Today is the last day to join, so if you want in on it, be sure to read over the rules and PM Shakespearicles!OPWA: Episode Four · 7:44pm May 6th, 2016
Overpriced Writing Advice
Where you can learn the stuff I paid thousands of dollars to have taught to me, for free.
Theme
(Or "4 Steps To Figuring Out The Point To Your Story")
Creating characters and constructing plots will certainly be something I try to discuss in more detail at some point, but to be perfectly honest, they are such common questions on their own that you could find many answers in many places online, and most are very valid approaches. This blog series definitely wants to cover the basics, but my main concern was addressing those less common or more complex elements of writing that a new author has a harder time finding answers for. So for this post, I wanted to talk about something you get when you combine character and plot...
Theme!
This is one major aspect of a story that both elevates its quality, and illustrates the author’s level of skill. You can have a story that is more or less coherent, and maybe even entertaining, but if it lacks a central theme, you’ll still have a hard time connecting with a wide audience. A decent story without a strong theme also finds itself under the frustrating classification of: Good, but not that good. Simply put, if you want people to remember your work and sing its praises, it has to feel like it has something to say about something.
Themes can comprise of many things. You can write a story that focuses on the bittersweet transition into adulthood. Or maybe your tale is about the joy of self-expression? The fight against authority? The fear of the unknown? The dangers of unmitigated science?
Whatever your theme is, it needs to be something you can boil down into simple words. For my mature FlutterDash fic, What They Expect to Give, my theme is:
Family Expectation vs. Expressions of Love.
This short summary captures the question of how Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy can engage in selfless love whilst meeting (or rebelling) against the desires of their family. Another way to interpret that summary: is honoring family expectations the same as genuine expressions of love? That is the major theme of What They Expect to Give. It’s true that there are other, smaller themes being explored in my story’s subplots, but the primary idea is the above theme.
Finding Your Theme
So how did I get the theme for my fanfic? By using this really neat chart:
This image can be found in the Outlining Your Novel Workbook.
If you’re intimidated by the terms in the venn diagram, don’t be. I’ll summarize them quickly, then provide examples later.
External Conflict - This is the major obstacle a character encounters in their journey.
Outer Problem - This is an external complication that undermines the character's ability to overcome the obstacle.
Internal Conflict - “The lie the character believes.” This is a misconception or a fear that the character is struggling with in his/her mind.
Inner Problem - The internal complication that fuels the internal conflict.
Misguided Goal - Fairly straightforward. This is a product of the internal conflict and inner problem. It’s the character’s “answer” to their psychological and emotional problems.
Internal Conflict Resolution - Basically the truth that overrides the lie. These tend to be obvious to audiences in some way from the start, and is a nice way of measuring how far a plot has developed by how closely the character arrives to this resolution.
External Conflict Resolution - The answer to their external conflict.
Combined Solutions - This is what gives us our theme! Hurray!
Now how do we go about sorting all of this out…?
Step 1: Decide who is your protagonist.
This method of finding your theme works best when you have ONE primary protagonist. I know some of you may have multiple characters that seem to have central roles, and this can be especially confusing in romances that explore both sides of the relationship, but this can be resolved with one simple question. Who is primarily driving your plot forward? Who is solving problems? Setting events into motion? It doesn’t matter if the character is a “leader” in the story. They can still be a lowly hoof soldier in an army, and still be the protagonist for the purposes of your plot. For my FlutterDash fic, though I explore the story from multiple viewpoints, I know that the protagonist is Rainbow Dash. She’s the one who primarily drives my plot forward.
Step 2: Fill in the blanks.
Easier said than done, but this step is fairly simple in summary. All those questions posed by the terms I described above? Now you gotta start answering them.
You can begin this process in one of two ways. It’s best that you pick one path to keep from getting confused or overwhelmed. Decide right now: Do you want to first approach this from your plot or your character? Both approaches are perfectly valid, so you don’t need to stress about it. If your story is plot-heavy, you might start with plot first. If your focused on character, then that will be an obvious route to take.
Plot
This route focuses first on external conflict and outer problem. I’ll use my own fanfic as an example.
