Timothy S. Currey's Blog

Oenan Telíth Ahar – The Strength of the Whole

 

In Madea and other human-dominant societies, the idea of strength is closely allied to that of mechanical force. Motion, mass, velocity, torsion, friction, and all the energetic capabilities of alchemy. The bull has great strength, they might say, but a bee has not. As someone who witnessed an unfortunate beast disturb a hive and perish from the thousand stings that followed, I might say otherwise.

The elvish notion of Ahar is alien to humans. It means strength, but like most elvish words, it means many other things as well. It is the strength of a community, a fabric, a web, a hive. The strength does not lie in one muscle or lever or fibre but in the totality. If you take a scarf and pull it apart thread by thread, fibre by fibre, each individual filament or telethí will be weak and fragile. The threads do not transform when they are woven together. They are all in the same form they always were. It is just that, when they form a scarf, they lend each other strength. They gain Oenan Telíth Ahar – The Strength of the Whole. Each thread added to the scarf adds more than its individual strength.

The Common Power, the miracle of Elarím culture and community, is an application of this principle. The telethymic art stitches a great tapestry of spiritual fibres that extends from one end of Elarím land to the other. Every bird, beast, cricket, flower, tree, and lichen within those lands are interwoven also. The more telethí, the more threads, the more life is added, the stronger the Common Power becomes. Most crucially, as I mentioned above, each individual gives more to the total than their own strength. A group of twenty are like a group of thirty. A group of a thousand are like a group of a thousand and a half. But there is a shadow to this light—the loss of one individual begins an unravelling.

Our people have been at war for countless years, now. We have survived. We have not lived. We have not thrived. We have held on, just barely, within the shelter of the Common Power. While we developed the technology of life, humans developed the technology of war. Their art—the art of guns, cannons, and powders—has at last begun to eclipse ours. Human ‘strength’ is overwhelming elven Ahar. By the time my daughter is grown, I fear the Elarím will have been defeated. We do not lose more battles than before. We do not run low on the supplies needed to arm and feed our warriors. The herald of our loss is that with so much death and destruction of the living land, the Common Power has begun to fail. Oenan Telíth Ahar recedes, like a wave that has broken on the shore. We are getting weaker.

My idea is a radical one. The principle of Oenan Telíth Ahar suggests this idea. To me, it is the most obvious thing in all the world, but I know that it will not be welcome. Very few among the Elarím will consider it.

We must make peace with the humans, and extend the Common Power to them.

Did you recoil in your seat reading that? I imagine most would wear the ugliest scowl at the thought. How could I suggest it—after so much slaughter, so much theft of sacred life? I tell you now that I am not suggesting it. I am stating our only way out. It is this, or extinction.

Perhaps my suggestion is the wrong way around. I have considered this. Why not extend the Common Power first, and then make peace? It seems equally likely—or unlikely—as a viable course of action.

For most of our history, we have thought that humans cannot wield telethymia. I have seen with my own eyes that this is wrong. They can be taught—they must be taught—to see the telethí that permeates and penetrates all living things. My second, and perhaps more radical notion, is that humans are not incompatible with telethymia as a species. I believe that they are heavily resistant to telethymia because of their culture.

As to how we can achieve the feat of extending the Common Power to our foes, I have no idea. I have experimented with some of the anti-war humans I have met, but most humans are enthusiastic supporters of war. Our own people, it seems, have no choice but to fight. Both sides are stuck on a course they seem unable to control. Besides that, how cruel for the universe to place the responsibility of making peace on the shoulders of our people. How cruel that it should fall to us!

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the human rulers would never make peace unless they were forced. Whether by gunpoint or by an uprising or an assault by our warriors, it would require great force. Not the strength of Ahar, but mechanical force—the very thing that is hardest for elves to imagine. Can one form of strength lead to another? Could we unite with the human commoners against their own king, their own country? I admit, it seems impossible.

Perhaps we have no hope. Perhaps it is better that I bow to the darkness and exit this world with all the rest of my kin. I hope our kind, our culture, can in some way echo through the pages of kinder historians. We made something beautiful, briefly, when we made Crann Arborím. It was the great miracle of that age.

To survive, we will need a miracle of our own.

Nyendí

Are your scenes too plot-heavy or character heavy?

A guide to making your plot- and character-driven moments work better

Preface

 

Tell me if you've been in this situation before: 

 

You are writing a plot-heavy scene, and you're aware that you have to slow things down and have a character-heavy scene. Then you know you have to write a plot-scene again, and then after that another character-scene. 

 

But things aren't feeling quite ... right. 

 

You're conflicted about what to do next. You want to make things progress better, somehow. Faster paced, more intriguing and interesting. You want to cut the slower scenes and get right to the interesting stuff ... but you also know that your hands are tied. You *have* to have slow scenes, scenes where the characters talk about stuff ... but what stuff? 

 

Maybe you fill the talking scenes with conflict. Instead of discussing things, the characters bicker constantly. Or maybe you end everything on cliff-hangers, hanging the tension on higher and higher cliffs. Maybe you cut the slower scenes right down. Maybe you keep the slower scenes, reasoning that people who have a taste for slower stories will like it, at least. 

 

If people don't have an attention span, that's on *them*, right?

 

You don't like writing the slower scenes because you're stopping all plot movements to have some character time. You need to have character scenes. Those character scenes – more dialogue, slower paced, less plot-focused – are the only spots in the story where the audience gets to learn about the characters, right?

 

Similarly, when you write your plot-focused scenes, you've paused all the character development. The plot-focused scenes are the only scenes with stuff happening. In a way, it feels like they are the main draw. They’re the reason people like stories. Right?

 

Writing character scenes and plot scenes feels like the right way to do things. Pausing is just such a hassle. Going from 100% character to 100% plot is the problem. It's the part that drags, wrecks the pacing, kills the tension. 

 

And it's not even necessary. 

 

The trick is to let your characters into the plot scenes, and let your plot into the character scenes in a particular way. Maybe not a 50/50 mix. Maybe more like 80/20, or 70/30. What matters is how you let character stuff into a plot scene, and vice versa.

 

Here's how you do it. 

 

Introduction

 

#We think about plot in a limiting way

 

What comes to mind when I ask you what goes into a good plot?

 

Pacing? Tension? Set-up and payoff? Conflict? 

 

Surprises and reveals? Resolution? Act structures, beat sheets, Dan Harmon's story circle? 

 

What is a plot, really? 

 

A bunch of stuff that happens in a story. The stuff you mention in a synopsis. Everyone knows that, right? 

 

We tend to draw a box around 'the stuff that happens.' We talk about it as a separate thing from character, setting, and everything else. 

 

The way we talk reveals the way we think. Inevitably, it affects how we write. 

 

Consider a few common problems: 

 

- A difficulty finding the right balance between 'plot scenes' and 'character scenes'

- Cutting scenes that don't contribute

- Slack tension

- Poor payoff 

- Too much shoehorned conflict

- Too little conflict

- Twists and reveals that seem cool, but don't work

- Too much "fluff", not enough focus

 

What if a huge contributor to these problems and more is simply the way we think about plot as a concept? 

 

What if drawing a box around it **is** the mistake? 

 

By isolating plot as a series of things that happen, we might start to think that the remedies for all our plotting problems lies with the stuff. We need to edit the stuff that happens, the pace of it, the tenseness of it. Right? 

 

Often, that's not actually true. 

 

We end up making a thousand little balancing acts out of these problems. 

 

Don't pace too fast or too slow. 

 

Don't have too much conflict or too little. 

 

Don't have bad twists, but also don't be predictable. 

 

Don't blindly follow 3-Act structure, but don't stray too far from it. 

 

The balancing act gets chaotic very quickly. That's a lot of plates to spin. Worst of all, you can tinker with the pacing and twists and everything else for a long time and yet **still** find that the problems have not been fixed. 

 

Where do we go from here? 

 

Body 1 – Redefining Plot

 

#Define plot in terms of characters and the choices they make. 

 

Here is something people always say: "Your protagonist should be active in the plot"

 

People also say: "If a scene doesn't advance the story/plot, it should be cut" 

 

People also talk about scene/sequel structures and try/fail cycles. They talk about 'yes, and' vs 'no, but.'

 

I find these to be useful ways of looking at things. My main problem is that it's very rare for people to tie these ideas together.

 

So let’s tie them together.

 

If you pursue them all separately, I feel like there's too much going on. I also feel like it's possible to do each of these things to your draft and still end up with problems. I've seen it happen. Usually, for example, people write try/fail cycles ... but without any clear idea of **what** to try or **how** to fail. 

 

What's missing is an overall framework, a game plan, something to steer by. 

 

Here is the framework I use: 

 

**Plot: The events which inform, involve, evolve, and result from proactive character choices."  

 

It all hinges around the active choices made by the characters, especially the protagonist/s. 

 

I think this is better than saying that the protagonist has to be active **in** the plot. That sounds like the plot is a separate thing, and the character is just visiting. You can't always keep the plot and edit the character. You can't keep the character and edit the plot, either. Usually, you have to change both. Unite them, merge them, blur the lines between them. 

 

Their involvement in the plot has to be there, deep in the bones of the structure. The structure ought to be built on a foundation of choice. 

 

So, breaking it down piece by piece, here's how the framework can help. 

 

Character Choices

 

**Character choices**

 

Characters change the course of the plot when they make choices. 

 

Choices are the moments when the plot and the character blur together. 

 

The simplest type of active choice is proactive. That is seeking a goal, usually facing steep obstacles and resistance. The more they want to pursue their goal, the better. When the character has the freedom of making the next move in an unrestricted way, that is proactive. They will choose the way of doing things that is most comfortable to them, which makes it an ideal way to *show* their usual problem-solving skills. 

 

Another powerful type of choice is a dilemma. Some stories (It's A Wonderful Life) are all about dilemmas. They are powerful when both possible routes are equally desirable -- or unpleasant. The choice the character ends up making demonstrates who they really are.  

 

Another type is reaction. A story cannot hinge totally on reaction, which seems passive. However, sometimes reaction is crucial. When a character needs to face new, unexpected trouble, their reaction can drive the plot forward. It is better if their reaction is unique to them -- some people fire up while others crumble under pressure. Who is your character? Sometimes, being forced into a reaction is the only way a certain character trait or plot point can progress. Usually, pure knee-jerk reaction should be kept out of the climax, unless that is the whole point of the story. 

 

In every case, choices show the audience who the characters are. Not their favourite color or their starsign or their place of birth. *Real* information about them. Who they are on the inside. 

 

Use choices to design the plot, then focus the other elements around it. That way, every scene advances *both* plot and character. 

 

Once that foundation is laid, you can give the character all the fleshing out they need, with details and backstories and quirks and unique dialogue. 

 

But when does this information add to the story and when is it just fluff? 

 

Contextualising the Choices

 

**Contextualising the Choices** 

 

Imagine an action scene in a blockbuster. 

 

In the scene, our square-jawed hero has to wade through crocodile-infested water to get where he has to go. There are no boats around, no other choices. 

 

Dilemma: Go ahead or turn back? 

 

He takes a moment to steel himself, then wades through. He fights off the crocodiles and makes it through easily. Onto the next scene. 

 

That would be a scene of *almost* pure plot. A bunch of stuff that happens. It can involve perfect pacing, tension, conflict, resolution, etc. The audience might even enjoy watching it. 

 

He made a choice, too! The audience sees that he's uniquely brave. Most people wouldn't try that. Character is inescapable, it seems. 

 

The thing is, I don't think it really deserves its place in the story. Think about it: the whole scene could be cut and the plot would be unaffected. Especially if other scenes have proved that he's brave. What would it be adding, other than padding out length? 

 

Let's involve character a bit more, now. 

 

My recommendation is to always use quieter, slower, or dialogue-heavy scenes to serve as *context for choices.*

 

If you know what conflict is up ahead, and you know what choices need to be made, you should use your 'set up time' to make the plot and character mesh together. (Or, write the conflict scenes and go back to edit earlier stuff) 

 

First, let's make the scene character-specific. That involves using the unique personality of the characters.

 

I'll design a better character. 

 

This action hero has a particular fear of crocodiles and the water. They certainly don't like swimming, either. They've also been shown to be resourceful, able to cobble together tools for any situation. Additionally, they *have* to get to the other shore -- their close friend is in danger. 

 

So now we have a character who I think is better designed. Crucially, I designed them for this situation, but it could always be done the other way around. As long as the situarion and the person work together. 

 

So, our resourceful adventurer comes up to the bank. Crocs everywhere. Nothing but rocks, trees, and water around. They look at the crocodiles in fear. But they need to get across to save their friend. 

 

Dilemma: Proceed or go back. 

 

They choose to proceed, but first they search the riverbank. They find a broken rope and plank bridge. But it's guarded by a big croc! They take out some rations from their pack -- their last bit of beef jerky -- and lure the croc away. Doing so nearly scares them out of their wits, but they manage it. Now they have access to some rope and planks. 

 

They try to throw a line across for a simple rope bridge, but the line won't catch onto anything. The crocs keeping swimming menacingly around, closing in. At last, they decide to lash some planks together in a type of raft, and make a precarious journey across. Crossing is terrifying, especially for our croc-phobic hero. The crocs snap and churn around in the water, knocking the flimsy raft. At last, the hero makes it across. They are a little shaken, but safe.  

 

The contextual information there was supplied by me, of course. In a real story, you would put that information in previous scenes. 

 

There is no need to drag down the pacing with aimless dialogue scenes ever again. Now, you know that you have to design the slower scenes to support the **unique character choices** of the upcoming high-conflict scenes. 

 

Think of these scenes as if you are *actually* writing a dynamic, plot-driven scene. It just so happens you are writing the dynamic tensions of the conflict ahead of time. Doing so well can be challenging, which will make the process less boring. 

 

What context would the audience need for this? 

 

- Proof that the hero is resourceful, handy

- Knowledge of the friend they are rescuing, and how close they are

- Knowledge that the protagonist is usually pretty fearless, but has a specific phobia of crocodiles. Or alligators, what do I look like, a fact-checker? 

- Also, a little detail -- the beef jerky they use to lure the croc away. It will be a more satisfying moment if the audience knows it's the hero's last scrap of food. This means they've got through the conflict, but now there's a new problem -- how to get food? 

 

Take care with the order information is given. Many writers might choose to have this scene happen, then fill the audience in afterward. "Man, I really hate crocodiles. And that was my last scrap of food!" 

