Theme Versus Meaning
By Donald Maass | March 2, 2022 |
Which would you rather: 1) Write a novel with a world-changing theme, or 2) Write a novel that captures the exquisite pain and beauty of life?
There are other choices, needless to say, such as write a novel that entertains, reaches best seller lists, earns a ton of money, or is made into a movie directed by Ron Howard. (Hey, his development team is looking.) My topic today, though, is not fiction’s commercial appeal but rather it’s literary significance: that is, what makes a novel important, if not memorable, if not a story for the ages.
Theme is frequently mentioned but mostly vaguely understood. It’s a point. A lesson. An instruction, in a way, for what’s wrong, how to fix that, or how we should live better. A novel’s theme points out something we must heed about ourselves and our world. Genre fiction, for instance, has overriding messages. Justice will be done (mysteries). Love conquers all (romance). One person can make a difference (thrillers, epic fantasy). Beware the future (science fiction). Be kind (women’s fiction). I’m grossly simplifying and ignoring secondary themes in specific novels, but you get—ahem—my point.
Another type of novel, though, aims differently. It wants less to tell us what to do, and more to tell us what and how we are. Its purpose is not to warn or change us, but instead to capture our human existence as it is. Novels like that are not prescriptive but descriptive. They tell us not how to change, but that we don’t need to. We’re beautiful the way we are. Our world is just the way that it is, and ain’t that grand?
Realistic literary fiction is like that. So are coming-of-age novels, sagas and historical fiction. Again, that’s simplistic but, I think, captures a certain literary reality. The difference between those two intents is the difference between being told something and sharing something. It’s the difference between heightening human experience or accurately rendering the human condition.
One argues and provokes. The other mirrors and reassures. One judges. The other does not. One is purposeful. The other is profound. One issues alerts. The other adds meaning. One pushes hope or fear. The other reminds us to accept pain and embrace joy. One warns or uplifts. The other reassures or laments.
Some stories present events which, for the most part, can’t really happen; other stories portray things exactly the way they do happen. But there’s a paradox. Stories that capture ordinary life have the greatest power when their people and events in them are heightened or extreme. Stories that deal in events extraordinary or fantastic, by contrast, become the most real to us when the people in them are relatable; meaning in some way exactly like us.
Theme versus meaning. Naturally, you are thinking can’t a novel do both? Of course. There are ways to enact either intention, or both. I have a few suggestions.
Practical Theme, Practical Meaning
Here are some prompts aimed at making your WIP more purposeful and/or more profound, the way life ought to be or the way life actually is:
- What’s the point you want to make? Who in the story wants to make that point, too? Give that person some room to speak. When would it come up naturally?
- Who in the story sees the nuances, hidden aspects, exceptions and ironies in your issue? Give that person some room too. Some people love to opine.
- What’s a question the answer to which you do not know? Pose the question and let the readers figure it out for themselves.
- To what should all of us pay attention? Why do people in general ignore what you’re saying in your story or remain stubbornly blind to what you want us to see? Certain characters in your story have that same resistance. Show it.
- What’s wrong in our world? How are we hurting each other in ways we don’t understand? What are our false justifications? How do we minimize injustice? How do we shift responsibility? In your story, bring whatever is bad right to your protagonist’s doorstep. Make it his or her direct responsibility.
- Who in your story is misunderstood, minimized, stereotyped or villainized? How does that happen in small, everyday ways? How does that happen in big, cruel, permanent ways? Show us insensitivity, ignorance and injustice actually happening.
- What historical force operates on your characters? What social force? How, exactly? Who in the story is the wielder of that force? What’s the worst that person can do? Do that.
- What would save the world? Sorry, bad news, that won’t happen…but something else will change the world a little. Make that happen instead.
- What would save humanity? Sorry, bad news, that’s not possible…but one person can be saved. Save that person.
- What’s something common that happens to people? What’s something insane that could never happen? Find a version of either or each to include.
- Is there a giant disaster underway? Make it common, happens often, or is happening everywhere.
- What’s the big meaning in something small that happens? Who sees that?
- Is there something fantastic or magical in your story? Make it ordinary in this place. Make it a known thing with protocols, regulations, academic study, experts, solutions or cures. Then make it different or exceptional this time.
- Is the problem facing your protagonist something many, or everyone, goes through? Find one way in which this problem is very different for your protagonist, on one way in which your protagonist is very different than anyone else facing the same problem.
