Weaving Theme Into Your Story

Shannon Dittemore is the author of the Angel Eyes novels. She has an overactive imagination and a passion for truth. Her lifelong journey to combine the two is responsible for a stint at Portland Bible College, performances with local theater companies, and an affinity for mentoring teen writers. Since 2013, Shannon has taught mentoring tracks at a local school where she provides junior high and high school students with an introduction to writing and the publishing industry. For more about Shan, check out her website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. 

Today, Jill and I (and author Paul Regnier) are kicking off our Teen Writers Track at Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference! We are so excited and hope to see some of you today. If you ARE there (here?), please say “hello!”

This week, we’re picking up where we left off last Friday. We were talking about theme and how we can dig it out of our stories. Assuming we’ve pinpointed a few of our themes, I want to give you five simple ways to weave theme into your story.

William Shakespeare uses a lot of imagery to reinforce his themes in his tragedy, Hamlet. One of the themes he vigorously explores is the idea that the world is a decaying garden. Throughout the play, various characters and actions and dialogue reinforce Hamlet’s early observation: “‘Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.”

As you create your world, consider which elements will reinforce the message of your story. In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, they do this so well with the Beast’s castle. While it suffers beneath the curse, the castle is dark and gloomy, Gothic even. It is perpetually winter, a cold and numbing place to be. But when the curse is broken! Spring again! Sunlight and happy colors everywhere. The world itself helps us see the message of the story.

I’ve talked about this before, recently even. But as you create your characters, consider their traits and how their own make-up and journey contribute to the ideas you want conveyed. In Broken Wings, I created the Sabres, a rank of angel, after I had completed my first draft. Their creation highlights the idea of worship as warfare: ” . . . it’s his wings that so separate him from any other angel I’ve seen . . . Where I expect to see rows and rows of snowy white feathers, one blade lies on top of another–thousands of them–sharp and glistening silver . . . they rub one against the other, trembling, sending music far and wide.”

Common or Repeated Sentiment

Consider the scenes that make up your story. Do they share a repeated sentiment? When you read them individually, are the various characters sharing a common feeling? One of my favorite historical fiction writers is Kate Morton. In several (maybe all) of her books, certainly in The Distant Hours, she introduces several generations of women. In each mother-daughter relationship, there is a reluctance for the daughter to view her mother as having a life before she was born. It’s a relationship, an idea, a real-life stumbling block many people can relate to, and she doesn’t sermonize about it; she simply shows you the commonality of this belief and then she shows you just how wrong it is.

Similar Takeaways from Individual Scenes

In the WWII novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, the authors tell the entire story as letters to and from a variety of characters. It’s delightful and they’ve done well to capture each voice uniquely and with varying points of view on similar moments. But as different as each character is, a theme begins to emerge. In a letter from Dawsey to Juliet, he says, “But sometimes I think of {the author} Charles Lamb and marvel that a man born in 1775 enabled me to make two such friends as you and Christian.”

Dawsey is a farmer on the isle of Guernsey. Juliet is an author in London. And Christian? A Nazi soldier stationed at Guernsey as part of an occupying force. With every letter we read, we understand what Dawsey says so plainly. Love of the written word connects people from all different walks of life.

Tell me, do you have a difficult time weaving theme into your stories? Do you have a favorite method for doing so? Which of the above ideas would you like to give a try?