 

Unfortunately, this common choice is often a mistake. If the audience knows just how croc-phobic the character is, they'll be on the edge of their seats the whole time. Likewise, if the hero makes a raft without demonstrating how resourceful they are earlier, the audience will feel like they skated through the conflict in a contrived way. 

 

Proper set-up that contextualises a character's choices can be the difference between believable tension and boring, contrived filler. 

 

**Evolution** 

 

Most writers agree that character arcs lie somewhere between a really good idea and compulsory. 

 

So I won't labor the point: let's assume you have a character who grows and changes over the narrative. 

 

With this element added, you no longer need to spend much time wondering just how many try/fail cycles you'll need. Nor will you need to ponder what's the right ratio of talking to action scenes. Instead, you can pursue an active goal -- just like your protagonist. 

 

A plot is a series of character choices, and the context that highlights those choices. 

 

If all the choices and the context *for* those choices add up to a character arc, a lot of the task of focusing and balancing becomes much more streamlined. 

 

Before we were juggling tension, conflict, set up and payoff, and a host of other things. 

 

Now, we have a consolidated goal and method. 

 

Early in the story, the protagonist is early in their arc. They choose to do things one way -- the flawed way. 

 

In the bulk of the story, their flaw holds them back from resolving the conflict. They try to solve things with all their strengths, but their flaw is still there to block them. Tension grows and grows. 

 

Finally, the protagonist hits rock bottom. Their flaw has seemingly brought them to the depths of failure. 

 

They fix their flaw and win, or they stubbornly hold onto it an fail. The denuement is a snapshot of them making new choices -- if they triumphed over their flaw, better choices. 

 

Don't think of a plot as a sequence of interesting, well-paced things. 

 

Don't think of character as someone who has a vague assortment of flaws and strengths. 

 

Think of them in terms of each other. Plot reveals character, character drives plot. 

 

The plot can drive the character to make tough dilemmas. 

 

The character can change the course of events. 

 

The plot is engaging because we care about the character.

 

We care about the character because the plot showed us who they are. 

 

The loud scenes work because they are the payoff to the quiet scenes. The quiet scenes work because of the loud scenes they're swtting up. 

 

Both kinds of scenes work when character and plot drive each other. 

 

#Keeping the Plot Interesting

 

**Pacing** 

 

Most think of pacing the wrong way. 

 

'Good pacing' and 'fast pacing' are not the same thing. 

 

The pace, on a scene level, depends on the way you pursue your goal for that scene. People assume that slow scenes make the story slower overall. Too slow.

 

As a result, they agonize about cutting slow dialogue scenes so that the reader can get to the conflict, the action, the fun. They agonize over writing slow scenes, feel obligated to have them, are tempted to cut them, but they just get dizzy.  

 

The problem is not actually how slow or fast the story unfolds moment to moment. You can and should work on that, but it's not the real problem. The real problem is when the writer doesn't know what slow scenes and fast scenes are **for**. 

 

The pace on a story level depends on the **progress of the character arc.**

 

Sometimes people love quiet, emotional scenes. Sometimes people hate loud, vibrant, well-choreographed action. 

 

Slow and fast, quiet and loud -- these things don't matter. The only thing that matters is progress. 

 

Not all conflict is a violent battle or a screaming confrontation. Each story defines its own parameters. Progress along those parameters, using character choices to show the way. 

 

A story about grief will often involve a catharsis for the protagonist. A way to move beyond the grief, assimilate it in a healthy way, and keep on living. (Pixar's Up) 

 

A thriller about catching a serial killer will involve uncovering shocking truths and probing the unknown. Often, the protagonist is changed by the horrors they see. (Silence of the Lambs)

 

A fantasy epic about a farm boy fulfilling their grand destiny will involve maturation and coming of age. (Star Wars - A New Hope)

 

Each story defines its own parameters. 

 

Once you know what they are, pace according to them. 

 

Pacing is good when the audience is happy with the progress toward the overall goal -- the character's evolution. 

 

Cut action that doesn't involve their unique flaw. Cut slow dialogue that doesn't contextualise the arc. Or, if you cannot cut, change. 

 

You can keep things the same 'pace', the same word count, the same slow or fast movement, and yet still drastically improve the *feeling* of pacing this way. 

 

A related quotation here to demonstrate: 

 

"I was once editing a manuscript that had all the right beats and emotional draws ... But it felt slow and boring ... I discovered it was because it had next to no subtext, and ... I wasn't actually invested in understanding and figuring out the text." 

 

- September C. Fawkes. 

 

The above demonstrates that pacing can be determined by factors other than the external trappings of pacing.

 

It makes even more sense when we understand subtext -- message, theme -- as the lesson learned by the protagonist. The character arc *is* the theme in most stories. When the story is founded on character choices that make up the spine of the character arc, then the subtext has a real impact on the feeling of good pacing. 

 

The subtext isn't just the secret sauce, the garnish put on at the end. Subtext is the foundation, the solid base the rest is built on.   

 

 

**Tension and Conflict** 

 

Tension is created when a character wants an outcome, but there are powerful barriers in the way. 

 

Survival is an obvious source of tension, but it often fails. Protagonists usually survive until the end. Characters that face death-defying odds over and over start to feel invincible. 

 

The best tension is couched in character, so it's good to design them together.  

 

Characters, especially protagonists, ought to have a goal in the story. Something they want. 

 

There ought to be a reason they can't get it. That's conflict. Good conflict creates tension. 

 

Now, your goal is to unite plot and character. 

 

The more a character wants their goal, the more actively they will pursue it. By oursuing it, they will influence events. By influencing events, they will drive the plot. The *way* they do this, the reasons they do it for, the outcomes of their actions, their reactions to the outcomes -- these things all reveal character. 

 

Character is not revealed with teary backstories or quirks or favourite colors or childhood memories. All of those things are details, and they can *potentially* add to the character's depth. 

 

The real, concrete, deep *knowledge* of who a character is comes out in the conflict and tension. 

 

If a character doesn't want their goal very strongly, there's no tension. 

 

If a character gets what they want easily, there's no tension. 

 

If a character is passive in the plot, and their goal falls into their lap, there's no tension. 

 

If a character could *never* plausibly get what they want, but the story hands it to them anyway, there's no tension. 

 

So give your character something they desperately want. Spend some of the quiet scenes demonstrating how much they want it. 

 

Show profound conflict blocking the way forward. Internal, external, monsters, battles, divorce proceedings, surviving the wilderness -- whatever it is. Give them a tiny 1% chance of succeeding. 

 

And remember what the conflict is for: it is to drive their character arc. To exploit their flaw. 

 

If they have a fear of crocs, force them to face crocs. 

 

If they have trouble keeping secrets, give them an especially juicy secret and an urgent reason to keep quiet. 

 

If they can't control their anger, make them angry in a way that's laser-targeted at them. Make them the angriest they've ever been, then make them destructive, then force them to see how bad things are -- show them that they need to change. 

 

If an older man is the expert in his field, but resistant to a new way of doing things, give them a young rival who is innovating everything. He'll be forced to change, or retire. 

 

The reason to heighten tension and conflict is not for their own sake. 

 

That's why SFX battles and screaming matches don't always work. 

 

The actual goal is for conflict and tension to reveal character, to put pressure on them, and to instigate the need for a character to change.  

 

The thing that *makes* tension work is the fact that the character cares about getting their goal, but can't. 

 

Plot drives character, character drives plot. 

 

When we forget that, all tension goes out the window. 

 

#Payoff

 

Whenever the big, crowning moment of success and victory feels hollow, writers often feel like the scene that needs work is the moment of victory. 

 

In nearly all cases, the scenes that actually need work are earlier in the story. They also usually involve moments where character and plot should have been more intertwined. 

 

Most of the time, when an ending falls flat, it is either because: 

 

- the story did not lead up to that ending

- the story did not lead in any coherent direction in the first place

 

It is not often that a story will have the first 90% of scenes point the right way and then fumble with the final climactic scene. Stories written with a clear focus tend to stay focused. 

 

The stories with bad, mediocre, or hollow endings are written without a proper understanding of how things work. 

 

They don't realise that you **have** to write the catharsis for the character and the plot **at the same time.** 

 

You can only do this if decisions made by the character resolve the plot. 

 

This only feels like a proper payoff when the character chose one way (early arc), faced conflict from their flaw (middle arc), then finally overcame their flaw with a clearly different choice (catharsis). 

 

If the character's personality changes in a way that has nothing to do with the plot, things don't feel like they actually resolve. 

 

Too many stories fail by doing something like this: 

 

- The plot is to find the key to unlock the box of lost souls so they can stop the evil wizard. They must face their many fears in the wizard's evil dungeon. 

- The character arc is that the protagonist used to be bad at keeping track of time, but after they defeat the wizard the protagonist is always on time for appointments. 

 

There is no possible payoff scene that can be a catharsis for those two different things. 

 

Writers will too often design a 'cool interesting dynamic' plot, set the plot aside, then design 'cool, interesting, dynamic' characters. 

 

If they are not designed together, it fails. 

 

Instead, make them unlock the Chest of Time with the Time key, to defeat the wizard of the Dark Timeline. Along the way, the protagonist learns how crucial timing can be, and that by always being late, they were holding everyone up. 

 

There can only be payoff when the set-up works. 

 

The set-up AND the payoff need to be based around active, personality-revealing choices made by the protagonist. 

 

#Character

 

Many writers consider good characters to be: 

 

- Fleshed out with many details

- Feel 'real', act in a lifelike way

- Have a rich backstory

- Have a unique way of speaking

- Have a clear goal, active in the plot

- Have strengths, but not too many

- Have weaknesses, but not too many

- Have quirks, foibles, mannerisms, etc

 

These things are all true. However, if you look closely, this list explains nothing. 

 

What these things boil down to is a bunch of observations that are passed on but haven't been properly understood. 

 

Yes, it's good for a character to seem lifelike ... but why? Why is that good? 

 

It's good for a character to have strengths and weaknesses, but why? 

 

It's good for a character to have a good backstory, but why? What makes a backstory good? 

 

The most usual set of answers here is to say: because it makes them relatable. 

 

Now we've just retreated a step, instead of making progress. 

 

WHY should a character be better just because they're relatable? 

 

Here's a test for you. Imagine a character who feels lifelike, but is still a bad character. Or, perhaps, a lifelike character who is trapped in a bad story. Can you think of a story like that? 

 

I can think, for example, of a lot of prestigious character-driven films that won Best Actor or Best Actress ... and yet nobody watches them. They have been totally forgotten.  

 

How strange! I thought the pleasure of watching them was to see how lifelike that character was? How come nobody can stomach going through those plotless, meandering movies? 

 

They are often written as showcases for the actor's talent, of course. As such, they lean heavily on character detail: backstories and monologues and conflict after meaningless conflict. Most people don't invest in the story. Most people sit through it thinking "Wow! Such good acting!"

 

Could it be that 'lifelike' is not enough?

 

Apply that thinking to all the other ingredients that make a supposedly 'good' character. 

 

Once again, we circle back to the same thesis. 

 

Separating character and plot leads to bad writing. 

 

You cannot have a good character without a good plot to back them up. And in both cases, 'good' is defined by how well they work together. 

 

There is no way for an audience to get to know a character except through the things that happen in the plot. 

 

The plot must therefore be engineered to paint a vivid picture of the character. Likewise, the character must be tailored precisely to match the conflicts and dilemmas of the plot. 

 

Why, though? 

 

It comes back to subtext -- the lesson, moral that lies beneath each story. 

 

Why should characters change in the face of conflict? 

 

Because it's the truth. In real life, conflicts change us. 

 

Why should characters feel lifelike? 

 

Because we need to feel that a story is real and true to learn from it. To take the truth of a story and to live it out in our own lives. We can't get the truth from cardboard cutouts. We need real people. 

 

Why should characters have strengths and weaknesses? 

 

Because the plot intersects with characters with their choices. If they choose wrong, the plot goes wrong. If they choose based on their flaws, the plot pressures them to change. In the end, they succeed or fail. A happy ending goes to those who change and grow. An unhappy ending to the stubborn who don't change -- or those who change in the wrong direction.

 

 

From the largest flaws to the smallest quirks and preferences, every character trait matters. But no traits can possibly matter in a vacuum. 

 

Does your character like vanilla or chocolate ice cream? 

 

Here's a better question: Who cares?? 

 

On it's own, that detail is utterly meaningless. 

 

Instead, let's say we have a character who's flaw is a taste for excess. They want more and more of everything, to the detriment of everything else. 

 

So, imagine they walk into an ice cream store in Chapter 1 and this happens:

 

>"Chocolate or vanilla?"

 

>"I'll have a double of both." 

 

Then, they walk out, all four scoops piled high with toppings. 

 

This tells us something about the character. Its such a little moment, but at least it tells us about their flaw, the conflict to come, and it distinguishes them from other people. Everyone else is either/or. This protagonist's answer to life is to say 'both.' 

 

Is that moment a plot or character moment? 

 

Well, if the story is written well, it should be ....

 

Both. 

 

There are no pure character scenes. There are no pure plot scenes. 

 

Every scene can, and should, be both. 

 

Check out my latest books here!

Check out my 99c books here!

What is a Worker’s Co-operative?

 

A worker’s co-operative is a type of company which has a democratic structure. It is run by members, for members. All profits are reinvested to benefit the people that made the profits, not investors and overpaid managers. Other than that, it’s fairly similar to a normal company.

An Author’s co-operative would be, as far as I know, a world-first. The structure of a traditional publishing house has many benefits, but also problems. For example, trad publishers will pay for editors, artwork, etc., but in return they take a large cut of the profits from book sales. Trad publishers will also have the final say on matters like cover art, where and how the book is sold, pricing etc. 

It may not be possible to overcome all of these shortcomings, but I believe an author’s co-operative could have advantages above both traditional publishing and self-publishing alone. Since it’s an experiment, it will be crucial to take all steps slowly, and to only get money and voting involved when all the members have a clear idea of how we can all work together. I also think it would be silly to go ‘all in’ and expect the co-operative to provide any kind of full-time income for members in the near future.

The first phase will be a kind of critique swap group, which is nothing unheard of. By regularly discussing next steps, we’ll hopefully be able to make something that works for all of us.

 

Author Co-Op Goals & Principles:

 Anti-Burnout. Healthy release schedules, community support.

Encourage Creativity and Quality. Work together to reduce the pressure to write series quickly and conform to narrow markets of readers.

