You're Writing Themes Wrong

so we have Harold's the writer today he's our guinea pig Because he believes a common lie about writing themes for all Harold's life when people talk about themes they'll always summarize that theme into a neat topic the theme of John Wick is clearly Revenge the theme of gladiator is clearly honor and so on they'll talk as if the story's theme is a topic Harold not knowing how much perceiving theme like this is going to bite him in the ass quite yet does this with his novel Harold chooses Justice for his theme a rich topic with much to be said about so he gets to work he makes the protagonist a policeman seeing his police deal with Justice that's fairly intuitive and he throws a bunch of ideas in we see innocent people being victims of the justice system falsely accused by officers who planted fake evidence we also see career criminals get away with crimes because officials are being bribed by the mob to look the other way we also see a man kill another but it's super morally gray was arguably justifiable homicide and there's a big ethical debate around whether or not he even needs to face Justice and go to jail or not Harold writes this story bangs out the words the end does his revisions as any good writer should all the while he is dead chuffed with himself for you see never not once did he deviate from the theme of justice justice he sends his novel out to some Publishers ah penguin Rand house has finally replied so he tears open the letter and reads the words dear Harold thank you for submitting your story for consideration while your story gave much insightful commentary we are unable to offer you publication you clearly put passion into it but there wasn't enough cohesion between the ideas on the page and instead of the themes being explored it felt as if you neglected your ideas because you were trying to juggle too much at once but that's impossible cried Harold I had a theme in everything Harold is very angry it doesn't make any sense everyone knows a theme should be stated in the form of a topic anywhere from technology to capitalism that's what great writers do but I just did that and the editor says they didn't like my story what did Harold do wrong well before I say that there's a plot twist in this story for you see Harold is me uh what he did in that hypothetical story is what I did in one of my unpublished novels and I chose identity as my theme and just like Harold's story I wouldn't call it a dumpster fire but it tried to say so much about so many things it ended up having nothing to say and it taught me some hard truths about how to not write themes the biggest mistake new writers make a round theme other than not bothering to have one is they get too vague about it you've got to get super specific with the issue you're grappling with way more specific than you might initially think this is the problem with perceiving theme as a topic because let's say just like Harold we're writing a story about the justice system the issue is this will have several Subs subjects and those new subjects are so vague as to have their own host of sub subjects and often you will find those subs subjects have Subs subjects of their own meaning your original theme has literally hundreds of potential Sub Sub sub subjects it has to contend with this is why theme as topic is a stupid idea from a writer's point of view because it gets very messy very quickly you can stay perfectly within the bounds of the theme you've given yourself and yet still your story will lack Precision in terms of what it's out to say which is a sin not a virtue so let's take Harold's story and fix it he's got three main ideas all around the topic of Justice people being framed for crimes guilty people getting away with crimes and someone committing a case of justifiable murder the best way to tighten this story up is to delete two of these ideas so now this story is All About the ethical Quagmire of justifiable murder suddenly just from this change the this story feels way stronger and if I saw a trailer for a film with this concept I would be so much more interested to go see it than I would a trailer which has the concept for Harold's original story but why well it's partly because the story is more lean now clearly it has more of an identity but leaving it there would be like a chef coming in turning our nasty dinner into a tasty one and us saying gosh isn't it tasty now and failing to examine how he identified and fixed the problem s in the dish how precisely did I just fix this story it's like so my big trick for writing themes is to never perceive theme as writing a topic instead perceive theme as writing a question and that's it like that's my big trick That's the basis for my entire Philosophy for for this video but what you will find is if you apply this technique properly not only is this issue of being too vague with your theme going to be completely solved not only is this the most thought-provoking way to write themes if you ask me it also means that large chunks of your story really do write themselves so that second story I suggested about justifiable murder this is a much stronger story conceptually because the entire story now has one question it revolves around are there situations where murdering another human In Cold Blood is morally justifiable and as I design expl the story this theme this question is the skeleton around which I build it constrains me because now I'm not bouncing around and throwing in all kinds of just random characters and scene ideas that are