>  Ask him what makes a theme significant, because my
>  > english teachers sure didn't tell me.
>
>  You wouldn't have a story without one.  At best, your work would be
>  semi-coherent nonsense.  At worst, incoherent babbling.
>   >>
>
> but I meant what would make a theme relevant to life as we know it?
>
> Mike S.

Theme is a tricky beast to define. In my upcoming (next week!) booklet
on writing short stories, I tackle the topic thusly:

Theme

This short book on short story writing shall end with perhaps the most
difficult topic to dis-cuss. What is theme?

When you read a story and come out of the experience with a succinct
revelation about life, honed in your mind by the totality of the
story, you have come out of that story sensing its theme. If the
protagonist's actions in the face of danger or difficulty left you
able to say, "The author of this piece meant to expose the falsehood
that _____," you have encountered theme.

Even were I able to nail a definition of theme squarely on the head,
it is unlikely that I could offer any tangible suggestions about how
to work with theme in your own work. Why? Because theme ultimately (or
at least ideally) emerges from the sum of all the parts of a story as
they interact with one another with the reader, and only you can
orchestrate all of the many various parts of your own work in your
attempt to convey theme to a reader. Only you can repeat a line or two
of dialog at the right time, with the right emphasis, after putting a
ray of light onto the right symbol, near the right allusion, with a
story given the right title, with the right beginning, middle, and
ending, such that the theme of the story shines forth to your readers'
eyes.

What I can say about theme is that it is not the moral of the story.
Some themes will, indeed, be moralistic, and certainly your views on
life will have some bearing on the classes of theme that you
investigate in your fiction. If you view life as an absurd collection
of barely connected events, or conversely, as an interwoven series of
deity-directed machinations, the themes you convey through your
stories may reflect this view. If you believe the world to be
populated by mostly intrinsically good creatures, with periodic spasms
of evil, or as populated by stone-hearted evil, with periodic glimmers
of hope and light, this, too, will come out in your themes. These
things, however, are not trite aphorisms found in a dictionary of
woodsy wisdom, but are instead insights that only you can convey
exactly as you believe them. The beliefs held by the author are
important to theme; to put forth empty themes in which one doesn't
truly believe is to lie to the readership and do art a disservice.
Theme is, therefore, ultimately revealing in ways that might make some
uncomfortable, if they tend towards personal reticence.

In order to write fiction that speaks on meaningful themes, then, you
must learn the art of insight and exploration of life's lessons, and
you must learn to polish your work in a way that allows you to convey
these insights to others in ways that do not stick in their craw.

All of this to say that, if you put your ear to the ground and listen
really hard to life, and do your utmost to hone your craft as a short
story writer, the skillful expression of theme in your work should
come as a natural byproduct of your efforts.

The most I can do is to wish you well as you listen for the coming
train.

--
Quinn Tyler Jackson

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