MANY MESSAGES, OR JUST ONE
Think of theme as the "meta-message," the one big statement about the world your work of fiction will convey. It will do this whether you're conscious of it or not.
A novel will have only one meta-message, though it may offer several sub-messages. For example, the theme of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is "Kindness and justice are the highest values of human existence." But the novel propounds numerous messages, such as the futility of pure intellect and the burden of free will.
But you don't want characters who merely represent a thesis. They must be real people with passionate hearts.
Your job is to find out where that passion is. In your prewriting, allow time for your main characters to explain, in their own voices, a philosophy of life.
Use the following exercise: Imagine your character sitting in a chair across from you. She seems angry. You, a trusted friend, ask her why she's upset.
Write down what she says, as quickly as it comes to you. Let this be a free-form, stream-of-consciousness exercise. Write for at least fifteen minutes. If you keep yourself from editing as you write, what your character says may actually begin to surprise you. Good. That's where real characters come from.
Later, come back and edit this voice journal to suit the needs of your character and story. Do this until you have a real person with real passions.
Once you've created well-rounded characters you'll have numerous opportunities to let them convey sub-messages in the actual story. But these must happen naturally, and that's a matter of learning the various "weaves" available to the fiction writer. To that subject we now turn.
WEAVING THE THEME
Ever look at a beautiful tapestry? From afar it seems like a painting. Only up close can one see it is really a combination warp (the foundational weave) and woof (the decorative pattern.) Put them together and you have art.
So it is with a great story, where plot and message combine to create a unified whole.
That's where weaving comes in. You must create the feeling of a tapestry, so the message emerges without fraying the rest story.
THE SPEECH WEAVE
Be wary of the straight speech—two or more paragraphs of one character speaking. Too often this becomes a thin substitute for the author's voice. If you come to a point in your story where a character wants to speechify, ask yourself some hard questions:
• Is the speech merely your voice in the character's mouth?
• Is there a dramatic need for the character to make a speech?
• Is the speech essential to the story? To character development?
• Are there alternatives (action, thoughts, dialogue) that could convey the information just as well?
Unless you can answer these questions satisfactorily, it's probably best not to give us a speech. But if you feel the speech is justified, make sure it is a window into the character's inner life. For example, in W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, the spiritual pilgrim Larry Darrell tells about his search in a speech lasting several pages.
Here's some of the flavor:
But that wasn't the chief thing that bothered me: I couldn't reconcile myself with that preoccupation with sin that, so far as I could tell, was never entirely absent from the monks' thoughts. I'd known a lot of fellows in the air corps. Of course they got drunk when they got a chance, and had a girl whenever they could and used foul language.... If I'd been God I couldn't have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation.
Here we have not only a glimpse of Darrell's struggle, but also some of his background (air corps). There is more going on than a mere conveyance of information. It is essential to Maugham's tale that we hear this speech. And it sounds like the character, Darrell, whom we have come to know.
In the film On the Waterfront (screenplay by Budd Schulberg), the theme is humanity—what does it mean to be a human being? Does it mean simply to survive? Or are we connected to each other?
Terry Malloy believes it's every man for himself. The ex-prizefighter, who has known nothing but "scrapping" all his life, wants to stay alive and make some money and be with the right people.
Edie Doyle is the very opposite. Educated in a religious school, she has a larger idea of what humanity is meant to be.
In this scene, Terry has taken Edie to a saloon for a little drink. Terry was unwittingly part of a scheme that ended in the killing of Edie's brother, Joey.
EDIE: Were you really a prizefighter? TERRY: I used to be.
EDIE: How did you get interested in that? TERRY: I don't know. I had to scrap all my life, I might as well get paid for it. When I was a kid my old man got bumped off. Never mind how. Then they stuck Charley and me in a dump they call a "children's home." Boy, that was some home. Anyhow, I ran away from there and fought in the club smokers and peddled papers and Johnny Friendly bought a piece of me. EDIE: Bought a piece of you?
TERRY: Yes. I was going pretty good there for a while. And after that...
What do you really care, am I right?
EDIE: Shouldn't everybody care about everybody else?
TERRY: Boy, what a fruitcake you are.
EDIE: I mean, isn't everybody a part of everybody else?
TERRY: And you really believe that drool?
EDIE: Yes, I do.
[Drinks are served]
TERRY: Here we are. One for the lady and for the gent. Here's to the first one, I hope it ain't the last. Go ahead. [Edie sips]
TERRY: No, not like that. One hook. [Terry drinks his shot] TERRY: Wham.
[Edie drinks hers, and is jolted] EDIE: Wham.
TERRY: You wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you.
EDIE: I never met anyone like you. There's not a spark of sentiment, or
romance, or human kindness in your whole body.
TERRY: What good does it do you besides get you in trouble?
EDIE: And when things and people get in your way, you just knock
them aside, get rid of them. Is that your idea?
TERRY: Don't look at me when you say that. It wasn't my fault what
happened to Joey. Fixing him wasn't my idea.