- What’s an error that happens to everyone? Someone else is not what they seem or has a personal motive? What’s happening is not what everybody thinks? We get the wrong idea? We believe a lie? We make excuses for someone? We misjudge someone? We try to do something with incomplete information? We call a failure “fate” when it’s really our own fault? Pick an error for your protagonist to make, then make it happen.
- What’s something we probably wouldn’t know? Who in the story knows it? Find a time for that character to explain.
- What’s an opinion at odds with yours? Who in the story holds that opinion? Find a time for that character to express it.
- What’s a primary emotion that your protagonist currently doesn’t have an opportunity to feel, or which you the author are avoiding? Use it.
- What’s an unchanging feature of your story world? What’s something about people that bugs you? What’s one thing that’s ironic? What’s something terrible that won’t go away? What’s something wonderful that’s always there? Include any of those.
- Connect some dots. Then scatter the dots. Let your protagonist connect the dots that you’ve put in place.
- What’s your protagonist’s object of desire? Take it away. It has to be earned back.
- Who is your protagonist’s out-of-reach love? What is the puzzle to solve? What’s a minor mystery to figure out? What’s an adventure too impossible to attempt? What’s a fear beyond fear? What’s a horror beyond anything that’s bearable? Use any of those.
Okay, will that keep you busy for a while? If nothing else, I hope you can see how theme and meaning can emerge in any story. As you work on enacting those intentions, though, keep in mind one over-riding principle:
Fantastic stories contain realism; realistic stories make ordinary life magical.
What’s the primary purpose of your WIP, to show us something we’re not seeing or to show us life the way we know it to be? How are you enacting that? Share.
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
[coffee]
My present work-in-progress is a novella about an art historian succumbing to physical blindness who imagines her ‘seeing eye dog’ companion is a dog she knows well from a famous painting.
The imagined dog guides her through a vision quest of what she deliberately ignored in life, what went unnoticed, and what she still refuses to see. But she becomes obsessed with the notion that once she’s permanently blind no one will be able see her.
Dog spelled backwards is God. Did you know that? Seriously, seeing is not the same thing as sight, and it sounds like that may be what your novel is about. Is your novel pushing a theme or conveying meaning? I’d say you’re hunting a human truth: Because we have sight, we think that we see. Truth is, there’s a lot we don’t see. To see it, we have to look with something other than our eyes. Something like that?
Don,
Great post, leaving me much to ponder. I’ve been tossing about this same question for awhile: what’s the point I want to make? It feels like there are several, and I’m having a devil of a time narrowing them down to one, as well as covering the timespans, story arcs, subplots, etc., without dragging on endlessly. It’s all much too much! I’m careening down a road with too many forks that lead nowhere. I write realistic literary fiction and want to write a story that, as you put it, “captures ordinary life with people and events that are heightened or extreme.” (paraphrased) I feel like there are too many stories I’m trying to capture in one novel, yet they all need each other to be cohesive. Instead of having a clear point, I’m at the “Calgon, take me away!” point. I’ll soak for awhile in your post. Your questionnaire asks all the right questions, now I need only the right answers.
Hey Mike–I hope you don’t mind my butting in (and hopefully I won’t muddy the connection between you and the guru who penned the post), but been there done that, re: careening down a road with too many forks. My advice? Let the story lead you to the answers. I’m not a plotter or a pantser, but I do believe that getting to a finished draft, with “some” ending (plot-wise) will not only inform you, but actually lead you to the themes and meanings that can be so damn elusive. (By “some” ending, I mean grab a solid possibility with the understanding that it can, and probably will, evolve.)
Having lots of questions and overwhelming possibilities for your story are truly good problems, IMO. Wishing you the very best with it!
Vaughn, thanks for the tip, and never worry that you’re muddying up waters that weren’t clear in the first place. I appreciate all the help I can get, especially from people who’ve had experience with the same issue. Time to careen some more!
Mike,
I would recommend Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. You may become a drinker by the time you get through it, but it will help you identify all those things and make sure your novel is pacing right.
Julie, I have read Save the Cat!, which is still a part of my reference library, and have seen the other online. I didn’t know how different or useful it might be, so I’ve shied away from buying it. I’ll start reading a portion on Kindle and see. I have so many craft books, but I’m always willing to get more, especially when referred. Thanks!
