You say theme, I say plot device

It’s good information whatever you call it. In my earlier search for theme related information I stumbled onto a handy section of the Romantic Times Website titled Themes. Without rehashing the whole “how I define theme” argument, I’ll just say that this is a pretty nifty (and pretty comprehensive) list of timeless romance plot devices.

Here’s a much shortened list I created from their lengthy one:

Feuding Families
Marriage of Convenience
Amnesia
Kidnapping
Nursing Back to Health
Secret Babies
Bad Boys
Presumed Dead
Terms of the Will
Pirates
Mail-Order Brides
Pretend Marriages
Childhood Sweethearts
Love on the Job
Reconciliation

I included the plot devices I consider to be the most classic among romance novels. I mean, come on, marriages of convenience and secret babies are as stereotypical as the romance genre goes—and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. Marriages of convenience and secret babies can be cliché and silly, or they can be page-turning and captivating. It’s really all in how the story is written.

For even the most extreme plot devices on the list that might leave you shaking your head and thinking ‘there’s no way I would buy that,’ there’s an example out there of how it’s been done well. “Disguised as a Male” struck me that way at first, but then I thought oh…what about Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night or the movie Shakespeare in Love or the movie She’s the Man.

I just finished an older Suzanne Brockmann, one of the early ones from the Troubleshooters Series, and one of the subplots contained a nursing back to health plot device. Never once while reading that did I think to myself, ‘oh I’ve seen this so many times before.’ Even though I have. The writing and the context of the situation within the bigger story made it fresh and exciting.

Classic plot devices are classics for a reason. This list could be useful for story brainstorming in the future.

Thoughts on Theme: Part II

It’s been a while since my first post on theme, but I haven’t forgotten about it. The Plotting Bootcamp workshop I took through Rose's Colored Glasses in June kept me busy all month. I accomplished a completely re-worked outline for the new and improved All Roads Lead to Ross, so the workshop was worth its weight in gold to me. Then the last weekend in June, I attended a writer’s retreat with several of my DSRA chaptermates. In one weekend, I turned my outline from the workshop into a scene by scene layout of the story. I still have a few holes, but I’m proud of how the story has shaped up.

So, enough excuses about why I haven’t written more about theme and on to the point. The workshop planted a seed for the theme of my story, and I keep thinking about how I can subtly layer it in. I asked several of my writer friends about their thoughts on theme, and I posed to the question over at Romance Divas too. I discovered writers’ attitudes about theme are as varied as themes themselves.

Many writers don’t seem to think about theme at all. That made me feel better about never having thought much about it myself until now. Many of them say they discover the theme as they write the story and then elaborate on it through revisions. Some feel they have the same theme in all their work--that it’s the piece of themselves that occurs naturally in their writing, the touch of their personal philosophy about life or love, that continually recurs.

I was cautioned by more than one writer to watch out lest I “beat the reader over the head with it (theme).” Subtlety and subtext are generally best with any writing device. I know this. I also know my own tendency to over-think things. So…my newfound obsession with theme may become a vice when my critique partners start looking at my WIP. Only time will tell.

The most intriguing concept someone shared for developing theme involved thinking of it as a continuum. Almost any of the abstract subjects listed in my first Thoughts on Theme post could be set up on a continuum. Truth wasn’t on my original list, but I’m going to use that as an example here anyway. If I plot my Truth Continuum below:

FALSE__________________________TRUE


Then things that are absolutely true fall to the far right, and things that are absolutely false fall the far left. Everything is simple. Black and white.

But some things aren’t that easy to classify—there are gray areas that fall in the middle or to the left or right of the middle based on their level of trueness or falseness.

What’s true for one character might not be true for another. One character might know something the other doesn’t, something that will completely change what the other character believes to be true. Or the character's beliefs themselves may color what is true for that character.

Taking an abstract concept and making it fluid via a continuum, marking its stages of progression on a line, can show a writer where each character falls and reveal multiple themes (complete philosophic statements about that abstract concept) that can be, or may already be, embedded in the story.

Using the concept of betrayal, betrayal goes at one end of the continuum and its opposite (as the writer defines it—in this case I’m going to use loyalty) goes at the other end. Then, considering the characters’ conflicts and viewpoints, the writer can place each in the appropriate place on the continuum. And of course, the character may be at different points on the continuum at different points in the story.

I wouldn’t make multiple graphs for this or spend too much time worrying with it (my effort to avoid over-thinking), but I can see how the visual idea of a continuum could help me in my plotting as I’m trying to establish running, cohesive themes throughout the whole story—both main and subplots.