vaguely to do with the topic of justice but everything is now all about assisting the exploration of this question so let's go through the thought process we obviously want the main character to have a murdered someone in a way that's morally gray we don't want to say a dude was running at him with a knife and it was self-defense that is too easy to justify this was done in Cold Blood let's say perhaps that someone he loves was horribly killed but the justice system failed at dishing out proper justice meaning the villain mostly just got away with the crime so the protagonist hunts him down and submits him to a gruesome death for revenge and I just accidentally came with the concept for Laur Abiding Citizen didn't I I guess I'm using that film for b-roll from now on but where is an intuitive place to have this question addressed in a courtroom so that's our setting he's on on trial for this and the defense is making the argument that murder can be justifiable sometimes and by Nature we want to balance this out with another Viewpoint we want the antagonist the prosecution to argue no the lore is absolute no one is above it murder is always wrong we want our two main sides to have two diametrically opposed stances on this core thematic question and what we need to do is in the end after a great deal of exploration both prosecution and defense have their closing statements about their perspectives something happens which is the final nail in the coffin for one side of the debate and the jury makes their verdict and what decision the jury makes combined with the judge's punishment is the answer to this thematic question not to say this is the only way to write this theme but this is certainly a potential way to do it well everything I just laid out there was honestly quite effortless for me because when you get super specific with the theme you want to explore large chunks of your story really do write themselves all I did was go the intuitive Direction the Story would need to go in order to address that question properly and suddenly I've created a protagonist an antagonist a setting and I know pretty clearly what the end is going to look like here is why forcing yourself to say your theme in the form of a question is a powerful way to write stories for one by the very nature of what a question is it forces you to get specific it forces you to narrow your sights on one issue and also because you've constrained yourself you now have a much easier time realizing the elements you need to cut that's one of the lovely things about constrains in writing you are always facing a sea of infinite possibility at the start of making any piece of art and it is always daunting there are just too many things for you to choose from but the moment you throw in a constraint such as a thematic question like is power inherently corrupting you've eliminated every element that has nothing to do with that question and just like that realizing what needs or doesn't need to be in your story has become a breeze with a story about Powers corruption you obviously want to have someone go through a journey where they've suddenly gained power and you flesh that out with a Supporting Cast who all believe very different things about the nature of power and just like that from out of nowhere we've got a pretty clear vision of where this story is going to go it's also a powerful technique Because by the nature of it being a question it's provoking exploration we're not writing asops fables here we're novelists and screenwriters writing for an adult audience people don't want Parables that hit them in the head with a blunt moral telling them that they're naughty if they don't do as the writer says trust me audiences hate that what people really want is a nuanced exploration of an issue where all sides of the debate are given their due that's the way you create the most provoking themes and if you frame your theme as a question you're set setting yourself up to do exactly that but there are quite a few caveats to this technique that if you want to use it I strongly recommend you bear in mind firstly what you will find is there is a direct correlation between the difficulty of answering the Thematic question and the degree to which your story is thought-provoking let's say we're writing a story with a theme is is kicking puppies wrong um that would be a pretty crap theme because yes the answer is yes obviously what is there to be explored in that question but if we leveled it up to a a far trickier to answer question such as you know is murdering people always wrong in every circumstance Suddenly It's a lot more interesting that there's more meat to this issue that we got to Grapple with right and it's just come to mind for me but Freud or Doo's Crime and Punishment has exactly this question as its theme the second thing you want to bear in mind is you should assign each of your characters a stance on this theme whatever stance you give your protagonist you want your antagonist to disagree and the disagreement between these two characters on the theme causes or at the very least underpins the entire conflict of the story here's a power tip for you that's vaguely related if you ever have conflict that feels melodramatic or even just not that compelling there's a good chance the reason why is because there is nothing about their conflict that plays into the themes of the story Into the different ideologies that characters represent I'd argue the highest quality conflict you can have in a story is when there's an ideological cause