Mike,
I have that library also and donated a bunch to the library. I kept important ones, Don Maass, James Scott Bell, Diana Gabaldon,Provost, etc. Now, I have 600+ books on the Civil War, so it’s not because I am anti-book. I just want them to earn their keep.
Tom, I could not have said it better than Vaughn. Your characters know what they’re looking for, your readers will decide what it all means. Sometimes it’s good to just raise issues and ask questions without answering them. That can be the reader’s job. It’s also a different post, which I suppose I will now have to write.
Thanks, Ron. ;-D I’ll do that, and eagerly await your follow-up post!
Hi Don, My forever novel, parts of which you have read, was fueled by fear after a local horrendous kidnapping and murder. Many of your prompts apply to my work. This one in particular: In your story, bring whatever is bad right to your protagonist’s doorstep. Make it his or her direct problem.
Well hurry up and finish, would ya? But take your time. Kidnapping and murder are primal human fears. We’ll wait and the fear you’re addressing is eternal.
My work-in-progress is a children’s picture book. I have a child character and her pet turtle. They each will live beyond 75 years old. The turtle acts as sympathetic listener throughout. I think I’m trying to figure out the meaning of what I’m trying to say beyond the theme of friendship. Thank you for your post.
I can think of only one picture book that has followed a character through an entire lifetime, Robert Munsch’s “Love You Forever”. Which tells me that there’s room for another. I love the idea of a pet turtle and a person living 75 years together. What made Munsch’s book work, ask me, is that there is a constant retrain running through the lives of a son and his mother, a song that she sings to him at bedtime even when he’s an adult. As she’s dying, (spoiler) he sings the song back to her. In your story, I wonder what will be the refrain? People will come and go through your life, but there’s one friend who will always be with you: me, your turtle? (Meaning, really, yourself?) Something like that? That’s capturing life in a way that’s simple–and therefore profound.
Don,
Would The Giving Tree qualify as a picture book that followed two characters through their whole lives–if you will permit a tree to be one?
Don–I’m so glad you’ve made this distinction today. I’ve often worried about theme. I mean, shouldn’t an epic story, spanning the entire life of such a grandiose pair of characters, have one overriding theme? If its ending is a tragedy, shouldn’t I be able to boil down some pithy phrase that heightens the human experience? I’ve never really found it, but I’m starting to see that maybe the fact that there is not a single, easily-grasped theme is not the purpose at all. Maybe it’s meant to provide meaning. Who knows–maybe just to me. Even if that’s the case, it will have been worth it. I mean, having gone on this journey I can see–more clearly than I could’ve dreamed beforehand–that we are all mere humans; each so utterly flawed but oh-so-wonderous.
Excellent checklist. Thanks for providing the clarity, and the hope.
Vaughn,
I sound like I’m a paid spokesperson for Jessica Brody. I’m not. When we went through the Save the Cat exercises on the forum, this nearly drove me crazy, but Jessica advises: THEME STATED (5%): A statement made by a character (typically not the hero) that hints at what the hero’s arc will be (that is, what the hero must learn/discover before the end of the book). Also referred to as a life lesson.
In my historical, my MC is talking to her lawyer about how to save her horse farm that bankers are trying to seize. He says, “You don’t always get what you want in life, and you can’t always win no matter how hard you try, but I will do all I can to help you win this fight.”
Boiled down, the theme becomes, you don’t always get what you want. She loses a great many things she holds very dear no matter how hard she fights for them.
In the fantasy she’s being put in a healing school for her own protection, but she’s digging her heels in when the Holy Father repeats the creed of her people, I serve, and says, “Then the choice seems clear. Who will you choose to serve this day? Yourself or the People?”
The theme, we decided, is her putting others above herself.
Jessica helps you drill down and find the meat of your story and I think she has a free work sheet you can get and not buy the book.
Excellent example! Thanks, Julie (I’m sure Jessica would thank you, as well :).
Eh, maybe not if she heard me ranting about that book and saw my Jessica Brody pin cushion. You’re welcome.
Hey Vaughn, I think Julie is making a good point. An epic covers a lot of ground, but you can pepper in a lot of good questions and life lessons along the way. Also, what ties an epic together? What makes a long story with many life phases feel like it’s one story? The answer, I believe, is that there is one question that unifies all of that disparate experience: Who am I? And ancillary questions: Where and how will I find myself? How should I live? Ultimately, an epic is about endurance. Keep going. Keep seeking yourself. It will take a long time and much experience–it has to–but in the end you will know who you are.
