It’s good to have passion for your story. Good to be passionate about a theme at the heart of your story. Good to write with passion. But passion is an intoxicant. A promise without a plan. And it’s addictive. It is cheering rather than playing the game.
It’s good to have, but it’s worthless as a story-planning asset.
In fact, your passion for a story, the very thing you might believe is your biggest asset going into the writing, might instead be silently, insidiously overwhelming it to the point of smothering the story entirely. It’s like a lover who drowns you in affection yet gives you nothing that you need.
A politician can rant for years about how a proposed tax cut can help the middle class. But can he shut himself into a room in the back of IRS headquarters and rewrite the tax code that will make it happen?
Some of us want to save the world with our novels. Some reign it in a little and merely want to save a few souls or at least unburden our own. We are serious about this. Our novels are important and necessary, stories that must be told. They matter.
If you asked Kathryn Stockett what her novel The Help (see Chapter 23) was about, you might get two answers. The first is a thematic target and rationale, the other a window into the story that reflects a narrative plan:
“The Help is the story of black maids in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, and their oppression and injustice at the hands of their prejudiced white employers. The story will show the strength and humanity of these women and how they helped change the course of racial history in this country.”
Yeah … but where’s the story? That’s just the subtext.
“The Help is a story of a young writer who’s looking to break into publishing and senses a story in the experiences of the black maids of 1962 Jackson, Mississippi. She struggles to enlist their help in writing a book that sheds light on these secret injustices and in doing so discovers both darkness and humanity that exceeds her vision and finds her own position in the community threatened.”
Now that’s a story. Theme will emerge from this story organically.
A writer needs both answers, always.
Because great craft and an understanding of the mechanisms, architectures, and chemistries involved—a compelling, dramatic premise … tension and conflict … antagonism that causes the conflict … optimal pacing … heroic empathy … a vicarious reading experience … stellar craft in execution—that’s the real work behind the thematic promise.
These should be the things the writer talks about first and becomes most passionate about once the work is underway. Inherent to this understanding is the certainty that the thematic promises—exciting and important as they are—aren’t even in the ballpark until these players are in the shower.
Thematic power is the product of dramatic effectiveness. If your passion is on the wrong end of that sentence, then your story needs a bodyguard, because its life may be in danger.
That last word is a loaded gun pointed at the heart of your manuscript. Your answer exposes you, strips you naked in the light of your story’s commercial and mechanical viability. It tells you what you know, and by its absence, also exposes what you don’t know.
To make your story compelling in execution, you must have a plot.
Passion without plot will drag your manuscript to the bottom of the Priority Mail bin on its way back to you.
A great story is about a problem, not an ideology. The ideology is subtext. It’s about a person, your hero, who has something to win or lose in squaring off with his problem and his issues. An external antagonist (bad guy) who stands in his way. A journey to take as the battle builds, ebbs and flows, and allows the hero to grow into his heroic role and begin to act in a manner that solves the problem.
Your hero doesn’t need to be a soldier in the problem, but the problem needs to contextually bear on whatever conflict-driven path you put him on.
Read any published story, and you’ll find these dynamics present. Read any unpublished story, and they might not be.
Too many writers don’t even consider this when approaching a story about pain and injustice and healing and finding love again. All of those targets are themes, and when they work, they are the product—the outcome—of a story well told.
A story with a plot.
I read a lot of unpublished work in my role as a story coach. And this problem tops the list: stories that focus on the wrong things. These stories focus on theme over conflict. The authors are writing passionately about issues. World peace. Finding love. Finding one’s true self in a cold, cruel world. Resolving family stuff. Forgiveness.
I read outlines intended to convey the idea and concept of the story, and I have to ask, “Nice theme, but where’s the story? Where’s the concept?” A theme is not a concept—it’s subtext—even if it may lead to a concept at some point. The flip side of this is also true: A theme is never really a concept; it’s an intention, a goal for an outcome.
Paragraphs then ensue describing the politics of the day or the backstory of the hero and the dysfunctional family. The author describes how the character feels, and, in a misguided attempt to resolve the story, about how the problem (if there is one) is resolved when the hero one day wakes up and realizes something.
As if the juice of the story resides there. It doesn’t. It resides in the power of the conflict you bring to it, and in the hero’s actions to make things right.
Still no story. The writer is practically weeping onto the page. Her pet issue, once illuminated, will be her cathartic salvation, and she puts all of her pain and rage and passion into it. She writes about it, often because it’s her own story.
There’s still no story, I tell her. No hero’s problem. No external antagonist. No overriding goal to reach, just a litany of internal issues holding her back, told episodically. Nobody and nothing to root for.
She sometimes doesn’t see what I mean, until I tell her this:
A story is about a character, a hero … not a theme. Theme only emerges from the vicarious emotional participation on the part of a reader who empathizes with (and roots for) a hero who faces a problem, a challenge, or a need that launches him down a path of reaction to a new quest. The hero, under pressure from the antagonist and a ticking clock, then proactively manages the new quest toward a desired end.
Variations on this model abound. There’s no need to reinvent it.
That’s a story. Hero, problem, antagonist, respond, change, attack, regroup, grow, do something heroic, solve the problem.
The word theme isn’t in there. It doesn’t mean anything … until it does.
That’s it in a nutshell. The sequence and sum of what they do is the story. It’s not what they see or feel but what they do in response to pressure and stakes and need.
What the story “means” is subtext, not the narrative point guard. Subtext is good because it informs what actually does happen, but it’s not the driving force. Character decision and action are the driving forces. Themes—the messages and focuses you are so passionate about—are outcomes of your narrative efforts, like fruit from a planting.
Bad dirt, no water, no sun, no care or craft … no fruit. And here you are, having promised everyone a lovely fruit salad.
Once you realize that the power of your intended thematic outcome is in your hands, you must comprehend the limits and the upside of what this means.
This isn’t true only for stories with bombs and criminals and murders. This applies to any story. Because they all require conflict, they all require a plot that arises from it. These two requisite elements—character action and related conflict—define the path toward strong thematic resonance.
Characters are the catalytic moving parts of the plot.
Emotions are the currency of everyone’s involvement in the plot.
Stakes are the consequences of the actions of the characters in context to that involvement.
A good story coach won’t care much about your theme, or the issues. These elements are either there or they aren’t, depending on how well the story physics pan out.
We’re looking for story, in all its phases, contexts, forms, and functions. A doctor doesn’t care about your upcoming promotion … she just cares that you’ll be upright and breathing when the day arrives.