EDIE: Who said it was?
TERRY: Everybody's putting the needle on me. You and them mugs in the church and Father Barry. I didn't like the way he was looking at me. EDIE: He was looking at everybody the same way. TERRY: Oh, yeah? What's with this Father Barry? What's his racket? EDIE: His racket?
TERRY: Yeah, his racket. Everybody's got a racket. EDIE: But he's a priest.
TERRY: Are you kidding? So what? That don't make no difference. EDIE: You don't believe anybody, do you?
TERRY: Listen, down here it's every man for himself. It's keeping alive. It's standing in with the right people so you get a little bit of change jingling in your pocket.
EDIE: And if you don't? TERRY: If you don't? Right down. EDIE: It's living like an animal.
TERRY: All right. I'd rather live like an animal than end up like ... EDIE: Like Joey? Are you afraid to mention his name?
In this exchange, the theme has come out naturally. When using dialogue to weave in thoughts about theme, wrap it up in conflict.
Terry and Edie have natural conflict here. He inadvertently took part in the murder of her brother. And Edie has ideas which, if Terry ever bought into them, would lead to the shattering of the only world he knows.
Sometimes dialogue that carries theme can become ham-fisted, too obvious, maudlin. A deft touch with humor can allay some of that.
John Grisham uses humor to keep the conversion of a character from becoming maudlin. In The Testament, Nate O'Riley tells missionary Rachel Lane he tried to kill himself.
"I almost drank myself to death with cheap vodka."
"You poor man."
"I'm sick, okay. I have a disease. I've admitted it many times to many counselors."
"Have you ever confessed it to God?"
"I'm sure He knows."
"What happens?"
"Your sins will be forgiven. Your slate will be wiped clean. Your addictions will be taken away. The Lord will forgive all of your transgressions, and you will become a new believer in Christ."
"What about the IRS?"
Instead of an easy pat answer to the religious presentation, Nate asks about the tax man. It's a light moment in a heavy exchange that works to strike the right balance.
And always remember that it must be the characters who speak, not the author. As Stephen King says in On Writing, the key to good dialogue is honesty. That is especially important for dialogue that carries theme.
INNER MONOLOGUE
What characters think reveals who they are. Thoughts, being secret, are honest witnesses to the soul of the character. But, like speeches, they're sometimes used by lazy writers to do all the heavy thematic lifting.
Inner monologue is best in short bursts within action. Give us brief glimpses of character thought while the character is under a condition of stress. In Alton Gansky's A Ship Possessed, a character in the midst of action has a quick reflection:
It saddened him to think that his faith had atrophied over the years. He was still a believer and made no attempt to hide the fact. Still, he was not as active as he could be, nor did his faith occupy as much of his life as it once did. Now he wished he knew more.
That's all that's needed here. More details about his faith struggle, at this point, would have diverted attention from the scene.
Sometimes, however, a writer may want to get deep into the head of a character and let the thoughts go on. In that case the inner monologue will have to have a style and content that makes it compelling in and of itself.
Here's a short section of inner monologue from Walker Percy's The Second Coming:
Everybody has given up. Everybody thinks that there are only two things: war which is a kind of death, and peace which is a kind of death in life. But what if there should be a third thing, life?
Death in the guise of Christianity is not going to prevail over me. If Christ brought life, why do the churches smell of death?
Death in the guise of old Christendom in Carolina is not going to prevail over me. The old churches are houses of death.
Death in the form of the new Christendom in Carolina is not going to prevail over me. If the born-again are the twice born, I'm holding out for a third go-round.
The passage continues with the repeated phrase "Death in the guise of..." and becomes, ultimately, quite poetic. It is perfectly in keeping with the style of the book.
How do you find the right style for a section like this? You really have to allow it to find you. It will if you let the writing flow the first time around. Step into the character's head and just let fly with his thoughts
and words. Only later rewrite and refine. This right-brain, left-brain rumba is the best way to find a style that delivers.
METAPHORS, MOTIFS, AND SYMBOLS
Fiction that draws from the well of a religious tradition often uses metaphors to powerful effect. The emotional content of icons, rituals, sacred texts, and the like can be placed at well-chosen points in a story, giving it a richness of meaning.
Historical novelist Jack Cavanaugh uses this technique in Glimpses of Truth. The setting is fourteenth-century England, a time when it was against the law for Christians to read the Bible in English. In this scene, protagonist Thomas Torr, who is assisting the aged John Wycliffe copy and distribute his rogue English translation of the Bible, has taught his guardian, an unschooled ploughman named Howel, how to write the letter T. Thomas then appended other letters to the Howei's letter to write a phrase from the Bible. The scene is witnessed by Howel's daughter, Felice.
"These are words from the Bible?" Howel gasped.
Thomas nodded, though he didn't understand Howei's reaction. "One of King David's psalms."
"0 my," Howel said, his voice quivering. His eyes glazed with tears. "And that's my letter."