Donald,
Thank you. I have The Emotional Craft of Fiction as well as your other books and they are excellent. In Writing the Breakout Novel, there was an exercise: What would your character never do? Now make them do that.
I was working on an epic fantasy when I read that and had no idea how to answer that. Then, the MC’s mother is extremely over protective, but I have her inadvertently put the daughter directly in the grips of the big bad in an effort to save her. The father would never desert the mother, but he leaves to protect her. The MC would never give up, but she does to the point she is suicidal.
Much like this advice: What’s something common that happens to people? What’s something insane that could never happen? Find a version of either or each to include.
Applying that one bit of advice, turned the story completely on its head in a good way. Just one of those things and the whole story isn’t recognizable.
A friend of mine from the Litforum.com sent me Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell and Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. I think she’s a friend. (JK, she’s my best friend) I nearly pulled my hair out over STC. Then someone got the bright idea to discuss it on the forum using our current works (probably me). By this time, I had moved on to a Civil War novel because an agent I queried with the fantasy said, “You know what you have here is a YA don’t you?”
No, I didn’t. We discussed this and some other things, but I had no idea how to transition it, so I let the boys in the back figure it out and started work on the historical story that had always intrigued me.
Lucky me, we did both the fantasy, which had by then been puzzled out and rewritten, and the historical.
Theme, I hated figuring that out both times. In the middle ages, a woman accused of adultery could have her virtue tested by walking on fire. Figuring out theme is my trial by fire. I’d rather just admit I had congress with that good-looking archer or confess my book has no theme.
Anyway, thank you. I’m going to copy this and put it in my writing folder.
There’s a lot to chew on in your comment! And that’s what a good story does, isn’t it, whether making a point or capturing life: it gives us a lot to think about.
As always, you ask the best questions that help us dig deeper into our stories. I write realistic fiction, both contemporary and historical, and I’m always interested in stories of the common people, how the culture shapes them even as they fight it or go with it. My current historical began with too many plot elements with all the complexity of relationships during a time of political and social unrest (oh, and I threw time travel in there as well because…fun) but over the years, simplifying it to its core (couer), which is a love story. And it’s so much better. True love indeed covers a multitude of sins. I mention true love because my young characters have to distinguish it from the counterfeit. And as I write this, perhaps that is the point of my story. Thanks Don.
Uh, sure…glad I could help. Seriously, a good story has a lot to tell us or show us. When a story makes us think, that’s good. And I can see that your story is making you think, too. Excellent.
“Stories about ordinary life have the greatest power when the people or events in them are heightened or extreme. Stories that deal in events extraordinary or fantastic, by contrast, become the most real to us when the people in them are relatable; meaning in some way exactly like us.” This jumped out at me. it explains my love for Urban Fantasy. Thank you for the thought-provoking list!
So interesting that you mention urban fantasy. I think that one basis for that genre’s appeal is the collision of the magic and the real world that we live in. We live ordinary lives but also know that our lives are in some ways magical. Urban fantasy captures that.
Thanks for the excellent post Don, and one of your prompts jumped out at me.
“Is the problem facing your protagonist something many, or everyone, goes through? Find one way in which this problem is very different for your protagonist, on one way in which your protagonist is very different than anyone else facing the same problem.”
My WIP sees a character trying to change their political views, and fails since their understanding of the opposing ideology is so flawed that it has warped their realty to ludicrous levels. The purpose of the story (besides hopefully being very funny) is to show how universal it is to think the worst of people you disagree with. It’s different for my MC in that they are trapped in their own misunderstandings. Aren’t we all?
James, there’s a lot of psychological research to show that we misunderstand others, and why. (We also are usually wrong about what others, in turn, think of us.) A favorite recent mind-candy book of mine is Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers”. He dives deep into the topic.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look that up.
Sometimes, Don, I think giving us less would actually be giving us more. There’s so much here to think about and respond to. About “what makes a novel important?” It’s impossible to answer without first knowing who’s being written for, and for what. I’m completing an upmarket novel that I think of as a comedy of manners. It’s set in a Florida retirement golf community, so the target audience would seem to be obvious. But that’s not really true. Like most readers in general, most people in such communities read genre fiction. That means the trick for me will be to find a way to catch the eye and ear of other readers (of course that’s marketing, and not applicable here). They exist, but are harder to reach than those who head straight for the latest bodice ripper, guy-fiction novel, or book that targets by special-interest category.