I think I will make theme a major point of consideration when developing new story ideas from now on. After doing some thinking and researching about it, I believe it’s a concept that should be deeply rooted in the characters, in the conflicts, and even in the setting. For me, it’s too important to ignore because, obsessive plotter that I am, I don’t trust myself to work it all in naturally.

My thoughts on theme have led to thoughts on motif and symbol, but I’ll save those topics for a future post or two.

By the way, if you’re interested in the Plotting Bootcamp workshop, they’re offering it again in September. You can find more information about that HERE.

Thoughts on Theme: Part I

During the month of June, I’m taking an online writing workshop called Plotting Bootcamp over at Rose's Colored Glasses. I’ve decided to return to a shelved work in progress, All Roads Lead to Ross, and basically start over with it through this one month long plotting workshop. One of our first lessons asked us to write down the theme for our story, and that got me thinking…

I know what theme is. Years ago, as an English major, I wrote numerous essays on it. I analyzed it in the classics extensively. In my former life as an English teacher, I taught the concept of theme to hundreds of students, yet I’ve never thought about theme from the perspective of a writer—just as a reader. I’ve never consciously chosen a theme for a story and tried to embed that theme throughout the plotline from the very beginning stages of development. I wonder why I haven’t?

It may be because the way I learned and taught theme isn’t the way most writing craft books and online workshops present the concept. I taught advanced English courses which had a heavy emphasis on writing literary analysis essays. I used the words “theme” and “universal meaning” interchangeably when I taught my students to find evidence of the author’s philosophy about life in the story.

Holman and Harmon’s A Handbook to Literature, sixth edition (1992) defines theme as “a central idea. … The abstract concept that is made concrete through representation in person, action, and image. No proper theme is simply a subject or an activity. Theme implies a subject and a predicate of some kind—not just vice in general, say, but some such proposition as ‘Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive.’ ‘Human wishes’ is a topic or subject; the ‘vanity of human wishes’ is a theme.”

When analyzing literature, I taught my students that a theme wasn’t a subject, but that a subject was a part of the theme. I had them make two columns on a piece of paper and label the left hand column “subject” and the right hand column “universal meaning.” We would fill the subject column with the abstract concepts the story was about—love, for example, or betrayal or revenge or secrecy. Then in the other column, we had to dig deeper. We had to figure out what the author was really saying about that subject.

Then we had to avoid the cliché trap. Of course the easy theme for love is “love conquers all.” For revenge, “revenge is sweet.” But we had a rule: No fortune cookie themes.

So we had to dig deeper than the cliché to find the real heart of the story and then strive to write it in a fresh way. For love, I might use something like, "love can unlock unknown inner strength to get a person through devastating loss and hardship" as a theme statement.

I googled for common themes in literature and compiled a list of the first several that came up. This list overlaps with suggestions I’ve gotten from several writing craft books and writing workshops when they address theme. Here’s the list:

Abandonment
Acceptance
Alienation
Ambition
American dream, the
Beauty
Betrayal
Birth/childhood
Coming of age
Commodification/commercialism/commerce
Community
Courage
Cruelty
Death and dying
Dreams can come true
Duty (filial piety)
Education
Ethics
Family
Fate
Father/son
Fear
Forgiveness
Freedom
Futility
Gender
Good conquers evil
Grief
Guilt
Heroism
Hope
Identity
Illness
Importance of family
Individual and society
Innocence and experience
Isolation and exile
Jealousy
Justice
Loneliness
Love
Love conquers all
Loyalty
Memory
Mother/daughter
Nationalism
Nature
Oppression
Overcoming fear
Parenthood
Peace/non-violence
Perseverance
Prejudice
Pride
Race
Regret
Rebirth
Redemption
Rejection
Religion
Responsibility
Reunion
Science and technology
Separation
Sex/sensuality/eroticism
Social class
Spirituality
Stages of life
Success
Suffering
Survival
Terrorism
Time
Tradition
Violence
Work

Now here's my issue with the list: None of those words or phrases, in my opinion, are themes. They're starting points for themes, but they're not themes by themselves. And for some reason, I find myself unreasonably irritated to find so much information out there that says they are. I'm inwardly cringing for all the English teachers who have to repeatedly explain, "just because you found it on the internet, doesn't mean it's true."

I've put some feelers out for opinions from other writers about theme and their definitions for it. I also want to emphasize that my rant about theme here is not directed at Plotting Bootcamp. Thus far, I'm finding the workshop helpful and informative. The Bootcamp assignment was merely the trigger than sent me searching for more information about theme.

I'll be writing my thoughts on theme, part II when I get some feedback.