.
Habits that perpetuate into the future with no visible end, that's what shapes our personality, character traits and identity. It's all choices. And just like any other habit you have like brushing your teeth or making your bed, eventually your brain doesn't wait for your conscious thought and consideration to act.
It just acts. So now it's time to ask yourself another question. How does your protagonist cement their misbelief as a truth by acting upon it again and again?
We talked about this a while ago in my backstory video, how you should really pinpoint these moments in your characters' past when they were faced with a situation that shoved them outside their comfort zone and gave them two options, act upon your lie or act upon the truth. And they chose their lie every single time. And it's repetition acting upon this misbelief again and again that has brought them to this conflicted place that they are in at the beginning of your story.
That's the danger of misbeliefs. They cement as truth in your mind and become part of who you are. And it's going to take a major shift in order for your protagonist to see the truth.
It's going to take something big and substantial enough to completely obliterate this lie. Something like a disaster, which leads us to step five. Tell the truth, crafting your protagonist's aha moment.
If you've been here for a while, you might know that I love the three-act story structure. In fact, I love it so much, I made a whole video series on how awesome it is and how to use it breaking down each act in a separate video of its own. Check out that series if you haven't seen it already.
But I'm not going to tell you that you need the story structure because some people prefer not to use it and they can still craft a great story with an awesome, powerful theme. So what is the most story bit that you simply cannot live without? The aha moment, the pivotal moment when your protagonist realizes the truth.
Yes. The truth that you wrote down at the beginning of this video. So how are they going to arrive at this aha moment?
Well, usually it's triggered by a disaster. See, your protagonist has gone on an internal journey and an external journey throughout the progression of this story. They've made fear based decision after fear based decision and created this tangled mess of mistakes that's going to catch up to them eventually.
And when it does catch up, your protagonist will realize just how wrong they were. See, story is not about what happens. It's about how what happens affects and transforms the characters.
It's about your protagonist going on an internal journey that pushes them outside their comfort zone, challenges their beliefs on everything and ultimately changes them for the better. If your protagonist has an aha moment at some point in your story and realizes the truth, that is not only a universal truth for everybody alive, everybody reading this book but also understands how it affects them and transforms their life, congratulations. You did it.
You wrote theme into your story without having to preach it to your readers. If you want to dive deeper into the story bits leading up to the aha moment in the three act story structure, definitely check out that series that I mentioned. Especially the video on act three as that is where the aha moment takes place.
So real quick, let's review this process one more time. To find the truth that you want to weave into this story, flip it upside down to make it a lie, your protagonist's lie. Find the origin of this lie in your protagonist's past.
Look for patterns where they established this lie as their truth and craft an aha moment to bring your protagonist transformation full circle. That's it. That's the formula that I use every time I sit down to write a story, and it is just fail-proof for figuring out your story's theme and how to execute it beautifully without telling your readers what to think.
Comment below and tell me what is the theme in your story. It's okay if you come right out and say it here on YouTube, just don't do that in your actual book. But please, definitely comment below and share your theme with us because I love to see other writers who are passionate about weaving truth into their stories and therefore making their stories matter.
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Until next week my friend, rock on.