Stories “that tell us what and how we are.” In my story, I’m not out to preach anything. In my view, the best novels create meaning for readers by making them care about characters. I am suspicious of novels and writers who have little or no comic element, so that’s an important aspect of my story. Or so I hope: one-size-fits-all is almost never true of humor.
Thanks for so much to keep us busy.
My mainstream trilogy is sadly much more relevant than when I started it, partly with the goal of showing how the world prefers to ignore those who are chronically ill/disabled, and to assume they don’t have the same dreams, goals, and aspirations – and the same chances of fulfilling them – as the rest of the world. When I began to write it, people with lives destroyed by post-viral syndromes (getting sick and never getting well) were relatively uncommon.
Now they are being joined by millions of unlucky long-covid sufferers – whose lives are being left without hope in the same way.
I wish I had never become topical.
The story is still about three people whose lives become intertwined where the world of Hollywood intersects with the world of ‘content creators,’ and how they pursue happiness when not all three can achieve it, but it is now pertinent to far more people and their loved ones – directly.
Gosh, Tom, I apologize. I will strive in future to give you less! LOL.
Are you responding to me or Tom Knister?
Lol! ;-)
Funny guy!
Don,
I have chosen #1, so I can change the world. Although I would also welcome lots of money and meeting Ron Howard. My difficulty is remembering that it is stories that change the world, and stories are about people (or sometimes people-like beings), their emotions, reactions, desires frustrations, etc. It’s not proselytizing–even by my characters–who keep pulling at the reins and yelling, “But it’s destroying the world. Do something. Tell people.” Finding the right balance is hard. So thanks for your column today. I’ve read it twice and will read it again. Maybe by the fourth time it will start to sink in. But in the meantime, Save the Trees.
Sherrill
I’m glad I saw this post today. I never go out of my way to include theme in my books, though I often look for, and sometimes find, one in the end. But perhaps they aren’t themes at all. In my last two, as-yet-unpublished manuscripts, both conspiracy thrillers, I started with current, usually political, issues that had my gut tied in knots and tried to untangle them through fictionalized events and characters that, in a way, reflect the fears and frustrations so many of us share. It’s the only way I can write really, impassioned by a pebble in my shoe that’s digging into my sole…or rather my soul. I need to get those fears and frustrations out, the anger and impotence I feel at not being able to shake people and make them see what they’re doing to all of us. To my surprise, those who started out as antagonists turned into something else entirely. I guess it was my way of showing, or even admitting, that not all those who appear as the bad guys are singularly dimensioned. They do bad, often shocking things but are motivated by desires similar to everyone else’s, mostly to protect their families, their children, their lovers and friends. Having said that, I’ll go through your extensive list and see if I managed to address them.
Hi Don:
I’ve never thought of separating theme and meaning in this way. My novels usually began with an issue or a question that bothered or intrigued me. The Devil’s Redhead grew out of my feelings about how much the drug scene changed — violently — from the 1970s to the 1980s. Done for a Dime grew out of my seeing how, as cities fell prey to post-industrialization, the people living there all too often seemed of less value than the real estate. Blood of Paradise was based on my awareness of the corruption that followed our involvement in El Salvador. Done for a Dime was based on my belief too few people understood the price families paid to emigrate here. From that core idea I turned to the characters who brought those various circumstances to life, and I asked myself what they would do to preserve or better their lives in the face of a crisis created by the instability of the situations I was investigating. I’m not sure how this fits into your methodology, but the questions you pose are stellar — and exactly the kinds of questions to be asked if your story is to rise above a static investigation of a situation and instead reveal human character pushed to transcend its habitual comfort zone and thus discover what it means to be truly human.
Miss you, my friend.
I always love your observations, Don, and the way your big-picture questions help authors circle in on the specifics of the story they are telling. I focus a lot on those specifics and the nitty-gritty in my work as an editor; I love pointing authors to your work to help them get there.
This is an awesome timely post as I am brainstorming a historical series and love the way these questions prompt ideas.
¿Por que no los dos?
Thank you for this thought-provoking post! Your workshops and books have helped me grow as a writer.
Wow. Just, wow. I’m printing this up as I await my first editorial letter for my upcoming release. Thank you!
Fascinating piece. I find, based on your definitions, that I prefer books with theme over meaning and struggle to find much meaning or relevance in stories that don’t also have a clear theme. Thought-provoking stuff!