to it people give out the advice all the time saying characters need to want different things and it is good advice it's good if you do it but the issue is I've seen one or two people give out this advice in the context of theme and if you try to use mere want as the base for your theme that will fail that will fall flat because a far better approach is to have your characters believe different things when you do that it all clicks into place especially when these beliefs are directly incompatible when this is the case not only will there differing beliefs cause differing wants which is good because that causes our much needed conflict it will also render this fight a proxy for the different belief systems one can have so as they fight we're seeing both ideology get tested as the story tries to answer which is the superior one if you can pull that off that is when conflict is at its most engrossing next if you can you want to assign substances to your side characters you do not need to do this it is not vital but it can help if you assign all of your characters a different stance on your theme all of which subtly different you will find each scene where these characters interact is suddenly oozing with Juicy fun conflict because of their ideological disagreements as a super quick example The Matrix has several themes one of which being should you accept reality no matter how dark it is this is shown by Neo's choice between the two pills and we have pretty much all of the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar believe that yes it should be accepted with one notable exception that being the character Cipher he believes ignorance is bliss and this differing belief causes plenty of fun conflict throughout this film why oh why didn't I take the blue pill now there has been a flaw in all I've said so far because I outline all my story so for me planning for theme isn't terribly tricky but what if you're a paner where you like to improvise your way through well as a paner you should try to figure out what your thematic question is while you're writing draft one and if you finish draft one still not knowing that's okay just sit back and take a long look at your story to realize what thematic question is the most prominent remember that a story where a character learns any kind of lesson is a story that inherently has a theme if your protagonist under goes change look there for the fragments of your theme once you've realized this question revise for that theme cutting out all of the fat unrelated to it and adding in new scenes and characters that further explore it providing fresh stances on the theme that didn't exist in draft one everyone needs to be thinking of theme at some point in the Pro process like there are no exceptions to this like none like like if you do not want to use this specific technique of thinking of theme as a question that's okay there are a lot of stories out there which are great stories that don't use this technique but it but you've got to be applying like some technique here like if I asked you right now what is your technique for tackling themes as you write and you can't immediately rattle off your reply as to how you approach themes which other than just oh I wing it like that is not good enough like I I can practically guarantee you you are not writing at a professional level if you don't have a proper answer to that question to illustrate why this isn't all gobbley goog let me give you a few examples from pop culture that have taken exactly this approach to theme look at sha Shank Redemption the theme of this one is can hope survive in even the darkest situation to explore this question they throw Andy into an exceedingly dark place a prison for a crime he didn't commit again and again he is beaten down and we watch him struggle with not losing hope entirely we have Rays of Hope like when they drink beer on the rooftop when Andy finds purpose by giving a man an education so he can get a job when he gets out or when that very man turns out to know who actually killed Andy's wife offering a glimpse at being proven innocent only for that kindling hope to be promptly snuffed out we have characters with distinct stances on the theme we have Brooks a man who has succumb to the darkness all possible hope having left him so much so even after he gets his freedom it's too late as he chooses to end it all he represents where Andy will be one day if he carries on the way he is raising the stakes towards the end we have our Dark Night of the Soul where Andy seems to have been ideologically defeated Get Busy Living you get busy dying he says before we learn he's acquired a rope We Fear the worst fear not just that Andy's going to end up like Brooks but also that the theme is going to end on a decidedly dark note saying that hope cannot survive in the darkness but everyone is shocked when he makes an escape instead and the film says quite conclusively yes Hope can survive no matter how dark the situation and and it's incredibly cathartic when this happens the film says you can wallow all you like and stay in that Darkness forever letting it consume you or you can choose to fight your way onwards to something better but it won't be easy you'll have to crawl through a pipe filled with in order to get there but once you do how Andy feels as he reaches towards the sky is exactly how you'll feel once you've reached that better place I have heard quite a few people say that the sh Shack Redemption has helped them with their depression the core of Andy's struggle