I’ve already said that Rainbow Dash is my protagonist for What They Expect to Give. In this story, the major external conflict she faces is losing her scholarship (thus, being forced to drop out of school.) This is huge for her for obvious reasons. It throws her life completely out of balance, and could majorly damage the reputation of her and her father. Given Rainbow’s preoccupation with looking cool, to lose face in public would be devastating. Next is the outer problem. This is the thing that complicates her overcoming this obstacle. For RD, her outer problem is her manipulative and controlling father, Rainbow Blaze. Though her father wishes for her to keep her scholarship, his skewed priorities and emotionally confusing behavior makes Rainbow’s path to success challenging. There is a clear answer for Rainbow’s success, and that is to focus more on her studies instead of sports. Rainbow Blaze wants his daughter to be an athletic champion at all costs, and so he actively pulls her away from this obvious option.
For your own stories, you’ll need to identify the major obstacle your protagonist must overcome. Next, figure out what outer problem is most undermining their ability to overcome this obstacle. If you have a rough idea of what your plot is, this should be something that can be determined by asking questions. Challenge your ideas. Map out your plot’s events. I’ll eventually get around to providing tips for plot outlines, but for now, just look up basic outlining tips if you are having trouble identifying the major elements of your plot.
Character
This route focuses first on internal conflict, internal problem, and a misguided goal that comes as a result of those two things.
In What They Expect to Give, Rainbow Dash’s internal conflict is a fear that she is undeserving of love. This fear is not something she can admit to herself, but it is there, fueling her actions. Because her father provides only conditional love, because she suffered an abusive girlfriend, and because she was essentially abandoned by her mother, Rainbow Dash feels that she needs to “prove” herself to others by looking cool and being athletically successful. This leads straight into her inner problem, which lies at the heart of her internal conflict. Rainbow’s inner problem is that she yearns for her father’s praise. Because her father is not very supportive, this becomes a vicious cycle of attention seeking and denial of love, thus keeping the internal conflict alive in her mind.
From the internal conflict and the inner problem, we get the misguided goal. In my FlutterDash fic, Rainbow’s misguided goal is to be a sports champion. This coincides with her efforts at attention seeking, as well as her desire to earn her father’s praise.
As I mentioned above for plot, to answer these questions for your own stories, you need to really understand your characters. Again, I’ll get around to providing tips on doing character charts and mind-maps, but for now, just fish around for anything that might help online. There’s plenty of resources. Ask lots of questions about who your protagonist is. Don’t settle for answers. Dig deep.
Step 3: Check for synergy.
Once you’ve addressed the questions of both plot and character, you need to pause and see if your answers have any synergy. If at any point, you feel that your answers clash with each other, then you need to go back and re-examine your story. What element are you missing? What detail needs tweaking? What event needs to be added/taken away from your plot?
In my examples for my FlutterDash fic, you can see how my answers all sort of work together.
Rainbow Dash is at risk of losing her scholarship, and her sports-obsessed father’s screwed up priorities are putting her chances at success at risk. Because of various traumas in her life and her negative relationship with her parent, Rainbow feels undeserving of love (mind you, it’s a subconscious fear) and this drives her to fighting for her father’s praise. How will she earn his praise? By being successful at sports...which is the last thing she should be concerning herself with when her education (and essentially her future) is at stake.
Oooh, the drama!
Step 4: Figuring out your theme.
It’s the moment of truth! Now you take your answers about plot and character, and start pursuing your story’s major theme. We do this by figuring out what would resolve the internal and external conflicts. Combining these things gives us what we need to make our story feel like it has something to say.
For What They Expect to Give, I said the external conflict for Rainbow Dash was her scholarship being at risk. The internal conflict is her fear that she is undeserving of love. What resolves these things?
External conflict resolution = Rainbow Dash affording her education the complete attention it deserves.
Internal conflict resolution = Rainbow Dash realizes that she does deserve love, regardless of what her father thinks.
Combining these two things? We get the theme I already stated at the top of this post:
Family Expectations Vs. Expressions of Love
Because of her father’s expectations, Rainbow Dash pursues love in the wrong way. When she ceases this fruitless endeavor is when her character reaches full “maturity”.
NOTE: For romance stories where the romantic partner also has a major role in the story, it’s perfectly fine to go through this process again, but from their side. You just want to make sure you understand who your primary protagonist is, and do all of this with them first. That way, you can make sure your romantic partner’s character arc coincides with the story’s theme. In What They Expect to Give, I did all of the above for Fluttershy as well. From her side of things, I explore the same general questions, just from a different angle.
And that's it! I hope you guys found this useful. I'm not sure what I'll cover next. I'm up to requests if anyone has any. 
I'm honestly surprised that the show didn't go this route because it'$ totally believable for Rainbow's character, but I can see why they didn't. What they did do in the show itself worked for her character as well, though.