Work Democratically. Following the principles of worker co-ops, including votes, consensus, and elected positions.

Form Community of Learning, Teaching, and Mutual Support.

Make a Fairer, More Consistent Income.

Co-operate, not compete. The more one book succeeds, the more we all succeed.

 

Possible Co-Op Roles:

 

-          Elected Committee (incl. president/director, secretary, treasurer, etc.)

-          Authors

-          Editors

-          Artists

-          Formatters

-          Marketers

-          Narrators

 

What about my money? I earned it! 

Your earnings in royalties will be your own. 

We certainly won’t be taking money away from everyone and sharing it back out equally. 

What we will do is decide by vote where the cooperative’s funding will come from. Perhaps members can pay dues, or give a percentage of their royalties. Whatever works best for everyone involved. At first, though, we will just be a group of writers who help to critique and promote one another. 

Money won’t be involved in the process until the members all agree on a democratic process for collecting funds and using them. 

Then, what happens with that money is up to us as a group. Maybe someone is releasing a new book, and we agree to give them a bit of marketing money. Maybe we pitch in on a group landing page or a group newsletter push which promotes all of our work. Maybe we use that funding to get better editors and cover artists. 

The main point is that every decision we make will be made democratically, whether by a direct vote, or by elected committee members who can be recalled at any time. 

Growing the Co-Op:

 Phase 1: Mutual support, learning, critique swaps. No money involved at this stage.

Phase 2: Pooling resources for better editing, art, and marketing pushes. Achieve larger reach together rather than being stuck alone.

Phase 3: Drafting a constitution, electing positions, codifying financial structure, rights & responsibilities of members.

Phase 4: Re-evaluation, elections, improvements. If capacity is reached, help other interested parties form cooperatives of their own.

 

Links and more info:

 

Setting up a Worker’s Co-op, a Seeds for Change short guide:

https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/setting_up_a_workers_coop.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

 

Tropes: Common patterns in narrative fiction; tools used by writers to write stories.

Theory of Tropeism: The overarching framework that understands stories primarily as collections of tropes, and their various subversions, divorced from all other context.

From TVTropes.com: Tropes are Tools.

Tropes and the Theory of Tropeism

Many writers rely heavily on an explicit understanding of tropes in their writing. The rest rely on tropes just as much, their understanding is just more implicit. Tropes aren’t bad.

There has been a rise in writers who understand stories only or primarily through the lens of tropes. In my opinion, this is often a bad thing. The common and popular framework that arises here is inadequate for anyone that wishes to write good fiction.

Tropes are, basically, anything that stories can have in common. Car chases are a trope. A character that is a charismatic leader is a trope. A twist ending is a trope. A villain’s cackling laugh is a trope. Anytime a pattern, character, plot point, setting, or anything else can be adapted into the context of another story, it is a Trope.

When you include a regular Trope, that’s ‘playing it straight’. When you turn it on its head, that’s ‘subverting’ the Trope.

Not everyone who uses Tropes subscribes to the Theory of Tropeism. Even people who think in terms of Tropes constantly can avoid all the problems I’m about to outline. What distinguishes regular writers from serious Tropeists, as I’ll call them, is the extent to which they allow Tropes to produce blind spots in their understanding of narrative.

The Theory of Tropeism is a network of beliefs shared by writers, readers, and fandoms who often use the internet, followers of Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube lectures, and especially by keen users of the site TVTropes.com. While each individual has their own opinions, the framework looks something like this:

(See ‘Tropes are Tools’ ) Tropes are neither good nor bad, they are tools. They can either be ‘played straight’ or ‘subverted’. They can be used well or used poorly, and have no inherent quality.

Stories can be defined, discussed, understood, and analysed based on their tropes.

Similarities and differences between stories are the most important things about them. Intertextuality, meta-references, and subversions of Tropes are the most interesting things to discuss.

Really well-written stories are those which use the right tropes in the right way.

There is a pervasive and intense interest in magic systems and worldbuilding in the predominantly Sci-Fi/ Fantasy wing of this framework.

I’m being as fair as I can on purpose, especially because a lot of smart and capable people use Tropes in at least some of the above ways. Because I’m being fair though, it might not be apparent why any of this is a problem.

I saw a weird comment one time on Reddit. It’s perhaps not the most convincing argument to quote one thing I saw one time on Reddit, but I’ll do it anyway. It’s okay if this doesn’t convince you right away. My main goal is to start with an extreme example to set the tone.

One user wrote (paraphrasing): “I always hated the magic system of Hamlet. Shakespeare never bothered to give the ghost any kind of explanation or consistent rules. It just reeks of lazy writing.”

I was gobsmacked by the sentiment when I first read it. I was shocked when I saw that others responded with agreement (it had 50 or so upvotes!). This was no isolated, fringe opinion. I won’t link to it because people deserve their privacy, and as a result you can believe that this particular comment is a fiction or exaggeration, and that’s fine. I’ll link to real sources later as I build my case.

For now, let me walk through the problems I have with this comment, and how it ties in to Tropeism.

Stories can be defined, discussed, understood, and analysed based on their tropes.

Really well-written stories are those which use the right tropes in the right way.

There is a pervasive and intense interest in magic systems and worldbuilding in the predominantly Sci-Fi/ Fantasy wing of this framework.

These three points are most relevant. This user has expressed their dislike for the play Hamlet in terms of its magic system.

Let me say that again.

The play Hamlet’s magic system. The Shakespearean tragedy written around 1599, HAMLET, has problems with its MAGIC SYSTEM.

THE MAGIC SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAY HAMLET.

They call this lack of magic system ‘lazy writing.’

It seems to have escaped this user’s attention that the website TVTropes was actually first created within the past few decades, and not in the late 1500’s. They seem displeased that Shakespeare did not use a ‘hard magic system’ akin to the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons, or the new literary genre called LitRPG.

They have taken extremely modern ideas about storytelling and applied them to a play written centuries ago. This isn’t bad in itself. Sometimes new ideas help us to understand the old.

What is bad is saying that Hamlet is bad because of its lack of magic system. In doing that, they took the play out of its habitat (the late 1500s) and transported it to the present Tropeist analysis of stories without a second thought.

To sum it up:

Tropeists are Anti-Context

There is a paradox here.

The Theory of Tropeism is obsessed with context in one way. It cares intensely—almost exclusively—about the context stories share with each other. That is, any context that is related to Tropes. If any contextual information can be analysed in terms of Tropes, then Tropeists can tell you all about it.

On the other hand, it disregards all other forms of context entirely. This includes context within a story quite often, but perhaps more commonly context between the story and the real world. They don’t mistakenly leave context out in the cold. They deliberately ignore context whenever it serves them, even if it means ignoring the full definition of a particular Trope.

Missing the context within a story might go something like this. The Tropeist may have heard the term ‘Deus Ex Machina’ before. It’s a notoriously bad thing to do in a story. It is cheap, it resolves all the tension without pay-off, and it’s an important thing to avoid.

From the above link:

“Deus Ex Machina is when some new event, character, ability, or object solves a seemingly unsolvable problem in a sudden, unexpected way … In its most literal interpretation, this is when a godlike figure or power, with all the convenient power that comes with that, arrives to solve the problem.”

For a Tropeist, if the ending of a particular story even slightly resembles the Trope of Deus Ex Machina, it is always bad and never excusable. They will not forgive the use of this Trope even if it fits the wider context of the story perfectly. Many great stories use plot events that very closely resemble ‘Deus Ex Machina’ without actually being that Trope. The reason they can do this is always because of the context of the rest of the story.

Example: Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the climax, Indiana Jones is tied up. As the Ark of the Covenant is opened, he shuts his eyes and the Nazis are killed by the divine powers of the Ark.

See, this appears like Deus Ex Machina because God literally intervenes to save the hero at the last moment. This is precisely the sequence of events that are prohibited, right?

In the Tropeist understanding of this moment, it shouldn’t work. Indeed, on the relevant TVTropes page, they note that Raiders of the Lost Ark includes an instance of Deus Ex Machina. This analysis is divorced from the relevant context. It also has to ignore the fact that it’s a great movie that is enjoyed by many people who haven’t heard of DEM before. Curiously, only people who have heard of DEM have a problem with the movie’s ending.

What make Deus Ex Machina bad and unsatisfying is not the intervention of God or any other overwhelming force at the 11th hour to save the heroes. What makes Deus Ex Machina bad is the fact that heroes are granted unearned and unforeshadowed salvation.

Here’s another line from the above page on DEM:

“A Divine Intervention need not always be a Deus ex Machina or the sole way this trope plays out however.” (Divine Intervention basically being Deus Ex Machina with appropriate context and foreshadowing)

Here’s how salvation can be earned.

In stories, internal character arcs are as essential as the external hardships characters endure. Indiana Jones started the movie being highly sceptical of divine powers. To him, the Ark of the Covenant is an item of academic, historical value, and nothing more. In the end, after coming into contact with divine forces, he actively decides to close his eyes — it’s forbidden to look upon the Ark of the Covenant. The Nazis earn their deaths by foolishly looking at the Ark as it’s opened. Indiana and his companion Marian look away, and are spared. These divine forces were foreshadowed throughout the film.

Indiana Jones doesn’t use his whip or his gun to save the day. Rather, his internal journey is what saves him. In terms of narrative, he has earned his salvation.

If context is ignored, any Trope can be used to ‘prove’ that a story is good or bad.

Now, a counter-example of a type of ending that better fits the problem posed by Deus Ex Machina.

A common sitcom situation:

Say Ross wants to ask out Rachel. However, Rachel has been hanging out with a very handsome man. Ross sees them having dinner, going out for coffee, visiting each other’s houses. As a result, Ross mopes around and doesn’t ask Rachel out.
Then Rachel reveals that the man was actually her brother! And she asks Ross out. The End.

I don’t think this is an actual episode of FRIENDS, but the structure should be familiar.

As far as I’m concerned, this is an example of Deus Ex Machina and it’s actually bad. It has nothing to do with intervening gods, and everything to do with the anti-climax.

Ross goes through no internal change. The stakes are simply removed at the climax, and Ross doesn’t have to do anything to make it happen. He simply gets what he wants. What makes Deus Ex Machina bad is the fact that heroes are granted unearned and unforeshadowed salvation.

What’s more unearned and unforeshadowed than ‘Oh, him? He’s just my brother! Want to go out with me?’

Tropeism and Armchair Critics

Many writers of stories are also readers of stories. They also watch films and television.

Most viewers and readers, however, are not writers. When it comes to Tropeism though, both groups tend to have a lot in common. One of these is a tendency to take superficial elements of a story relating to its Tropes, and form a highly orthodox and homogenous set of opinions about the entire story.

Let’s say a film comes out and the protagonist is accused of being a Mary Sue.

Whether or not the character is a Mary Sue is neither here nor there. What happens next is a witch-hunt led by Tropeists.

All that is required to condemn that film is for people to accuse it of having a Mary Sue protagonist. There’s no need to prove that it’s the case. There’s no need to understand the film’s context, internally or externally. There’s not even any need to learn from the film’s mistakes or discuss what could have fixed it. No, it has a Mary Sue, and it’s bad.

Just like Shakespeare’s weird magic system problem, this one is divorced from context.

(Again I’ll not that not all people who use the term Mary Sue are Tropeists. You can safely assume that if you ever see someone talking about Mary Sue’s with a sensitive analysis of context, you are not dealing with a Tropeist. A Tropeist is anti-context).

When so many armchair critics level such accusations (even when they’re well-founded), it has an effect on emerging writers.

Young, novice, beginner writers always go too far the other way.

If we take the common understanding of a Mary Sue to be a character written without flaws, this next part ought to make sense instantly.

Emerging writers on internet forums will wax poetic about how intensely flawed their characters are, and how much punishment the characters are subjected to.

Don’t misquote me—it is important for characters to have flaws and endure hardships.

However, when I see people going on and on about the depths of their character’s misery, they are very clearly reacting to an anxiety of being accused of having written a Mary Sue.

I have read a lot of stories by people who talk like this, and I’ve seen the trend creep into prestige TV and films. Maybe the tendency has always been there, but I feel convinced that it’s more common lately.

These stories always include a hopelessly flawed—terrible, unlikeable, irredeemable—character. Often, it’s the protagonist or another major character. The problem is there’s never any reason for it.

Oh, your character’s a pessimistic unemployed alcoholic hot mess who steals their roommate’s prescription pills to sell them to children outside the school? Cool, good for you. I’m not against a character like that. There are a lot of stories you could tell about that. But the thing is, you haven’t done that to your character to tell a story. You’ve done it to have an anti-Mary Sue.

The flaws are there, without any context or reason, just to be flaws. Just to give the character an aesthetic that goes against the naïve idealism of Mary Sues.

As time goes on, I haven’t actually seen audiences respond to these terrible, intentionally overcooked characters any better. Maybe I talk to a particular type of people, but cynical, pessimistic, anti-Mary Sues aren’t actually engaging according to anyone I know.

But I have seen writers get more and more enamoured with the idea of them. If only I could fit more flaws into this character bio, I’d have a hit. The last one must have not been a hit because there weren’t enough flaws. Next time, more flaws, and more, and more …

Why Tell Stories?

This is the context that Tropeism most ignores.

Again, clever and beautiful stories have been told by people who understand and use and talk about Tropes.

Anti-Context Tropeism, however, is a theoretical framework that excludes meaning, theme, context, and heart from stories.

So why do we tell stories?

Why do humans tell stories? Why do I, Timothy S Currey, tell stories? Why do all these directors and screenwriters and authors and playwrights spend so much time slinging all these words around? Why do we tell our friends funny little anecdotes?

I’ll give my answer to that later.

For now, let me just point out that the Theory of Tropeism, as I’ve observed it, is incapable of answering this question.

Other theoretical frameworks can address the question; many frameworks start with this question. (Think of the Hero’s Journey framework, for example)

The Theory of Tropeism understands stories as collections of isolated, unrelated, atomic Tropes. It discusses these Tropes without a proper regard for context, and the interconnected nature of elements within a story.

Tropeism cannot define stories because stories cannot be separated from their context.

I would even go as far as to say that stories are context, but I’m at least aware enough to know how weird that sounds. You don’t have to go as far as me.

Since Tropeism cannot adequately explain why we tell stories as humans, what are we left with in its place? Let’s first remember these points in particular:

Stories can be defined, discussed, understood, and analysed based on their tropes.

Similarities and differences between stories are the most important things about them. Intertextuality, meta-references, and intentional subversions are the most interesting things to discuss.

