Themes! and Messages! and Plots!? OH, MY!!

Okay, so I can’t say I’m the best person to ask for advice on this, but I’ll certainly try to help. Just take whatever I say with a grain of salt since I’m not really super experienced in this part of writing.

I would guess that your thematic question would be that everyone is important and that they all have a purpose no matter how rich or poor. That’s just based on what you told me.

The problem with this theme, however, is that it’s kind of an easy theme. I learned from a recent webinar on StoryEmbers that true, good themes that resonate with people will have thematic questions that are harder to answer. In this case, I believe your thematic question would be, “Do I matter to the world?” Or something along those lines. That’s a yes-or-no question, meaning that it’s a lot easier to answer than a lot of questions are. To build a really good, strong theme, it’s helpful to have a thematic question that is harder to answer and that all readers might not necessarily know the answer to.

So, personally, I would change your thematic question. Make it more difficult to answer, and make sure it has multiple possible answers that are right. Use questions that begin with the words what or how, instead of words like do or are.

Moving on to your next question: Having multiple messages isn’t a bad thing. But you should probably still have one dominating theme, and the other messages should branch off of that. You want readers to see clearly your one theme.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have other messages along with it. Your other messages should probably just be more subtle, and they should probably relate to the main theme more.

Does that make sense? I typed this up pretty fast, so sorry if any of that was confusing!

You’re welcome! Yes, either of those questions I think would be good.

I think that’s true? I’ve never really thought about it until now, so I don’t know. Like I said earlier, I may not be the very best person to ask for advice on this. Still, that sounds right to me, and now that I think of it, I have read books that have changed thematic questions. Especially in series, the themes often change through different volumes in the series.

I’m not sure that a changing thematic question is necessarily a character arc, though. A character arc is typically the character developing and finding the answer to the thematic question, not necessarily changing it.

@maryg3

It seems like you already nailed down your theme with your description of what the book is about.

It’s ultimately a journey about finding one’s family and embracing yourself.

Found family and embracing yourself seems like the main two themes of your story.

And about your question on multiple themes, pretty much every story has multiple themes. Like The Lord of the Rings’ main theme is good vs evil, however, there are also themes of friendship, sacrifice, and courage.

So you can play with multiple themes in your story, however, it’s usually recommended that among those themes to have one main theme that your story is mostly focused on.

The main theme is usually the theme that is most closely connected to the MC’s internal struggle and the story’s overarching narrative.

So if your MC’s main internal struggle is understanding who she is and embracing it, then that would probably be your main theme.

If your MC’s main internal struggle is finding belonging in a family, then that would be your story’s main theme.

Of course, you can have both themes play a big part in the story, but one will probably end up being more in the forefront of your story thus being the “main theme”.

I hope that makes sense! I hope that writing motivation will return to you soon!

@elishavet-pidyon

Yes! You illustrated my point perfectly. Delving into the core of the theme (such as Good Vs Evil) through questions demonstrated throughout the book, opens up many different but related themes that expands on the original theme’s message.

Themes are really cool in that way. I really like how you explained it in your post!