Usually, I write short.
But for my script, Warriors, I came up with over 160 pages. This meant that I
had some serious cutting in front of me to get to a more reasonable length of
110 pages. One of the best tools I used during my rewrite process was
identifying the theme of the work.
To me, theme means
understanding what you're trying to say. Developing the theme is something I do before I begin writing a speech or other nonfiction. In those instances,
understanding what I want to say provides one of the fundamental building
blocks for the writing.
Not so with fiction. I am highly suspicious of
beginning an artistic effort with a message. To me it smacks too much of
propaganda and the kind of didactic stories I hated when I was a child.
Besides, I can't imagine that writing in such a way would be fun.
So I don't even think
about the theme on a conscious level for fiction until I have
completed a draft. Once I have the words in front of me, I know that my
imagination has buried a concept, sometimes a surprising concept, somewhere in
the story. It is my job—one of the more pleasant jobs of rewriting—to discover
what that is.
For Warriors, this began
with my looking at the dialogue. When my characters get talking, they often
will state the theme explicitly. As I worked through my manuscript, I came up
with several candidates for theme. Sometimes, they were formulated as advice
offered by character. More often, they were statements of point of view–here's
how the world really works.
Actions can also be clues
to the theme, especially if you look at their consequences. When someone robs a
convenience store and gets arrested, the obvious theme is, “Crime doesn't
pay.” (Unfortunately, most
themes, once articulated, seem simple and obvious. This is disappointing, but it
isn't a problem for the writer. In fact, the simple formulations are easy to
holding your head as you work through your rewrite.) Looking at the key action scenes in my work and the impact they have upon
the characters usually provides a lesson of some sort.
In Warriors, where all the hackers hid behind
their secret identities, a theme about taking responsibility for your actions
emerged. The good news on this for me was that it provided plenty of
opportunities for cutting scenes that did not relate to the theme. The bad news
was that it left holes in the plot—one of which was the ending. I have a lot of
work ahead of me, but that work paid off with a streamlined story that had much more emotional impact. Understanding the theme reignited my interest in the script and,
with no strain, helped me to cut it down to the required page length.
No comments:
Post a Comment