Theme Comes from the Hero’s Choices

Theme is about what the character does, not what anyone says.

One temptation for a writer is to mistake exposition for theme. 

Exposition refers to introductions, explanations, and arguments: in other words, talk.

It may be fun for the writer to tippity-type and chatter away, riffing on all the concerns running through a character’s mind, but readers know that’s all talk. You take it with a grain of salt. 

What matters is not what the character says . . . but what the character does.

A character gives a rousing speech about taking bold action . . . and caves into peer pressure at the last moment.

A man claims to be a good father . . . and leaves his family every weekend to go golfing with his buddies.

A woman talks to herself all day about living a better life . . . and goes right back to the office in the morning.

What the character says can be at odds with what they do, and theme can arise from the contradiction.

In dramatic fiction, of course, it’s better for characters to take hypocritical actions than none at all. 

You may have read novels in which the characters don’t make hard choices. They don’t make commitments. They don’t try. Instead, they just keep talking and thinking, remembering and musing, page after page, chapter after chapter, in a fictional filibuster.

Ugh.

We’re talking about writing fiction here. We’re not talking about writing essays. If you want to explore theme in long passages of meditation and argument, maybe you should consider writing nonfiction. 

That’s not a dig. That’s for real. I write nonfiction all the time to work out my thoughts. In fact, writing nonfiction to work out your thoughts is a great way to prepare to write a novel.

So despite pages of exposition, backstory, and chitchat, the reader waits for the hero to make a choice, take action, and deal with the consequences. Only then can the hero reveal themselves, and only then can theme be expressed.

Wait. Am I saying you shouldn’t write exposition, backstory, and dialogue?

Nope. 

In fact, nopety nope, nope, nope.

I’m just saying that in dramatic fiction, heroes have to make choices, and that’s where theme emerges.

It’s often really fun to speak in your character’s voice, to write exposition, backstory, and chitchat. It can be freeing. And it can be revealing, if done at the right time in the story.  

Debating | I want to hear from the character when they’re debating a dilemma—that is, when they’re arguing with themselves or others about a tough decision they have to make. How does this character think? What value is important to them in this particular moment?

Taking Action | I want to hear from the character during the follow-through of making that tough choice, but I don’t want to hear too much. I don’t want to hear a whole lot of self-reflection, which would seem false in the heat of the moment. I’d rather watch them try, fail, reconsider, and try again. Following through on the decision is where I want a scene of dramatic action.

Processing Consequences | When the action is complete, and the outcome is different than expected, then I want to hear from the character as they process that dramatic scene. They have to react emotionally, process the event (its failures and successes), and then plan the next step.

So where does theme come in? 

Oh, and what is theme exactly?

Theme is an abstract expression of what the story is about. A story can be about, say, revenge, love, friendship, or success. These abstract nouns identify the subject matter of the story, but there’s no opinion expressed. Theme should be closer to an opinion. The story should advance a perspective on the subject matter, as in: revenge can be self-defeating; unrequited love can foster self-esteem; friendship can demand hard work; and success can stoke the resentment of others.

I’m talking now about theme from the wide perspective of the whole novel. What is the novel about? Theme is an expression, in abstractions, that answers that question.

Once you get into the novel, you’ll have characters argue about the theme. Say the hero wants to seek revenge. A naive character eggs on the hero to seek revenge; a wise character counsels against it. Most characters in the novel will have an opinion about the theme, and the consequences of the characters’ choices might serve to change their minds. The naive character might get seriously injured and come to appreciate the costs of seeking revenge. The wise character might get seriously wronged and come to appreciate the benefits of seeking revenge.

I often create my cast of characters by defining their relationships to the theme. Each character embodies a different approach to the challenge set out by the theme. This gives them something to argue about during the story and an opportunity to change, if they choose to. 

In The Writer’s Journey (2007), Christopher Vogler writes, “Theme, a word derived from Greek, is close in meaning to the Latin-based premise. Both words mean ‘something set before,’ something laid out in advance that helps determine a future course. The theme of the story is an underlying statement or assumption about an aspect of life.”

In Into the Woods (2015), John Yorke writes, “A theory is posited, an argument explored, and a conclusion reached. That, in a nutshell, is what theme is. . . . Subject matter, then, is a static given. Theme, on the other hand, is an active exploration of an idea, it’s a premise to be explored, it’s a question.”

In Save the Cat! (2005), Blake Snyder writes that, within the first five minutes of a movie, a minor character will state the theme, directly or indirectly, to express the story’s thematic premise. “In many ways, a good screenplay is an argument posed by the screenwriter.” 