Really well-written stories are those which use the right tropes in the right way.

There is a pervasive and intense interest in magic systems and worldbuilding in the predominantly Sci-Fi/ Fantasy wing of this framework.

On an unrelated note, isn’t it strange how so many emerging writers get trapped building worlds, designing complex writing systems, and filling out character bios?

Isn’t it also strange that many share these lists, fact sheets and biographies with friends on the internet in lieu of writing? Isn’t it odd that these conversations are focused on how different the characters, tropes, worlds, and magic systems are ….

When people get truly stuck in the quagmire of Tropeism, they write Tropes instead of stories. They write the Tropes, their subversions and quirks and relations to other stories and inspirations, and they write it all without any knowledge of context. Filling out endless lists, character sheets, magic systems, worldbuilding …

When they do this … aren’t they just filling in a pretend entry for their story on the site TVTropes.com?

Say what you want about Shakespeare being lazy with his magic system. At least he didn’t get stuck at the step of designing it.

The Theory of Tropeism can teach you a lot about stories. I won’t dispute it on that count. There is a lot of information within the framework. But it can never teach you how to build the connective tissue that binds these elements together into a cohesive story. It can’t teach you to understand, much less build, the context of a story.

Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube Lectures

These lectures are well worth watching, and very valuable. Even if you’re very familiar with stories and how they work, Brandon Sanderson brings a perspective that’s interesting and useful enough to justify a watch. I’m being sincere here. I’m not throwing Brandon Sanderson under any kind of bus or blaming him for doing wrong.

I’m only going to interrogate why so many of the people who are big fans of his books and his lectures are adamant and fanatical Tropeists.

Many of his fans are regular people, and many people who watch his lectures simply get value from them and go on to live their lives.

Some of them go on to become people that say things like, “Shakespeare’s bad magic system is a sign of lazy writing, and therefore Hamlet is 0/5 stars.”

I’m going to draw a comparison between Brandon Sanderson and the TVTropes.com website here. That comparison is that the original source always contains disclaimers, but under the Theory of Tropeism, caveats are contextual and therefore ignored.

The actual content of Brandon Sanderson’s lectures is, again, valuable. He’ll say over and over that his way of teaching is not the only way, and that you should seek out other styles. He’ll include a lot of caveats and explanations of things that promotes contextual learning. If a student asks a tough question in a lecture, he’ll almost always say, “It depends…” before continuing. He’ll never force anyone to accept an idea as undisputed fact.

Then, on the other hand, his lectures will be structured like this: (Taken from his 2016 lectures on YouTube)

#1 Course Overview

#2 Cook vs Chef (A whole damn lecture about understanding context above all else!!)

#3 The Illusionist Writer (A kind of philosophy of writing)

#4 World-Building

#5 The Box (narration, 1st vs 3rd person etc.)

#6 The Business of Writing

#7 Character

#8 Magic Systems

#9 Brandon Mull Guest Lecture

#10 Plotting

#11 Dialogue and Agents

#12 Q&A

I’ll reiterate that not only will he throw in asides about respecting context, he also has at least one full lecture that can mostly be understood as a warning to always pay attention to what you are doing and why. (The Cook vs Chef lecture—a great perspective that I think everyone should learn from)

What is happening here is not something Brandon Sanderson is doing wrong. It is something that, for any number of reasons, is going on in the unconscious biases of Tropeists.

The problem is the idea of taking the lecture called ‘world building’ or the TVTrope page called ‘Mary Sue’ and treating them as isolated, context-less, unintegrated ideas that stand apart. It is a mindset that divides and dissects until constituent parts are rendered meaningless. It is a bias that leans toward separation, division, individualisation, and a bias that leans hard away from context.

TVTropes is clear that the ideas expressed there are contextual, and what happens in one context may not apply in another.

All humans share a vulnerability which we have identified in the die-hard Tropeists. It is hard to remember the thoughtful, complex ideas of the caveat. It is easy to remember the blurry outline, the article heading, the attention-grabbing quip.

When Tropeists cut the heart out of storytelling as a way of exploring its ventricles with a scalpel, they commit a sin that seems universal. They distil the complicated truth down to a series of digestible factoids.

And what could Sanderson or TVTropes do differently? They’ve done just about everything they can to make sure people take the contextual information away with them! Is Sanderson supposed to give lectures with strangely esoteric titles that wander around different topics? Is TVTropes supposed to get rid of lists and headings?

It’s just a common bias we all have that’s finding a home among a subset of people who subscribe to Tropeism. A common bias, but one worth resisting.

After all, we have to contend with things that Tropeism produces. It doesn’t end with the magic system in Shakespeare. Tropeism has colonised the minds of prestigious TV and film writers, producers, and many of our beloved authors.

Maybe the problem didn’t start with the website TVTropes.com. Maybe the problem is far, far older.

Society is to blame. If I am to blame, it is because society made me that way.

Tropeism exists at the crossroads between certain beliefs about world-building, magic systems, TVTropes.com, and certain types of story criticism popular on the internet. The foundation under it all is the tendency to be Anti-Context.

I am Pro-Context.

I think understanding context is not only valuable and important, but actually crucial. I also acknowledge that it’s messier, more complicated, and doesn’t instantly solve all our problems.

The extreme ends of Tropeism cause the most problems. This is where people get weird ideas about magic systems. It’s where people label a character ‘Mary Sue’ or a plot point ‘Deus Ex Machina’ or anything else, and use it as a rallying cry to trash a story. It’s where people get stuck writing page after page of trivia about the story in their head rather than actually writing the story.

The root cause doesn’t lie with those things. It lies in a curious little detail I touched on earlier: the fact that lectures on writing are most often split into categories: Plot, Character, Theme, Setting …

It’s not that the lectures are inherently the problem. It’s the fact that we feel so comfortable separating plot from character from setting from theme. Different lectures, different headings, different web pages. It comes so naturally that I bet nobody questions it.

Maybe I’m a kooky extremist, but I think we would benefit from blurring the lines between these ideas. Or at least, we’d benefit from the ability to see them as intertwined.

Here’s one way of defining these ideas:

Plot is a series of events that happens in a story

Character is a person that is in a story

Setting is where the story happens

Theme is an idea that relates to the story somehow.

These are all accurate, but they are also all compatibly with a fanatically Tropeist view. I believe that by putting context first, we can take one step towards improving things:

Plot is the series events which Characters participate in, governed by a particular Theme/s within a Setting.

Character is a person that participates in plot, governed by particular Theme/s within a Setting.

Setting is …..

You see, they all define each other once we adopt a slightly different perspective.

Plot events in a story should relate intimately to each other. There should be cause and effect and other relationships that link them together. And a major part of the cause and effect should be the characters, who they are as people. And the way plot and character interact in this way ought to be in keeping with the thematic ideas being explored. And the setting should be a supporting piece for plot, character, and setting.

AND all the characters should interact with each other and play certain roles that are complementary, both with each other and with the other elements of the story. I could go on and on, but let’s leave it with this: everything should be interconnected and sensitive to context.

There’s inner context, within a story. Intertextual context, between different stories (Tropes included). Then there’s the context of real life, which is a huge topic on its own, and equally important. What makes a story or character ‘relatable’ but the fact that we’ve seen it, experienced it, lived it in the real world?

The End of Tropeism

Maybe Tropeism is just a phase for writers that are still learning. Maybe Tropeist online critics are just firing off Tropeist Tweets (and CinemaSins videos …) without thinking of the consequences. Maybe everyone does understand context better than these issues would imply.

Maybe Tropeism will never end.

Maybe the amount of people who are completely absorbed in this Anti-Context mentality are in a very small but vocal minority.

I still think it’s worth countering Tropeism in all its forms. It shows itself in all sorts of subtle ways. It’s in syllabuses, internet comments, YouTube videos, writing guides, and all other places where stories are discussed.

It’s no conspiracy, it’s just a consequence of accepting business as usual. The discussions we can have about all the particulars can be exceptionally complicated. Shifting to a different way of thinking can be a long and difficult process. But in the end, the solution boils down to a simple question you can ask whenever you come across an iffy statement.

What’s the context, here?

Writing with ADHD Episode 2: Interested in literally everything all of the time

or,

How do I overcome ADHD to just sit down and write?

Episode 1: https://timothyscottcurrey.com/timoth...

The most common question I get is: How do you get your ideas?A better question might be: How do I focus on ONE idea when my brain constantly juggles hundreds of them?

Something I like about myself is that I get passionately interested in things.

I might say that I have a lot of hobbies and interests, but it would be more accurate to say I have one hobby, and that hobby is becoming intensely interested with completely random things.

Sometimes this reaches the level of obsession, which can be good and bad.

Recently I’ve been obsessed with:

Learning Mandarin

Reading non-fiction books about extremely varied topics

Gardening

Improving my squash skills

Future plot points of the series I’m working on.

Eight dozen other story ideas

Video games

Watching informative YouTube videos about a variety of topics

I have a love-hate relationship with all these things.

Each of them brings something valuable to my life. I’ve wanted to become fluent in a language other than English my whole life, and my current Mandarin skills are the closest I have ever gotten. I feel like I just need a little bit more to break through!

I love all the non-fiction books I’ve been reading. They introduce me to such engaging ideas that I’d never considered before, and I can almost physically feel my mind expanding.

I love practising my squash skills, and I really have been getting better lately. It’s so important to stay fit (for ADHD people especially). I might be in the best shape of my life, at least in a cardio-vascular sense.

I love tinkering with all the new story ideas that come up! They can really spark my imagination and transport me to daydreams in far-off lands that last for hours.

Do you see the problem?

The problem is that, while I do love all these things, and the do bring me joy and value … none of them are ‘sitting down to write.’

I don’t know how much you know about writing fiction, but the ‘sitting down and writing’ part is kind of a really crucial step that can’t be skipped.

How to keep my hobbies from disrupting my writing?

This heading is posed as a question on purpose. I’m actually asking it. I’m asking because I don’t know.

It’s not rhetorical, and I’m not setting myself up to answer it for you.

TEN WAYS TO STOP PROCRASTINATING AND START WRITING

….. is what I wish I could say.

The boring, complicated, unsatisfying, thoroughly honest and true answer, is that it’s all about balance.

Maybe I could write more books if I didn’t have such passionate interests to distract me. Maybe I’d sell more books if I focused on marketing instead of trying for the 99th time to beat the boss I’m stuck on in Dark Souls 3. Maybe I’d sell more books, have more fans, even win some awards—all that good stuff.

But if I didn’t get so deeply, intensely interested in such a variety of things, I wouldn’t be me.

And ‘me’ is a unique person.

THE HIDDEN VALUE OF PROCRASTINATION

!WARNING! ** ASTERISK ** DISCLAIMER! ATTENTION!

I’m not saying you should procrastinate on purpose. I’m not condoning it. Do your assignments! File your taxes! Write your stories! Do the work that needs to be done!

Procrastination can be a benign little set of distractions, or it can be crippling.

Procrastination can sneak into your life, bit by bit, and for some of us it takes over.

If you always treat your procrastinations as indulgence, then you should hopefully be alright.

Procrastinating with something interesting is a treat.

Having said that … here are some of the valuable things my hobbies bring me.

Learning Other Languages Teaches Me About English

See, being a writer means you have to work on your language skills.

Most people do this by learning grammar rules, vocabulary, and rhetorical techniques within a single language, the language they write in.

I definitely spend time working on my English skills.

But I spend much more time working on my Mandarin skills (and French skills, and Dutch skills, and Italian skills, and …)

As a result, often I’m playing on language learning apps or google translate, or chatting with people online who speak my target language. A lot of the time I’m doing this, I should actually be writing my books. (Or doing housework. Or even real work at my day job…)

The thing is, I believe that learning a language very different from English, such as Mandarin, it’s possible to gain a fresh perspective on language skills that are not otherwise possible.

Expanding vocabulary, learning grammatical rules, and understanding new idioms in Mandarin shines a new light on all the English words, rules, and idioms I have become so familiar with.

This kind of thinking follows me back into fiction writing. I take great care to get things just right when it comes to word choices, sentence structures, and literary devices.

I think working on language skills doesn’t have to mean working on ONE language only.

(Having said all that, maybe I’m just trying to justify how many hours I spend on language learning apps ….)

How My Gardening Hobby Inspired a Magic System

I write fantasy.

Fantasy is all about creating worlds that have never been, with mysterious forces of magic working in them.

As a big genre, with many kinds of magic floating around, it’s tough to be original.

While I was into gardening—really, really, into it—I was consuming every guide, article, video, and book I could get my hands on.

I came across permaculture, then I came across a number of different schools of thought within permaculture.

One major idea that really grabbed my interest was the theory of the soil web of life. It’s fascinating. The logic that usually dominates gardening and farming is turned on its head. Don’t worry too much about the health of the leaves, flowers, and fruits—the parts above the soil. Instead, worry about the intricate microscoping food web under the soil.

Bacteria, fungi, insects, worms, and a bunch of other little critters—properly balanced—are able to do all the jobs of conventional fertilizer, tilling, aerating, and yes, even pesticide and herbicide.

I’m not qualified to evaluate whether it’s true or not. I’m no soil scientist.

But as a writer … the idea that hidden creatures under the soil dictate the health of what grows in it … that’s compelling to me.

So, I made a magic system based around it.

You’ll have to wait until the Elixir of Power is out to read about it, but it has been an amazing thing to base a magic system around.

Reading Non-Fiction and Reading Fiction Is Equally Valuable

One of the most common bits of advice in the writing world is to read many, many books within your genre. This is true and good advice.

I’m not disputing it.

I’m just saying that the part about only focusing on your own genre is not 100% true. I think even reading fiction exclusively is a bit limiting.

Personally, I try and balance non-fiction and fiction at around 50% each. I think that’s ideal.

But this is me, remember? I don’t do ideal things. I don’t quite achieve the balances I aim for.

I read closer to a 80% non-fiction / 20% fiction split. I don’t think that’s a great way to do things. If I had a choice, I’d get closer to that 50% mark, I swear.

The thing is, when I’m learning new, interesting information on an engaging topic, it just sucks me in like nothing else. I can read long-ish non-fiction books in a couple sittings. Fiction books take me a bit longer. More like a couple hundred sittings …

It’s not that I’m not interested in fiction. (I hope that’s obvious …)

What happens here is: My brain knows I ‘should’ be reading more fiction. Like a cat resisting being put in a bathtub, my brain hates anything it ‘should’ be doing.