"Yes. That's the T you wrote." "My hand-printed Scripture?" "Yes."
"Father, are you alright?" Felice asked.
Howel didn't respond. His eyes were fixed in awe at the letters on the cloth strip. Tears spilled onto his cheeks. "Say the words again," he asked.
Thomas read slowly, "The Lord is my shepherd." Softly, reverently, Howel repeated the words.... "Oh! What a grand thought! And it begins with my T!"
... Thomas handed him the cloth strip. The ploughman took it in his oversized hands as though it was a splinter of the cross of Christ.
The last image is all we need to understand how the character feels.
A more extended use of this technique can be found in novels that are modern retellings of sacred stories. One of the most famous biblical parables
is the tale of the Prodigal Son. When he finally returns home, after wasting his inheritance, his father welcomes him back with compassion. In her novel The Note, Angela Elwell Hunt gives us a prodigal daughter:
King sat at the kitchen table while Peyton pulled glasses from the cabinet, then filled them with ice. She glanced over at him a couple of times, noticing how at home he seemed, and when she brought the glasses to the table she saw that he'd pulled two of her father's letters from the crowded napkin holder.
"Thought you might like to read these," he said, deliberately dropping them to the table. "It's about time, don't you think?"
Peyton stared at the letters as realization bloomed in her chest...
Picking up the phone, she punched in the number she hadn't dialed in years, then turned when a male voice answered. "Dad? This is Peyton."
Glancing across the room, she saw King give her an enthusiastic thumbs-up. She returned his smile, then looked away, unable to hide a grimace as her heart twisted.
Her father was weeping.
For an audience familiar with the biblical story, the scene takes on an added level of meaning.
Look to your own traditions, sacred or secular, for material that can deepen your stories.
A motif is something that recurs. It can be a setting, an object, words and phrases, character type—almost anything that's consciously used to convey meaning.
The land in Gone With the Wind is a motif, representing home and permanence interrupted by war and greed.
The ocean in Moby-Dick has several meanings, like dread and danger, as well as hope of reward.
A symbol is an object that comes to represent a thematic element. The green light on Daisy's dock in The Great Gatsby is a symbol for dreams and hopes that are, ultimately, unattainable.
In the film Collateral, Tom Cruise plays a hitman who forces cabdriver Jamie Foxx to drive him around to his appointed rounds. At one point the cab is stopped at a light on a city street at night, and a coyote runs across the road. The two men stare at it.
It is a symbol for what the hitman is: a predator in the city, alone, and hunted. His fate is determined.
RESONANCE
The last chapter of your novel, indeed the last paragraph and sentence, is of crucial importance. They should leave the reader with a feeling of resonance—just the right tone. In Anton Chekhov's words, the end of a novel or story must "artfully concentrate for the reader an impression of the entire work."
Flannery O'Connor's story "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" does just that. It ends with the following imagery:
Her mother let the conversation drop and the child's round face was lost in thought. She turned it toward the window and looked out over a stretch of pasture land that rose and fell with a gathering greenness until it touched the dark woods. The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight, it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees.
This image resonates and makes the entire story seem somehow deeper.
Finding just the right ending is one
of the great tasks of novel writing, especially when writing to inspire. A good exercise is to write several alternative endings. Try out different images, actions, and dialogue. Stretch yourself. The effort will be well worth it.
In New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art there hangs a Chinese silk tapestry from the Ch'ien-lung period. Royal birds soar among swirling clouds and exquisite flowers. It seems like a flawless painting, with all elements working in perfect harmony. Seamless fiction generates the same magic. Weave your messages into the fabric of your fiction and you will give your readers a deeply satisfying experience.
A FINAL THOUGHT ON THEME 3
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What will your novels ultimately mean? What will they say about life "
beyond the confines of the plot? How will they illuminate your vision of 187
life? Every story has a meaning. So does every author.
As Viktor Frankl puts it in his classic book on the subject, "Man's search for meaning is the ultimate motivation in his life." It is a subconscious reason readers pick up books. In the fictional search, they're also exploring their own inner territory.
John Gardner, novelist and author of On Moral Fiction, says:
I think that the difference right now between good art and bad art is that the good artists are the people who are, in one way or another, creating, out of deep and honest concern, a vision of life ... that is worth pursuing.
So what are you writing for? If it's only for money or fame, you'll miss the spark that makes both of those things possible. Go further.
And I don't mean you have to change the whole world. Writing so readers will be transported is also a valid goal. Good, solid entertainment is a release, and goodness knows we need that today. But start by asking yourself what moves you. Put that into your novels, and the entertainment value will skyrocket.
Develop a vision for yourself as a writer. Make it something that excites you. Turn that into a mission statement—one paragraph that sums up your hopes and dreams as a writer. Read this regularly. Revise it from time to time to reflect your growth. But have something in writing that will inspire you.
Root that inspiration in the world—your observations of it, and what it does to you. "I honestly think in order to be a writer," says Anne Lamott, "you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let's think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world."
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