Finding Themes You Can Be Passionate About

What do you really want to write? What do you want to dedicate a year of your life to exploring, understanding, and sharing? Even though you may have a focus on entertaining (or think you could write anything), commitment shows through for readers and passion will keep you going through all the rewrites and disappointments.

So what do you want to write? What story would you stand in line for and shell out twenty or thirty dollars to experience (in a film or a book)?

If it is truly your story, heavily based on personal experience and seasoned through years of reflection, meditation, and (possibly) therapy, you probably know what you should be writing. Dickens may never have gotten over his stint in a work house, and that comes across in his realistic novels, like Oliver Twist, that so often include facing poverty. I’d argue the truth of The Lord of the Rings emerged from Tolkein’s participation in the Battle of the Somme in WWI.

But your personal story may not be so specific or tied to a singular trauma. And, even if you have awareness of what has shaped you, finding the stories and their themes might be a challenge. So try this:

0 Start by clearing your head of what’s popular or commercial. Don’t write with a paycheck in mind. Also, beware of writing someone else’s trauma — no matter how affecting — if there is no real personal connection. It is alarmingly easy to write someone else’s story to avoid writing your own.

1 List at least 20 stories you find yourself referencing or returning to. Don’t create a “best” list. This is for you, not posterity. Maybe think about a desert island list, where these would be the only stories available to you for the rest of your life.

2 Strike out those stories that are not helpful because you are not in love with the tales as much as what comes with them. The songs in a musical, the spectacle in SF or fantasy, the laughs in a comedy, the gore in a horror movie, the love scenes in a romance. All of these may bring you back over and over again, but the job now is to find the themes that touch you deeply.

Note: I am not implying that you can’t have a great theme in a musical (West Side Story), a fantasy (most of Henson’s Storyteller shows), a comedy (Some Like It Hot) or a horror story (Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death). Every genre has the potential to be meaningful and touch us deeply. But style and charm can hide a multitude of sins. I love musicals, but I can count those I’ve seen with strong endings on one hand. (Weak endings are a strong indicator something is missing.)

3 Put question marks next to those that may be too far from your own experience or may lure you in with language or wit. The former may distract or take too much mining to find the shared human experience (for me, stories of the Holocaust and slavery) or attract because of novelty. The latter may dazzle (for me, the monologues of Sorkin, Mamet, and Tennessee Williams). Save these for a closer look after you have a better idea of what your stories are. Then poke at them for answers.

4 A Explore the remaining (10 or fewer?) separately by free-writing about each for at least ten minutes. (You probably don’t want to do all of them in one sitting. Once you have let yourself respond without editing, mark the strong verbs, virtues, and vices you’ve written down.

4 B You may just want to explore characters from the stories. Those who provoke the strongest emotions.

5 For each story, in one or two sentences, write what happens in 1-3 memorable scenes for each.

6 For each story, in one or two sentences, write why the story matters to you. You may want to express this by stating the theme of the story, but only if that’s something that would be helpful to you. This is not an academic paper.

7 Look at what you’ve written in 4, 5, and 6, and see if anything is common. Do you see the same terms, challenges, concerns, and fascinations coming up repeatedly? Chances are, you’ve found what draws you to these stories and makes them important to you. (If there is no pattern, that’s fine. Humans are complex. Just force rank terms or ideas that resonate with you.)

8 Use what you’ve learned to see if you discover anything about the stories you’ve written. Chances are, you’ll see some that were great choices for you that you can make better. You’ll also see some that, though workmanlike, probably weren’t your best choices. (It’s good to have both.)

9 Dedicate yourself to making the ones that you’re passionate about as good as they can be. These belong in your portfolio.

Follow up work:

10 Forget what you’ve learned when you are writing first drafts. Don’t try to impose your themes (which may change with time) on unformed stories. Instead, you might use them on completed drafts to determine whether a) a revision is merited and b) the full value of the theme has been explored.

11 Look at the flashy stuff you struck out in step 2. Maybe you should be mastering these genres to add something extra to your meaningful works.

12 Once you have enough of your own stories that reflect what you are meant to write, you can go back to the stories with the question marks and see if they connect with you in a way you didn’t recognize earlier.

The point of all of this is to make good choices. Writers who have mastered their craft can competently respond to prompts that are provided by life. Real life anecdotes, genres that promise opportunities, requests to collaborate, and family folklore suggest stories that can be written well, will please others, may pay bills, and/or promise a little fun. I can’t argue against these, especially the paying bills one. But it would be good to become aware of the kinds of stories you were meant to tell and that are sure to make the best use of the gifts you have.