If you don’t like reading dry non-fiction books about economics or history, this might sound absolutely backwards to you. But when my brain ‘clicks’ with a topic like that, I can’t stop myself from reading it. My brain ‘knows’ I shouldn’t be reading three non-fiction books about the French Revolution back to back, and that I ‘should’ be reading the fiction book I spent good money on. I ‘should’ be reading great fantasy books to help inspire me to write fantasy.

But again, my brain hates anything I ‘should’ be doing.

The positive spin to this is that I learn about such interesting and varied topics, they always inspire ideas that make my books better.

Reading great fiction can teach you to write with better style, tone, atmosphere. It can teach you to create compelling characters and plotlines. These are all crucial.

But only non-fiction can spark story ideas that nobody else has thought of.

What if… something like the French Revolution took place in a fictional land where elves practice magical permaculture? What if … a society had an economic system that became its religion? What if …..

The ‘what if’s keep coming, each one a collision of completely unrelated topics. All thanks to overindulging in non-fiction.

This Is All Great … But At Some Point, I Do Have To Write

Sitting down and writing the project I’m currently working on is always tough.

My brain knows it’s a ‘should’, and treats it like it.

Thankfully, I’m able to make progress, bit by bit. Inching towards finished drafts.

When my writing inspiration runs dry, I can always find a way to refill the well. The problem is, that the act of taking a break from writing to refill the well always feels wrong, like procrastination and distraction.

But I’ve been struck with ‘eureka’ moments too many times to ignore why and when they are striking.

I never get a eureka moment while I’m actually writing.

It always comes when I’m least suspecting it. I’ll be zipping up my squash racquet in its bag, I’ll have my hands on a particularly stubborn weed, I’ll be reading a book comparing different Keynesian economic theorists, or I’ll be halfway through a tough level in a video game …

And I’ll suddenly be hit with a compelling idea, as though by a bolt of lightning. I’ll know exactly what to do in the next scene of the book.

And those moments fill me with so much inspiration and excitement, I can’t help myself.

I have to sit down and write.

However …

Inspiration Is Never Guaranteed

Whether we have ADHD or not, all of us writers have to find ways to do the work of writing.

Lightning-strikes of inspiration are incredibly fickle and unpredictable events. You can’t rely on them. If you do, you’ll be headed for disaster.

If I go a week (or three) without doing any writing, my flashes of inspiration seem to be about things that are not writing. So it seems like writing a few times per week is an essential ingredient. The brain works on creative problems subconsciously, but only if they’re recent and relevant.

The best approach I’ve found that ties all the above sections together is something like this:

Try and keep a healthy balance with everything in life—exercise, social life, reading, writing, etc.

Don’t wait on inspiration, but leave room for it.

Pursue new interests without guilt, but don’t let them take over.

Write regularly, inspired or not. Inspiration will come — but only to those who write.

If writing leads to a feeling of burnout, a short break is better for productivity than trying to push through.

The main insight I’ve been trying to internalize is the idea that having a diverse array of hobbies, interests, and distractions is not a reason to feel guilty. It’s never fulfilling to pursue distractions and neglect everything else. But demonizing the distractions themselves ignores the value they bring, and leads to frustration and other emotions that stifle creativity.

I suppose I’m saying, there’s a positive way and a negative way to look at these things.

The negative brain looks at me playing games or learning Mandarin, and says to me, “You should be writing! Look at all the hours you’re wasting on these things! You’re terrible!”

This makes me feel bad. Feeling bad wears me out and makes me seek … distractions, games, and other low-effort pursuits.

The positive brain looks at me watching endless Youtube videos, and says, “This is fun, if not productive. So what? Not everything has to be productive! On the other hand … the joy of finishing writing a novel is better than the short-term fun of distractions. Tell you what, if you write for a half-hour, you can watch all the videos of cats with funny meows all you want!”

The reframing done by the positive brain takes a lot more effort than the automatic, grumpy negative brain. The negative brain attacks when defences are low already.

It takes effort, but I believe there’s a way to accept the place distractions, hobbies, and interests have. That place is different for everyone. The healthy balance they should take is defined by each person’s situation and goals.

For me, I’m going to stick to the idea that distractions are a treat. My brain wants them so badly, they work perfectly as rewards. So I’ll say as long as I write X hours a day, or a week, I’ll let myself pursue whatever eclectic mix of hobbies my brain wants to pursue.

You need to eat your vegetables before you can have dessert. We all know that.

Why can’t writing be the same?

Were the Curtains Really Just Blue?

Or, ‘What your English teacher was really trying to say.’

Quotes from some authors:

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Italo Calvino

“The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” Ernest Hemingway

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.” Maya Angelou

“That’s what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!” Connie Willis

“Themes are for eighth grade book reports.” Two amazing and acclaimed television writers … can’t quite remember their names just now.

__________

In this essay, I will be making a rebuttal to a particular statement. I have summarized the strongest elements of this argument, so that when I argue against it, I’ll be able to make a good case. I have intentionally tried to not belittle or simplify the other position to make my job any easier. Hopefully, this will make the end result better.

I am rebutting the following statement:

“Themes? Symbols? You're putting too much thought into it. Stories are just stories. They’re just entertainment. When you get into the weeds, yeah, anything can mean whatever you want. But the significance is all constructed by your desire to see it.”

 

 

Part 1: What happened in English class?

 

A theme is just a thread that ties ideas together.

A symbol is just one thing that represents some other thing/s.

A message is just a summary of what a narrative ‘says’ beneath its surface.

 

When you boil them down, these concepts seem very simple indeed. At worst, they seem neutral and benign. At best, they can enrich the fiction we read, and even life itself. What they shouldn’t be is upsetting.

What I have observed, though, is people getting upset. There is a common tendency to dismiss some or all of these ideas. People take stances that span from smug superiority, to apathy, and even hostility.

The internet is fertile ground to observe that kind of thing. When was the last time you corrected someone who was incorrect? You probably saw their mistake, felt a pang of frustration or annoyance, and you just **had** to log in and tell them just how wrong they were. There was an emotional part to your need to reply. If you hadn’t felt that motivating emotion, after all, you might have just kept scrolling. (I used to be a neckbeard-style atheist, so I know the feeling all too well)

So why is it that every time themes, messages, symbols, and motifs are brought up in writing spaces, there are dozens of angry people who cannot resist the chance to say, “Only fools read into fiction this much. The curtains are just fucking blue.”

Where did these negative emotions originate? Who is to blame?

Is there a way out of this hostility?

If you think the curtains are just blue … are you missing out on anything really valuable?

 

What did teachers actually teach?

 

A lot of people have memories of High School English class that are … less than fond.

I spoke to some students, some writers, some teachers, and some friends, and a pattern emerged.

Some students had an amazing experience, some had an awful one. Some teachers went above and beyond to explain things, most teachers did their best with disengaged students, other teachers taught by rote, commandment, and rigid conclusions. (Or at least, their students remembered them doing that.)

The bad experiences focused on finding symbols in the text, but not understanding them. The bad teachers seemed to insist that only one answer could ever be correct. Alternative readings or interpretations were not accepted.

There was a flip side, too. It was super common for people to say that they got top marks for essays that they bullshitted entirely. If you pick things at random from the text, and say ‘this means X and that means Y’ at random, and you get top marks … doesn’t that mean that the whole thing is just pseudoscience?

These bad experiences seem like the perfect backstory to bring us to the present day. How can we blame all this unhealthy scepticism? How can we blame those people who were once students in tyrannical English classes? If you are taught that literary analysis is like palm reading, cloud watching, or dream interpretation, then of course, you will spend your whole life believing that it’s all a fraud.

The other major pattern across the spectrum was a distrust—or even hatred—of the idea that any author really sat down and INTENDED for the blue curtains to represent sadness. There is broad agreement here, but I think even a lot of reasonable objections to author intent need a bit more nuance. I’ll return to that in a later section.

If this is you, then I’m here to tell you that there are good methods. Better methods. And some people were lucky to have teachers that taught them well. Other people were lucky enough to find better ways to learn after school.

Everyone who learns to interpret and analyse what they read says that fiction becomes more enriching. Doesn’t that sound great? Wouldn’t you like to be enriched?

 

Wishy-Washy Interpretations, Academic Pressure, and the Fear of Being Wrong

 

I am going to define one main concept first: theme. I’m going to give a few different definitions, all of which are true. But when we use them, we’re going to be flexible.  

This might seem fuzzy and vague. A lifetime of concrete, dictionary, board-approved definitions of terms might make this uncomfortable. But it’s necessary.

Picture this all like a big wire frame. It can stand on its own and be solid. But if it needs to change, you can bend some of the wires, and the frame will change and hold its new shape. It’s neither floppy nor rigid.

Good answers hold their shape, but we can bend them around if we need to.

 

A theme can be:

-          A summary of subtext in a narrative

-          A connecting thread between concepts in a narrative

-          An idea that evolves over time in a story, and comes to fruition at the conclusion

-          A subject of discourse or artistic representation

-          The main idea or message of a story

-          The part of the story that resonates emotionally

-          A way of stating the internal growth experienced by the protagonist

-          “Universal experiences that connect all humans.” Teacher u/short_story_long_

-          ALSO, a wildcard : A design focus, as in decorating, eg. A party or wedding. “The theme of my wedding is champagne and seashells”. The concept which ties it all together.

Personally, I’m going to use one particular definition from that list: A connecting thread between concepts in a narrative. I like this one because it encapsulates or hints at all the others. Some of the definitions are too specific. If you have your own definition, please borrow my one just for the moment. You can always discard mine and go back to your own later.

Some definitions say a story has one theme. Others say that stories can have many themes. To get around that, I’ll refer to them either as ‘themes’ or ‘the central theme’. 

Now that we have a usable definition, I want to highlight something really interesting that a teacher on reddit told me.

They said that students most often struggled with themes and symbolism due to a fear of being wrong. This fear leads them to often dismiss the whole idea, with typical teenage eye-rolls, or on the other hand, to become paralyzed in their seats. Nobody wants to put their hand up and offer a foolish suggestion. This fear of being wrong is exactly what I want to address.

I see this fear every week on the /r/writing subreddit. Someone will come in, obviously distressed, and ask, “Does my story have to have themes?? Will my story be bad without them?”

Sadly, nobody seeks to reassure them by explaining what themes are or how they work. The answers are inevitably dominated by ones like this: “No! Don’t worry. If you don’t want to have themes, then don’t have themes. You can just write for entertainment 😊”

This might be my psychology degree talking, but despite the reassuring tone, that seems about as helpful as saying, “Don’t worry about your depression! Worrying about it only makes it worse. It will go away on its own!”

The fact is that wishing problems away has the opposite effect. Denying the reality of a problem makes things worse. Themes and symbolism in narrative are basically inevitable, and it’s crucial to understand them.

Fears of being wrong are only corrected by confidence in making good answers.

Remember how things can be ‘wishy-washy’ but still good? Remember the wire frame that you can bend and shape? That’s the reason I said ‘good answers.’ Notice how I didn’t say ‘the right answer’ or ‘the correct answer.’

Answers come in a spectrum. It’s a little wrong to say that a banana is a vegetable. It’s a lot wrong to say that it’s a power tool.

So if answers come on a spectrum, how can anyone ever be right? Does ANYTHING matter?

The trick is to think of yourself like a detective. You need to find evidence, then build a case.

 

You Already Have All the Skills You Need

 

To a large extent, interpreting themes and symbols in fiction is just a puffed-up, formal version of what we already do every day. You can already understand subtext and hidden meanings that go deeper than the surface. Many people pick up these routine interpretation skills without even thinking, and for the rest of us these things are possible to learn.

One teacher used emojis to show their class how this interpretation works. You can see this little icon of a facial expression, and know not only what emotion it represents, but how different emojis can be paired together to make mini-stories or nuanced statements. Doing this is, fundamentally, reading subtext. If you can interpret emojis without even thinking, just imagine what else you can interpret.

Another way we encounter it is relating to people who have had similar experiences. Even when the experiences have surface differences, we can feel an emotional connection over the core part of the experience. One person who missed out on a big scholarship might relate to someone else who missed out on a promotion. Those things are not identical, but the experiences are similar enough. They’re connected by the thread of ‘missing out on something they really wanted.’ The important part here is that the emotional part is what’s relatable. It’s the same in stories.

What about meta jokes? In shows like Community or comics/films like Deadpool, what exactly is making the meta jokes funny? These types of comedy will often get laughs from exposing a familiar pattern to the audience, then turning it on its head. As an audience member, you ‘got it’, usually without trying. The reason the joke was funny was never stated or explained. It lies in the invisible connection between stories. Somehow, you were able to see the connections being subverted, and understand the hidden meaning of the joke.

How about in regular, everyday conversations with people? There are dozens of times every day when you can read between the lines in something someone has said. Their words might say, “Yeah, right”, but you interpreted that as a sarcastic expression of doubt. Their words might say, “I’m fine, really, nothing’s wrong”, but you were able to see something that was upsetting them. What helps you see that? Context. The context might be something that’s just happened, or it might be their posture and tone. Either way, you are using cues outside of the literal words to form a theory about what is ‘actually’ being said. Seeing themes works the same way.

You also believe in character arcs, and probably use them in every story. More on this later, but understanding character arcs better is probably 99% of the work you need to do to understand themes. If you believe in and use character arcs, you already believe in themes, you might just not like calling them that.

All you have to do is take these ideas and apply them to fictional stories. It’s not as hard as it can sometimes appear.

So, a theme is a connecting thread between concepts in a story.

You might say, ‘But the human mind is active. It loves to imagine things. You can say anything is connecting to anything and be right. So what’s the point getting so deep with stories? You might as well look for shapes in the clouds.’

To that I say there are still better and worse answers, even when watching clouds. If someone sees a long thin cloud and says it looks like a soccer ball, you won’t nod and say, ‘That’s really valid.’ You’ll send them contact details of the local optometrist.

It’s the same with themes. If someone tells me that Toy Story is secretly about the death of the Prussian King Wilhelm II, I will need plenty of evidence that supports that claim to buy it. If they have none, I will be right to say ‘That answer is not supported enough to be valid.’ Or I’ll just say, ‘That’s a dogsh*t theory.’

There are methods you can use to make sure you arrive at a decent, well-supported, usable, ‘good’ answer. Not ‘the correct’ answer. Not ‘the final’ answer. Not ‘the only’ answer.

A good answer.