To show how thinking of your story as an argument can help you understand the acts of your story, Snyder calls the first act Thesis, the middle act Antithesis, and the final act Synthesis. (I think of Act 1 as Thesis, Act 2 as Positive Antithesis, Act 3 as Negative Antithesis, and Act 4 as Synthesis.)

Sometimes the theme is posed as a question. Is romantic love worth the humiliation? Is justice worth dying for? Is getting your wish worth alienating your friends? Is pulling a heist worth the risk of prison?

In The Tools of Screenwriting (1993), the authors write, “The theme might be defined as the screenwriter’s point of view toward the material. Since it hardly seems possible to write a screenplay, even the most frivolous one, without an attitude toward the people and the situations one has created, every story must therefore have a theme of some kind. And there is one spot in the screenplay where this theme can be invariably discerned: the resolution.”

The resolution in the final act, keep in mind, is where the hero synthesizes the lessons of their experience and resolves their relationship to the theme. The previous acts explore the adventure of the hero living the back-and-forth argument in dramatic fashion (thesis and antithesis). 

Act 1 | Thesis: In the first act, the hero thinks love isn’t worth the humiliation. 

Act 2 | Positive Antithesis: In the second act, the hero declares his love, despite the risk of humiliation. 

Act 3 | Negative Antithesis: In the third act, the hero is humiliated and considers himself a fool for believing in love. 

Act 4 | Synthesis: In the final act, the hero overcomes humiliation to find love.

Is true love worth the humiliation? The acts seem to answer, “No. Yes. No. Yes.” In this story, the hero lives all sides of that argument until finally resolving the argument in their own way. 

A different hero in a different story may resolve the argument in a different way. For example, a hero may seek love, experience humiliation, lose the object of his love, but find a stronger friendship along the way.

I find I can’t think too much about the theme until I have outlined my story and imagined my character acting in my fictional world. I need to know the big choices my hero is going to make before I can explore the theme, because I won’t know what the theme is until I have decided what my hero is going to choose to do.

Consider a vengeance story. My hero chooses to enter the second act on a mission to exact vengeance. But what does he choose to do to enter the final act? Is there another value in his life that supersedes vengeance? Maybe he enters the final act on a mission to save an innocent person rather than to kill a bad person. Theme will arise from the hero transforming from one who seeks vengeance into one who seeks justice. So my theme will not just be about vengeance. It will be about the relationship between vengeance and justice.

If the hero makes a different choice when entering the final act, my theme could be about the relationship between vengeance and love . . . or vengeance and honor . . . or vengeance and peace.

So theme can be appreciated when considering the two main choices the hero makes. The hero chooses to enter the second act, and the hero chooses to enter the final act. I’ve written before about the symmetry of these two dramatic decisions (see “The Hero, Part 1”). I used The Scarlet Letter, Of Mice & Men, and The Matrix as examples.

Hester Prynne keeps a secret to enter the second act . . . and reveals the secret to enter the final act.

George trusts Lenny to behave himself at the new ranch in the second act . . . and assumes responsibility for Lenny in the final act.

Neo trusts Morpheus to guide him to the truth about the real world in the second act . . . and, in the final act, asks others to trust him as he enters the Matrix to save Morpheus.

Theme arises from the relationship of these two main decisions. There is irony. There is symmetry. There is evidence of serious character growth. The hero can’t make the wise decision to enter the final act without experiencing the adventure of the middle acts because that’s where the learning takes place. 

You can’t learn from experience until you have experience.

Theme comes from the hero’s dramatic choices over time. Theme does not come from setting or exposition, endless backstory or summary, chitchat and idle talk, rumination or interior monologue. You can explore theme in those ways, of course. But no matter what is said, you need a character to act. 

Theme arises from hard choices the hero makes, and those hard choices signify a compromise the hero is making. The hero, in making a choice at a particular moment, is putting one value above another. After the experience of the middle acts, the hero may reverse their earlier calculation and choose to put another value at the forefront of their decisionmaking.

This awareness of how theme can arise from character choice frees me when I’m working on a novel. I know I don’t have to write some beautiful treatise on the themes of love and duty, revenge and forgiveness, justice and peace. Instead, I can focus on the choice my hero makes to enter the second act and the choice my hero makes to enter the final act and let those hard choices, which express the hero’s changing values, reveal the theme to the reader.

When I’ve planned my novel, and I know those two hard choices, then I can sneak in discussions of that theme in dialogue and other areas without giving the whole game away. I can have other characters argue over different values and ways to live while my hero charts his or her own path. 

Theme isn’t imposed on the story. Theme emerges from the way the hero lives.

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