the question can hope survive in one's darkest times is something those who struggle with depression ask constantly so for these people this movie really strikes a cord hope is a good thing maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies if that's not enough for you let's do some rapid fire examples Juno is abortion wrong but Blade Runner can a robot be human Finding Nemo can a parent be overprotective Toy Story what do you do in your identity the very way you find meaning in life is undermined for Woody Andy's favorite toy this question is presented when Buzz comes along replaces him and gives him an existential crisis when he realizes he's no longer Andy's favorite toy you can even go back and apply this to the classics Romeo and Juliet has the question can love conquer all as its theme I'm half convinced that Shakespeare saw a few sappy romances about love conquering all where everything ended all happily ever after and he thought to himself does it though like does love really conquer or what about teenagers high on hormones you know to love can turn them into blithering idiots when they start to feel it and oh oh oh there's a play in that Shakespeare's play play of course ending in disaster when both lovers kill themselves immediately upon thinking the other was dead when if they just been a little more levelheaded both of them would have lived and been perfectly fine saying quite conclusively nope love can absolutely cause tragedy love for a fact does not conquer all this proves that hey if you have a thematic question you can absolutely declare one side of the debate the winner in the end you've just got to do what any good student in a maths exam would and show you're working I find it pretty hilarious that Romeo and Juliet is an anti romance it's setting out to belittle what most romances are out to say that love is infallible and always wonderful and somehow in spite of that or perhaps because of it it became the most famous romance ever told I've only realized why recently but people Point At The Dark Knight Rises as being the weakest movie Christopher Nolan's ever made but I've never heard a compelling argument about why that film fell so flat especially compared to the Dark Knight that came up before it which is arguably the best superhero movie of all time I've heard people say Bruce more or less teleported from the prison back to Gotham which is a bit of a plot hole to be fair but the plot hole explanation it just Falls flat for me because the Dark Knight has plot holes too and so do most movies when you really think about it I realized while writing this video that its theme that's why this movie fell so flat Nolan totally dropped the ball here when it comes to what the story is out to say yes there are plenty of ideas there but a little like Harold in his novel about Justice they're terribly disconnected and don't build to a satisfying hole so what I've done is I've created a video where I take all I've said in this one and use it to fully analyze why the Dark Knight Rises fell so flat realizing what a movie looks like when the the theme is Half Baked what these specific points of failure are and I suggest how it could have been fixed and made a far stronger story if this video you've just watched was as insightful for you as I hope it was know that this was just theme 101 covering the basics of My Philosophy if you'd like to understand this technique in Far More depth you should absolutely watch this video and you can watch it only on nebula the sponsor of today's video I've uploaded a bunch of exclusives there that I will never upload to Youtube mainly because they just wouldn't perform that well despite how these videos are the same quality as my usual stuff I did one on how to write great Exposition another on WHY games are simply better at World building than movies videos I really wanted to make but also ones that if I had uploaded to YouTube the algorithm would have buried them and it's not just me you've got hundreds of creators there many doing the same thing like hello future me Thomas flight tail Foundry terrible writing advice now you see it uh just right Wendover legal eal and and so many others I dare not name them because we will be here for quite a while this What I've Done For The Dark Knight Rises will be exclusive to nebula for the next 6 months in half a year's time I'm uploading this one to YouTube so if you don't want to wait that long to see this more advanced look into this technique of theme all you've got to do is click my link in the description and get 40% off nebula making it $30 a year yes it really is that cheap though if you like and if you're quick about it you can get a lifetime nebula membership meaning that you can pay once and watch nebula forever while using the cash from this one to fund a ton of fun projects many of which I can't tell you about because I'm under NDA but I can say they're shaping up to be very cool there's a second link below if that interests you but this offer expires at the end of December so do grab it quite quickly this offer will not last for very long if you want to apply this technique to your right go for it but I do suggest you watch this Dark Knight Rises video as well so you can understand this philosophy on a much deeper level do click my link in the description if you'd like to see it anyway thanks for watching keep writing and I'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

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Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023