 

One Method for Quickly Spotting Themes—Without Guesswork

 

Most stories these days involve at least one major character arc. The character goes through an internal change as a result of their struggles in the story. Most avid readers and writers understand this already.

This is good for me, because the easiest, quickest, and most reliable method to find your main theme involves character arcs.

The method goes like this:

-          Put the character arc into words: What did they realize? How did they change?

-          … That’s it.

Oh, and when you find your main theme this way, you’ve also found what people call the ‘message’. Those things are one and the same, if you phrase the theme as a lesson or ‘take away’.

This is good! Now we have less terms to worry about. Let’s chuck ‘message’ and ‘lesson’ in the bin, and just use ‘the main theme’.

Some examples:

In Frozen, Elsa closes herself off in an attempt to protect others from her magic. Instead, this causes severe weather problems and other conflicts. Only when she stops closing herself off and opens herself up to others does balance return. The main theme there is: Bottling up your problems causes more problems, so it’s best to open up.

In A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge is a miserable, selfish grouch. Ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future come and show him visions of the dire consequences of these traits. Scrooge has a change of heart, and becomes kind and generous. The main theme there is: You will have a better life if you are kind and generous.

In Black Swan, Nina (Portman) becomes increasingly paranoid about Lily (Kunis) taking her spot as the star of the upcoming production of Swan Lake. She seems to suffer from hallucinations, and finally ends up stabbing Lily with a piece of broken glass in a fit of jealous rage. When it is revealed that Lily is actually unharmed, Nina realizes that she stabbed herself, and dies shortly after giving a perfect performance. The main theme there is: If you obsess over others plotting to sabotage you, you might just end up sabotaging yourself. Another valid one might be: If you strive for perfection, you might just get it—but the stress of it could kill you. (Both answers are supported by the text, and neither cancels the other one out. That is how interpretation works—different, but not at random.)

In Pokémon: The First Movie, Mewtwo goes on a telekinetic rampage when he discovers his origin as a clone, a scientists’ plaything. He then clones other Pokémon and fights ‘originals’ in a tournament to prove that clones are superior to originals. When Ash Ketchum is petrified in an attempt to put an end to senseless fighting, Mewtwo is moved by his sacrifice. Ash is revived by the tears of watching Pokémon, and Mewtwo states that we should not be judged by our origins, but by our choices. The main theme there is: We should not be judged by our origins, but by our choices. (Thanks to Mewtwo for stating it aloud).

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby spends all his time looking at Daisy’s green light. When there is a car accident, everyone thinks Gatsby is to blame. But it wasn’t Gatsby in the driver’s seat: It was that damn green light! The theme there is: It was the damn green light all along. Never trust the green light.

I know it’s exhausting to read examples like this if you’re already on board with the whole process. I did have an ulterior motive, though. I wanted to explicitly show a link between this method and stories that range from children’s cartoons, to Arrenofsky films, to classics of literature.

Important notes for this point:

-          These aren’t the only themes

-          This isn’t the only method

-          Analysis doesn’t have to stop there.

Having said all that, the method is pretty sound, pretty useful, and a quick way to get ‘into’ a text. Especially if you’re having trouble ‘getting it’ on a deeper level, having a foundation like this is really helpful.

Nine times out of ten, you’ll find that if you pick out the main theme in this way, you’ll find that answers stop being arbitrary or random. It feels nice to decode something, and to later come across critics, friends, and internet strangers decoding it in the same way. The more people you can find with the same answer, the more confident you can be.

It’s not arbitrary or random, because it follows a method. And it’s not a restrictive, ‘one size fits all’ answer, because we acknowledge other ways to see things. It doesn’t rely on guessing what the author ‘meant’ to express with the story. It is just based on basic evidence, and basic logic.

So in my view, it makes up for all the shortcomings that people are most concerned with. You can set aside fear of being wrong. You can forget about how arbitrary and wishy-washy it all appears to be. You can discard the idea that authors are hiding secret messages everywhere. You can also stop insisting that authors emphatically never intend secret messages. You can let go of the idea that subjectivity makes any act of interpretation pointless. 

Best of all, you can come up with a solid answer that works.

But if no single answer is ‘correct’, how can we hope to prove that any given answer is good enough? How do we compare different answers? How do we entertain multiple conflicting interpretations in unison without getting confused?

 

A quick note on Author Intent

 

We don’t ‘need’ to know what an author meant to communicate in order to understand the story.

But sometimes, when we analyse a story and learn about the author’s life, it can become clear that author intent can be an important piece in the puzzle.

George Orwell was a journalist. He wrote a story called Animal Farm, and another story called 1984. Both of those books are about government control, authoritarianism, and the lies fed to the populace in order to keep the powerful in power. Neither of them has a happy ending.

To the person who says that no author has ever intended a ‘message’, or that readers interpret books however they want: What about Orwell?

Aren’t his books very clear evidence that authors can intend to write messages?

Is Orwell a special case? An outlier? Maybe.

Most likely, every author who ever lived lands somewhere on a spectrum from ‘never intends messages’ to ‘always intends messages.’ Many probably hang around in the middle, where they think about the themes and symbols of their writing a little bit, but they don’t go to the same lengths Orwell does.

High School English class may not have mentioned this, but George Orwell was a socialist. A democratic-socialist, to be precise. (That’s the anarchy type, not the Bernie Sanders type. Bernie is a social Democrat.) Read Orwell’s autobiographical Homage to Catalonia if you’re interested. Basically, Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war, within a unit of socialists. Their allies, who were Stalinist Communists, harassed and sabotaged the war effort, and potentially brought about the victory for the Spanish Fascists under Franco. Orwell seemed very bitter about it, but remained a dedicated democratic-socialist. Basically, the Stalin type ones hate the anarchist type ones and vice versa.

Does knowing that change your opinion of Animal Farm or 1984 at all?

Is the smiling face of Big Brother a bit more Stalin-like than it was before? And the pigs in Animal Farm (based on Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and others)—do they seem any different to you?

I think there’s a lot to be said—some of the time, for some authors—about author intent. Sometimes, there is just no denying that a message has been intended. Sometimes, like with Orwell, the entire story is an allegory and/or satire of real-life politics.

The trouble is, what do we do when we talk about the less obvious authors? The ones who don’t ‘seem’ to be intending anything?

The only tool we have in that case is analysis, and evidence. If we think an author intends X, but their story includes instances that contradict X, it may not have been intended.

However, if the same elements keep coming up again, and again, and again … we can start to be more confident that the author meant for us to see it.

Once might be a mistake. A few times might be by chance. But multiple times per book across multiple books?

Your Honour, I believe that repeated instances are evidence of intent.

 

Different Lenses, Frameworks, and Tools

 

If you get three people in the same room with The Great Gatsby and ask them what it’s ‘really’ about, you’ll get four different answers.

It’s the same book. How are four different answers even possible? The simplest explanation might be that they’re all making stuff up out of boredom. We did trap them in a room with nothing but a book, after all.

Let’s do a thought experiment that involves their different answers.

The Great Gatsby is about Jay Gatsby, who dreams obsessively of being with a married woman, Daisy. The story is told through the eyes of Daisy’s cousin, Nick Carraway. Gatsby throws lavish, enchanting parties, apparently as a way to try and tempt Daisy to visit. We learn, as Nick grows closer to him, that Gatsby had been with Daisy before, but wasn’t wealthy enough for her. So Gatsby built a fortune for himself from the ground up, even changed his identity. He finally has an affair with Daisy, with Nick’s assistance. From that moment, he is gradually let down by the reality of being with Daisy, and he now wants her to retroactively have never loved her husband. During a confrontation, Daisy reveals that she loves both her husband and Gatsby. Daisy, driving Gatsby’s car, kills her husband’s mistress, but Gatsby takes the blame and is killed. Tom and Daisy withdraw ‘into their vast money or carelessness’ and Nick loses touch with them. The dream is over, and Nick muses that we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

 

The first person, Ashley, says that the story is really about love and beauty, or maybe jealousy. They finally settle on jealousy, because the green light is the colour of jealousy.

The second person, Sam, says that the story is really about class struggle and the myth of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby wanted all those riches, and look where it got him. Dead. The American Dream is a lie.

The third person, Francois, says that the story is really about the objectification of women, and how patriarchal society robs women like Daisy of true agency by reducing them to an idealized prize to be won.

Are they all equally correct? Are they all wrong?

In my opinion, each answer has flaws, but is mostly solid.

Ashley has part of the truth. The story does deal with love, beauty, and jealousy quite a bit. Those are emotional through-lines that you can easily spot. What is lacking is an overarching theme that connects the different threads together. What does jealousy have to do with ‘boats beating against a current’? What does it have to do with the other stuff in the story that isn’t about jealousy?

Sam has part of the truth. The story is so consistently about gaudy wealth that you can’t really escape it. Class analysis is a time-tested way to read a text. There are a few references about pioneers expanding westward, which would hint at the ‘American Dream’ being central to the book. However, there are a few too many things in there that don’t quite add up into the American Dream framework. It seems like the book is about the American Dream, but it’s not only about that. (This one is the most common scholarly analysis, I think, but I find it incomplete. I aim to build a case solid enough to make even hardcore literature nerds tremble.)

Francois has part of the truth. Nobody else in this group properly spotted that Daisy was being reduced into an ideal with no agency, rather than a real person. The feminist angle is valuable to show things about female characters that you otherwise might miss. But it doesn’t account for all the wealth stuff very well. You can say that all that pursuit of wealth is about patriarchy and so forth, but Daisy and Jordan are wealthy, too. It’s an important point to make, but I don’t think we can say it's what the book is ‘about’.

Let’s return to my method: Look at the character arc FIRST.

The mistake I believe the above people make is that they look at the abstract and emotional undertones of the story, and they start to form final answers. I think that’s backwards.

If we do things forward, as I would suggest, then we might have a chance to reconcile all of these different viewpoints. We do this like a statistician making a line of best fit in a data set. Like a detective building a case from the evidence. Like a scientist coming up with a theory to explain their observations.

We judge the answer based on its ability to explain things. If it explains many things well, then it’s a good answer. If it explains only a few things, then it’s not as good.

So what are the character arcs in The Great Gatsby?

Jay Gatsby, while not the point of view character, has a fairly clear arc of the tragic type. Before the book begins, he starts as a penniless officer in the Army. Then we meet him, as a man of extreme wealth and success, who has built up a dream of being with Daisy so potent that it seems impossible. Gatsby himself seems like a larger-than-life legend at first. When he finally gets to be with Daisy, before any real conflict comes along, Nick perceives that he is slightly disappointed in the romance, and the green light loses its enchanting presence. Then, after the car accident, Daisy chooses to stay with Tom rather than be with Gatsby. Gatsby is shot—partly because of Tom—and has no real friends to attend his funeral. Despite all those lavish parties that filled the house, his house is emptied almost the minute he dies.

 

Nick starts out busy with his job in New York, attending Gatsby’s parties, and enjoying a casual relationship with Jordan Baker. Even he seems to find his cousin Daisy enchanting—dreamlike. The prose, which casts her in an ethereal and impossibly graceful light, cannot be ignored. Gatsby is presented to the reader as this legendary, enigmatic, absorbing character. Notably, the narrator is writing about events years in the past, in a nostalgic mood. He is mostly swept along in the plot, observing and assisting, but not standing up for much or pursuing his own goals. When Gatsby waits below Daisy’s window after the crash, Nick tells him that “You’re worth the whole damn bunch of them put together” He then admits to the reader that, up until that point, he had disapproved of Gatsby. From that point, though, Daisy seems cold and phony to him. He closes by reflecting that we are all boats against the current, etc.

 

Both Jay and Nick are disillusioned with things they had previously idealized.

For this reason, I don’t believe that the story is ‘about’ the American Dream. I believe that it’s about disillusionment of dreams in general, and one of the main illusions that is explored and then broken is the American Dream. Remember, themes are also used to ‘make universal ideas resonate’. The American Dream is a specific thing that is covered extensively, but when we talk about the ‘central theme’ I think it’s better to say it’s about the disillusionment of dreams (the general thing which resonates), rather than focus on the specific American Dream, which would miss some things out.

There is a particular focus on nostalgia. Gatsby idealizes his past relationship to such an absurd degree that even being with her in the present can’t measure up. Nick writes about the events years later, infusing the prose with a glow of nostalgia and enchantment.

So my take on the main theme of The Great Gatsby is: ‘Nostalgic dreams cannot sustain you.’ Or maybe, ‘Nostalgic dreams will be the death of you.’

Or maybe, to borrow and mangle the text’s own words, ‘Dreams of colossal vitality—lost love, the American Dream, dreams of conquest and glory—will in reality, always tumble short.’

The main reason it works for me is that is contains all the other proposed themes within it.

This is how they fit in:

-          It is about love, beauty, and jealousy – it’s about how Gatsby’s nostalgia over his love for the beautiful Daisy turned into jealousy. But once he had her love, it became hollow.

-          It’s about how Daisy is reduced to an ‘idea’ with no agency – because Gatsby’s nostalgia prevents her from ever becoming ‘real’ in his eyes.

-          It’s about the American Dream – especially all the ways the Dream turns out to be hollow. The explicit mentions of pioneers and so forth cast the American Dream as a way of striving nostalgically for a past that never really was. In short, all the wealth that Gatsby built up didn’t get him friends, a wife, a family, or any real happiness. The American Dream as a path to happiness is debunked by the text.

 

Remember in the last section, where I said that author intent is supported when something comes up again, and again, and again?

I’m going to support my argument by showing you how many times ‘dreams’ comes up:

-          There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.

-          No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

-          After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.

-          There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.

-          I think that voice held him most with its fluctuating, feverish warmth because it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song.

-          Her face bent into the single wrinkle of the small white neck. “You dream, you. You absolute little dream.”

-          …But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the dead dream fought on …

-          But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.

-          … he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye.

-          If that was true [Gatsby] must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.

-          A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about …

-          West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams.

-          Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity to wonder.

-          He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.

So what did F. Scott Fitzgerald intend to say with The Great Gatsby, if anything?

We can’t know for sure … but if he wasn’t making a point about the disillusionment of over-worked dreams, all these quotes that explore that idea are a HELL of a coincidence. For me, I’m happy to say that Fitzgerald did intend something in this neighbourhood, at least. There are too many instances to be arbitrary, random, or pure coincidence.

I don’t need to hear it from him. I’ve built a case, and I’m confident in my method.

 

The value of themes:

 

What do themes ‘add’ to a story?

I think it’s a mistake to think that only oddball nerds like me, who pick apart stories with tweezers, can get something out of a story that’s full of subtext, themes, and symbolism. I think that themes add something intangible to a story, and the better the themes are done, the better the story. I’m not alone in thinking that.

One analogy I can use to explain this is that of flavour balancing. In cooking, the main tastes are: sweet, sour, salty, umami, bitter, and spicy (and a few more depending on who you ask). Flavour balancing is the concept of making sure that a given dish or beverage has a—you might have guessed—balanced flavour profile.

Each of these main flavours has a way of counteracting or enhancing the others (think of salted caramel, or sweet and sour pork). The important thing is that they counteract other flavours, and have huge impacts in the overall taste, **without necessarily being noticeable.**

If an ingredient can impact a dish without being noticed, then I believe themes and subtext can impact a story without being noticed.

Sweet and sour, for example, counteract each other. If a chef is designing a dessert that is ending up too sweet, they only have to put in small amounts of something sour to reduce the sweetness. Diners can then eat that balanced dessert, and not a single one of them will notice that sour citric acid has been added. But all of them notice that it tastes great. And all of them would have noticed that the dish was too sweet if the balancing hadn’t been done.

You miss it when it’s not there.

I think it’s also a good analogy because writing stories in a way that makes conscious use of themes is a balancing act. If a character gets up on a soapbox and preaches the message of the story, most people yawn. That’s being too obvious. That’s too much salt in the salted caramel.

But if the story keeps its elements in a good balance, then the themes can fly under the radar and enhance the experience.

All this prompts the question—how exactly do themes actually improve a story?

If themes can help a story, does this mean they can also hurt it?  

To answer this, I’ll point to something you already know and love: subtext in dialogue.

I think subtext in dialogue is uncontroversial, unlike subtext on a thematic level.

Everyone who pays any attention to any writing guide will learn that characters don’t say, “You have made me so upset! I am angry and hurt!” Instead, they might say, “I can’t even look at you right now!”

We want dialogue scenes to employ good subtext. This is for a few reasons:

-          Subtext is a common way for people to communicate in real life. Euphemisms, veiled threats, and sarcasm are common examples of saying one thing and implying another. Making characters behave in a believable way is Good Writing 101.

-          It follows the 2+2 = ? principle. Readers and viewers are more engaged when they have to interpret the meaning of the dialogue and action. If everything is handed to them, they switch off.

-          It gives a chance to use juxtaposition, or to undercut what a character is saying. E.g.: ‘ She fumbled with her cigarette packet. “Everything is going fine. I’m great,” she said. She slipped, and all her cigarettes fell out and landed in a puddle. “See? Just doing amazingly well.” ‘

-          Giving a scene or a character more depth and more levels is widely recognized as a good thing to do. Subtext in dialogue gives more depth to the dialogue.

 

And here are some reasons you will want your story to have well-constructed thematic subtext:

-          Themes are a common part of real-life communication. Many people tell anecdotes or stories with a point to them. (This is how I got over my break up; This is how I succeeded in getting fit; This is why you shouldn’t believe everything you hear) Those who speak while never making a point are recognized as rambling on, saying nothing.

-          It follows the 2+2=? principle. It is not engaging for a character to simply say “Happiness is a good feeling but sadness is also valuable.” It is more engaging to see Joy and Sadness personified, like in Inside Out, and learn their respective value through a journey.

-          It gives a chance to comment on real-life situations. From Animal Farm to Black Mirror to The Handmaid’s Tale, many stories which seem to be speculative or fantastical have a lot to say about our world.

-          Giving a story more depth or more levels is widely recognized as a good thing to do. Thematic subtext in a story gives more depth to the story.

 

The process of understanding 2+2=? while reading a story is one of the greatest pleasures of fiction.

All of you, I’m willing to bet, already believe in ‘2+2=?’ as a technique for dialogue. All I’m saying is that the same principle works to enrich the structure of a story—its themes.

Have you ever noticed when a scene of dialogue is bad and clunky due to a lack of subtext?

Many readers who have never really come across the concept of subtext feel that something is ‘off’ with the scene as well. They might not be able to express why, but they know what they feel.

I have observed a same thing when a story has inconsistent or poorly implemented themes. I can spot why a story feels ‘off,’ why it doesn’t quite come together. Stories like that always feel like less than a sum of their parts.

Other people, including writers, who don’t have a proper working definition of themes will also feel that same gut-feeling of incompleteness. The story might have great scenes, or interesting characters, but the story itself is forgettable.

It’s like a dialogue scene without subtext: there aren’t enough layers there to engage you. Even if it’s only your subconscious that’s being engaged by themes, it’s your subconscious that notices when that crucial ingredient is missing.

The next time you come across a story that feels hollow, like there is some ‘special ingredient’ missing … have a look at the theme of the story. Did it come across clearly? Was it haphazard? Did some scenes say X, while others said Y?

On the flip side, when a story really, really resonates strongly with you, have a look at the themes it is built around. More often than not, these stories that you love most, and still enjoy year after year—they might have a few flaws, but they almost never have poorly constructed themes. Because the theme is the part that resonates.

In all my years of looking at stories, trying to break them down and understand them, and then also building them up to see them as a whole without slicing them into little pieces, I have found themes to be a consistent bedrock.

A story with admirable themes can still be bad (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), because the themes are really just the foundation. Stories that are built on shaky foundations are almost always … wobbly. And the greatest stories of all time, the ones that endure, the ones by long-dead authors that still resonate with us today—they invariably have something *more* to say than the words on the page.

 

Conclusion, and a final word on ‘Symbolism’

 

So, back to the example in the title. The blue curtains.

Here’s one iteration of the original meme:

>Student: The curtains are just blue.

>Teacher: No! The blue curtains represent the character’s depression.

>Author: The curtains are just fucking blue.

What if the author just wrote some random, throwaway description? Then, what if some English teacher opined about how the blue curtains represent depression over a century later? Wouldn’t that author turn in their grave?

I can’t give you an answer that pertains to the actual blue curtains. They are a strawman, built for the specific purpose of being easy to knock down.

I have a hilarious little irony to point out to you. ‘The curtains are fucking blue’ is, itself, an example of symbolism.

A symbol is a device that uses one thing to represent another, right? The ‘blue curtains’ represent a wider problem. They represent the frivolous pursuit of literary analysis, and the hubris of a teacher that inserts meaning where it doesn’t belong. The physical curtains are transformed into abstract ideas—the very essence of symbolism and motif.

The delicious, delicious irony of that is just perfect to me. In an attempt to debunk the idea that fiction has symbols, the author of that meme used a symbol.

They also had a message—a central theme—when they made that meme. The message is: Teachers will take random descriptions and elevate them to literary significance. Or perhaps, Literary analysis is all arbitrary, and therefore bogus.

So … by denying that fiction can use one thing to mean another, the maker of this meme made a mini-story in three acts, complete with a symbol and a central theme.

Let’s all pause for a moment to appreciate that, then move on.

I think Gatsby’s green light is the real example that most people have in mind when they reference ‘blue curtains’. I personally love the book. Nowadays I re-read it every year. I did, however, have to take an 8-year break after high school before I could stomach going back into it. Learning to analyze a book, at least in a school setting, is the surest method to get you to hate it.

So, right here at the last minute of the essay, let’s return to the green light.

What does the green light ‘mean?’

>“… he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light …”

>‘ “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.” ‘

>“It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”

>“I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could fail to grasp it.”

>“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”

 

You tell me what you think the green light means, after all that I’ve told you.

Is it:

A)      Greed

B)      Jealousy

C)      The American Dream

D)      Something else?

No wrong answers. Just remember: you have to show your working. I’ve shown mine.

Here is the secret of symbols, motifs, and other similar techniques: they are all subservient to the main themes. Don’t pick out a random green light and figure out what it means—that’s backwards. A symbol is just a piece of the puzzle, it doesn’t mean anything on its own. It’s like a single letter in a sentence—you can’t understand what role it has unless you read the whole sentence first. At the same time, if that letter was taken out of the sentence, what would be missing?

So, having said that. Figure out the overall theme first, and then figure out how the particular symbol is used within that theme.

What does the green light mean?

You tell me.

 

Were the Curtains Really Just Blue?

Or, ‘What your English teacher was really trying to say.’

Quotes from some authors:

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Italo Calvino

“The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” Ernest Hemingway

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.” Maya Angelou

“That’s what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!” Connie Willis

“Themes are for eighth grade book reports.” Two amazing and acclaimed television writers … can’t quite remember their names just now.

__________

In this essay, I will be making a rebuttal to a particular statement. I have summarized the strongest elements of this argument, so that when I argue against it, I’ll be able to make a good case. I have intentionally tried to not belittle or simplify the other position to make my job any easier. Hopefully, this will make the end result better.

I am rebutting the following statement:

“Themes? Symbols? You're putting too much thought into it. Stories are just stories. They’re just entertainment. When you get into the weeds, yeah, anything can mean whatever you want. But the significance is all constructed by your desire to see it.”

 

 

Part 1: What happened in English class?

 

A theme is just a thread that ties ideas together.

A symbol is just one thing that represents some other thing/s.

A message is just a summary of what a narrative ‘says’ beneath its surface.

 

When you boil them down, these concepts seem very simple indeed. At worst, they seem neutral and benign. At best, they can enrich the fiction we read, and even life itself. What they shouldn’t be is upsetting.

What I have observed, though, is people getting upset. There is a common tendency to dismiss some or all of these ideas. People take stances that span from smug superiority, to apathy, and even hostility.

The internet is fertile ground to observe that kind of thing. When was the last time you corrected someone who was incorrect? You probably saw their mistake, felt a pang of frustration or annoyance, and you just **had** to log in and tell them just how wrong they were. There was an emotional part to your need to reply. If you hadn’t felt that motivating emotion, after all, you might have just kept scrolling. (I used to be a neckbeard-style atheist, so I know the feeling all too well)

So why is it that every time themes, messages, symbols, and motifs are brought up in writing spaces, there are dozens of angry people who cannot resist the chance to say, “Only fools read into fiction this much. The curtains are just fucking blue.”

Where did these negative emotions originate? Who is to blame?

Is there a way out of this hostility?

If you think the curtains are just blue … are you missing out on anything really valuable?

 

What did teachers actually teach?

 

A lot of people have memories of High School English class that are … less than fond.

I spoke to some students, some writers, some teachers, and some friends, and a pattern emerged.

Some students had an amazing experience, some had an awful one. Some teachers went above and beyond to explain things, most teachers did their best with disengaged students, other teachers taught by rote, commandment, and rigid conclusions. (Or at least, their students remembered them doing that.)

The bad experiences focused on finding symbols in the text, but not understanding them. The bad teachers seemed to insist that only one answer could ever be correct. Alternative readings or interpretations were not accepted.

There was a flip side, too. It was super common for people to say that they got top marks for essays that they bullshitted entirely. If you pick things at random from the text, and say ‘this means X and that means Y’ at random, and you get top marks … doesn’t that mean that the whole thing is just pseudoscience?

These bad experiences seem like the perfect backstory to bring us to the present day. How can we blame all this unhealthy scepticism? How can we blame those people who were once students in tyrannical English classes? If you are taught that literary analysis is like palm reading, cloud watching, or dream interpretation, then of course, you will spend your whole life believing that it’s all a fraud.

The other major pattern across the spectrum was a distrust—or even hatred—of the idea that any author really sat down and INTENDED for the blue curtains to represent sadness. There is broad agreement here, but I think even a lot of reasonable objections to author intent need a bit more nuance. I’ll return to that in a later section.

If this is you, then I’m here to tell you that there are good methods. Better methods. And some people were lucky to have teachers that taught them well. Other people were lucky enough to find better ways to learn after school.

Everyone who learns to interpret and analyse what they read says that fiction becomes more enriching. Doesn’t that sound great? Wouldn’t you like to be enriched?

 

Wishy-Washy Interpretations, Academic Pressure, and the Fear of Being Wrong

 

I am going to define one main concept first: theme. I’m going to give a few different definitions, all of which are true. But when we use them, we’re going to be flexible.  

This might seem fuzzy and vague. A lifetime of concrete, dictionary, board-approved definitions of terms might make this uncomfortable. But it’s necessary.

Picture this all like a big wire frame. It can stand on its own and be solid. But if it needs to change, you can bend some of the wires, and the frame will change and hold its new shape. It’s neither floppy nor rigid.

Good answers hold their shape, but we can bend them around if we need to.

 

A theme can be:

-          A summary of subtext in a narrative

-          A connecting thread between concepts in a narrative

-          An idea that evolves over time in a story, and comes to fruition at the conclusion

-          A subject of discourse or artistic representation

-          The main idea or message of a story

-          The part of the story that resonates emotionally

-          A way of stating the internal growth experienced by the protagonist

-          “Universal experiences that connect all humans.” Teacher u/short_story_long_

-          ALSO, a wildcard : A design focus, as in decorating, eg. A party or wedding. “The theme of my wedding is champagne and seashells”. The concept which ties it all together.

Personally, I’m going to use one particular definition from that list: A connecting thread between concepts in a narrative. I like this one because it encapsulates or hints at all the others. Some of the definitions are too specific. If you have your own definition, please borrow my one just for the moment. You can always discard mine and go back to your own later.

Some definitions say a story has one theme. Others say that stories can have many themes. To get around that, I’ll refer to them either as ‘themes’ or ‘the central theme’. 

Now that we have a usable definition, I want to highlight something really interesting that a teacher on reddit told me.

They said that students most often struggled with themes and symbolism due to a fear of being wrong. This fear leads them to often dismiss the whole idea, with typical teenage eye-rolls, or on the other hand, to become paralyzed in their seats. Nobody wants to put their hand up and offer a foolish suggestion. This fear of being wrong is exactly what I want to address.

I see this fear every week on the /r/writing subreddit. Someone will come in, obviously distressed, and ask, “Does my story have to have themes?? Will my story be bad without them?”

Sadly, nobody seeks to reassure them by explaining what themes are or how they work. The answers are inevitably dominated by ones like this: “No! Don’t worry. If you don’t want to have themes, then don’t have themes. You can just write for entertainment 😊”

This might be my psychology degree talking, but despite the reassuring tone, that seems about as helpful as saying, “Don’t worry about your depression! Worrying about it only makes it worse. It will go away on its own!”

The fact is that wishing problems away has the opposite effect. Denying the reality of a problem makes things worse. Themes and symbolism in narrative are basically inevitable, and it’s crucial to understand them.

Fears of being wrong are only corrected by confidence in making good answers.

Remember how things can be ‘wishy-washy’ but still good? Remember the wire frame that you can bend and shape? That’s the reason I said ‘good answers.’ Notice how I didn’t say ‘the right answer’ or ‘the correct answer.’

Answers come in a spectrum. It’s a little wrong to say that a banana is a vegetable. It’s a lot wrong to say that it’s a power tool.

So if answers come on a spectrum, how can anyone ever be right? Does ANYTHING matter?

The trick is to think of yourself like a detective. You need to find evidence, then build a case.

 

You Already Have All the Skills You Need

 

To a large extent, interpreting themes and symbols in fiction is just a puffed-up, formal version of what we already do every day. You can already understand subtext and hidden meanings that go deeper than the surface. Many people pick up these routine interpretation skills without even thinking, and for the rest of us these things are possible to learn.

One teacher used emojis to show their class how this interpretation works. You can see this little icon of a facial expression, and know not only what emotion it represents, but how different emojis can be paired together to make mini-stories or nuanced statements. Doing this is, fundamentally, reading subtext. If you can interpret emojis without even thinking, just imagine what else you can interpret.

Another way we encounter it is relating to people who have had similar experiences. Even when the experiences have surface differences, we can feel an emotional connection over the core part of the experience. One person who missed out on a big scholarship might relate to someone else who missed out on a promotion. Those things are not identical, but the experiences are similar enough. They’re connected by the thread of ‘missing out on something they really wanted.’ The important part here is that the emotional part is what’s relatable. It’s the same in stories.

What about meta jokes? In shows like Community or comics/films like Deadpool, what exactly is making the meta jokes funny? These types of comedy will often get laughs from exposing a familiar pattern to the audience, then turning it on its head. As an audience member, you ‘got it’, usually without trying. The reason the joke was funny was never stated or explained. It lies in the invisible connection between stories. Somehow, you were able to see the connections being subverted, and understand the hidden meaning of the joke.

How about in regular, everyday conversations with people? There are dozens of times every day when you can read between the lines in something someone has said. Their words might say, “Yeah, right”, but you interpreted that as a sarcastic expression of doubt. Their words might say, “I’m fine, really, nothing’s wrong”, but you were able to see something that was upsetting them. What helps you see that? Context. The context might be something that’s just happened, or it might be their posture and tone. Either way, you are using cues outside of the literal words to form a theory about what is ‘actually’ being said. Seeing themes works the same way.

You also believe in character arcs, and probably use them in every story. More on this later, but understanding character arcs better is probably 99% of the work you need to do to understand themes. If you believe in and use character arcs, you already believe in themes, you might just not like calling them that.

All you have to do is take these ideas and apply them to fictional stories. It’s not as hard as it can sometimes appear.

So, a theme is a connecting thread between concepts in a story.

You might say, ‘But the human mind is active. It loves to imagine things. You can say anything is connecting to anything and be right. So what’s the point getting so deep with stories? You might as well look for shapes in the clouds.’

To that I say there are still better and worse answers, even when watching clouds. If someone sees a long thin cloud and says it looks like a soccer ball, you won’t nod and say, ‘That’s really valid.’ You’ll send them contact details of the local optometrist.

It’s the same with themes. If someone tells me that Toy Story is secretly about the death of the Prussian King Wilhelm II, I will need plenty of evidence that supports that claim to buy it. If they have none, I will be right to say ‘That answer is not supported enough to be valid.’ Or I’ll just say, ‘That’s a dogsh*t theory.’

There are methods you can use to make sure you arrive at a decent, well-supported, usable, ‘good’ answer. Not ‘the correct’ answer. Not ‘the final’ answer. Not ‘the only’ answer.

A good answer.

 

One Method for Quickly Spotting Themes—Without Guesswork

 

Most stories these days involve at least one major character arc. The character goes through an internal change as a result of their struggles in the story. Most avid readers and writers understand this already.

This is good for me, because the easiest, quickest, and most reliable method to find your main theme involves character arcs.

The method goes like this:

-          Put the character arc into words: What did they realize? How did they change?

-          … That’s it.

Oh, and when you find your main theme this way, you’ve also found what people call the ‘message’. Those things are one and the same, if you phrase the theme as a lesson or ‘take away’.

This is good! Now we have less terms to worry about. Let’s chuck ‘message’ and ‘lesson’ in the bin, and just use ‘the main theme’.

Some examples:

In Frozen, Elsa closes herself off in an attempt to protect others from her magic. Instead, this causes severe weather problems and other conflicts. Only when she stops closing herself off and opens herself up to others does balance return. The main theme there is: Bottling up your problems causes more problems, so it’s best to open up.

In A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge is a miserable, selfish grouch. Ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future come and show him visions of the dire consequences of these traits. Scrooge has a change of heart, and becomes kind and generous. The main theme there is: You will have a better life if you are kind and generous.

In Black Swan, Nina (Portman) becomes increasingly paranoid about Lily (Kunis) taking her spot as the star of the upcoming production of Swan Lake. She seems to suffer from hallucinations, and finally ends up stabbing Lily with a piece of broken glass in a fit of jealous rage. When it is revealed that Lily is actually unharmed, Nina realizes that she stabbed herself, and dies shortly after giving a perfect performance. The main theme there is: If you obsess over others plotting to sabotage you, you might just end up sabotaging yourself. Another valid one might be: If you strive for perfection, you might just get it—but the stress of it could kill you. (Both answers are supported by the text, and neither cancels the other one out. That is how interpretation works—different, but not at random.)

In Pokémon: The First Movie, Mewtwo goes on a telekinetic rampage when he discovers his origin as a clone, a scientists’ plaything. He then clones other Pokémon and fights ‘originals’ in a tournament to prove that clones are superior to originals. When Ash Ketchum is petrified in an attempt to put an end to senseless fighting, Mewtwo is moved by his sacrifice. Ash is revived by the tears of watching Pokémon, and Mewtwo states that we should not be judged by our origins, but by our choices. The main theme there is: We should not be judged by our origins, but by our choices. (Thanks to Mewtwo for stating it aloud).

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby spends all his time looking at Daisy’s green light. When there is a car accident, everyone thinks Gatsby is to blame. But it wasn’t Gatsby in the driver’s seat: It was that damn green light! The theme there is: It was the damn green light all along. Never trust the green light.

I know it’s exhausting to read examples like this if you’re already on board with the whole process. I did have an ulterior motive, though. I wanted to explicitly show a link between this method and stories that range from children’s cartoons, to Arrenofsky films, to classics of literature.

Important notes for this point:

-          These aren’t the only themes

-          This isn’t the only method

-          Analysis doesn’t have to stop there.

Having said all that, the method is pretty sound, pretty useful, and a quick way to get ‘into’ a text. Especially if you’re having trouble ‘getting it’ on a deeper level, having a foundation like this is really helpful.

Nine times out of ten, you’ll find that if you pick out the main theme in this way, you’ll find that answers stop being arbitrary or random. It feels nice to decode something, and to later come across critics, friends, and internet strangers decoding it in the same way. The more people you can find with the same answer, the more confident you can be.

It’s not arbitrary or random, because it follows a method. And it’s not a restrictive, ‘one size fits all’ answer, because we acknowledge other ways to see things. It doesn’t rely on guessing what the author ‘meant’ to express with the story. It is just based on basic evidence, and basic logic.

So in my view, it makes up for all the shortcomings that people are most concerned with. You can set aside fear of being wrong. You can forget about how arbitrary and wishy-washy it all appears to be. You can discard the idea that authors are hiding secret messages everywhere. You can also stop insisting that authors emphatically never intend secret messages. You can let go of the idea that subjectivity makes any act of interpretation pointless. 

Best of all, you can come up with a solid answer that works.

But if no single answer is ‘correct’, how can we hope to prove that any given answer is good enough? How do we compare different answers? How do we entertain multiple conflicting interpretations in unison without getting confused?

 

A quick note on Author Intent

 

We don’t ‘need’ to know what an author meant to communicate in order to understand the story.

But sometimes, when we analyse a story and learn about the author’s life, it can become clear that author intent can be an important piece in the puzzle.

George Orwell was a journalist. He wrote a story called Animal Farm, and another story called 1984. Both of those books are about government control, authoritarianism, and the lies fed to the populace in order to keep the powerful in power. Neither of them has a happy ending.

To the person who says that no author has ever intended a ‘message’, or that readers interpret books however they want: What about Orwell?

Aren’t his books very clear evidence that authors can intend to write messages?

Is Orwell a special case? An outlier? Maybe.

Most likely, every author who ever lived lands somewhere on a spectrum from ‘never intends messages’ to ‘always intends messages.’ Many probably hang around in the middle, where they think about the themes and symbols of their writing a little bit, but they don’t go to the same lengths Orwell does.

High School English class may not have mentioned this, but George Orwell was a socialist. A democratic-socialist, to be precise. (That’s the anarchy type, not the Bernie Sanders type. Bernie is a social Democrat.) Read Orwell’s autobiographical Homage to Catalonia if you’re interested. Basically, Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war, within a unit of socialists. Their allies, who were Stalinist Communists, harassed and sabotaged the war effort, and potentially brought about the victory for the Spanish Fascists under Franco. Orwell seemed very bitter about it, but remained a dedicated democratic-socialist. Basically, the Stalin type ones hate the anarchist type ones and vice versa.

Does knowing that change your opinion of Animal Farm or 1984 at all?

Is the smiling face of Big Brother a bit more Stalin-like than it was before? And the pigs in Animal Farm (based on Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and others)—do they seem any different to you?

I think there’s a lot to be said—some of the time, for some authors—about author intent. Sometimes, there is just no denying that a message has been intended. Sometimes, like with Orwell, the entire story is an allegory and/or satire of real-life politics.

The trouble is, what do we do when we talk about the less obvious authors? The ones who don’t ‘seem’ to be intending anything?

The only tool we have in that case is analysis, and evidence. If we think an author intends X, but their story includes instances that contradict X, it may not have been intended.

However, if the same elements keep coming up again, and again, and again … we can start to be more confident that the author meant for us to see it.

Once might be a mistake. A few times might be by chance. But multiple times per book across multiple books?

Your Honour, I believe that repeated instances are evidence of intent.

 

Different Lenses, Frameworks, and Tools

 

If you get three people in the same room with The Great Gatsby and ask them what it’s ‘really’ about, you’ll get four different answers.

It’s the same book. How are four different answers even possible? The simplest explanation might be that they’re all making stuff up out of boredom. We did trap them in a room with nothing but a book, after all.

Let’s do a thought experiment that involves their different answers.

The Great Gatsby is about Jay Gatsby, who dreams obsessively of being with a married woman, Daisy. The story is told through the eyes of Daisy’s cousin, Nick Carraway. Gatsby throws lavish, enchanting parties, apparently as a way to try and tempt Daisy to visit. We learn, as Nick grows closer to him, that Gatsby had been with Daisy before, but wasn’t wealthy enough for her. So Gatsby built a fortune for himself from the ground up, even changed his identity. He finally has an affair with Daisy, with Nick’s assistance. From that moment, he is gradually let down by the reality of being with Daisy, and he now wants her to retroactively have never loved her husband. During a confrontation, Daisy reveals that she loves both her husband and Gatsby. Daisy, driving Gatsby’s car, kills her husband’s mistress, but Gatsby takes the blame and is killed. Tom and Daisy withdraw ‘into their vast money or carelessness’ and Nick loses touch with them. The dream is over, and Nick muses that we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

 

The first person, Ashley, says that the story is really about love and beauty, or maybe jealousy. They finally settle on jealousy, because the green light is the colour of jealousy.

The second person, Sam, says that the story is really about class struggle and the myth of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby wanted all those riches, and look where it got him. Dead. The American Dream is a lie.

The third person, Francois, says that the story is really about the objectification of women, and how patriarchal society robs women like Daisy of true agency by reducing them to an idealized prize to be won.

Are they all equally correct? Are they all wrong?

In my opinion, each answer has flaws, but is mostly solid.

Ashley has part of the truth. The story does deal with love, beauty, and jealousy quite a bit. Those are emotional through-lines that you can easily spot. What is lacking is an overarching theme that connects the different threads together. What does jealousy have to do with ‘boats beating against a current’? What does it have to do with the other stuff in the story that isn’t about jealousy?

Sam has part of the truth. The story is so consistently about gaudy wealth that you can’t really escape it. Class analysis is a time-tested way to read a text. There are a few references about pioneers expanding westward, which would hint at the ‘American Dream’ being central to the book. However, there are a few too many things in there that don’t quite add up into the American Dream framework. It seems like the book is about the American Dream, but it’s not only about that. (This one is the most common scholarly analysis, I think, but I find it incomplete. I aim to build a case solid enough to make even hardcore literature nerds tremble.)

Francois has part of the truth. Nobody else in this group properly spotted that Daisy was being reduced into an ideal with no agency, rather than a real person. The feminist angle is valuable to show things about female characters that you otherwise might miss. But it doesn’t account for all the wealth stuff very well. You can say that all that pursuit of wealth is about patriarchy and so forth, but Daisy and Jordan are wealthy, too. It’s an important point to make, but I don’t think we can say it's what the book is ‘about’.

Let’s return to my method: Look at the character arc FIRST.

The mistake I believe the above people make is that they look at the abstract and emotional undertones of the story, and they start to form final answers. I think that’s backwards.

If we do things forward, as I would suggest, then we might have a chance to reconcile all of these different viewpoints. We do this like a statistician making a line of best fit in a data set. Like a detective building a case from the evidence. Like a scientist coming up with a theory to explain their observations.

We judge the answer based on its ability to explain things. If it explains many things well, then it’s a good answer. If it explains only a few things, then it’s not as good.

So what are the character arcs in The Great Gatsby?

Jay Gatsby, while not the point of view character, has a fairly clear arc of the tragic type. Before the book begins, he starts as a penniless officer in the Army. Then we meet him, as a man of extreme wealth and success, who has built up a dream of being with Daisy so potent that it seems impossible. Gatsby himself seems like a larger-than-life legend at first. When he finally gets to be with Daisy, before any real conflict comes along, Nick perceives that he is slightly disappointed in the romance, and the green light loses its enchanting presence. Then, after the car accident, Daisy chooses to stay with Tom rather than be with Gatsby. Gatsby is shot—partly because of Tom—and has no real friends to attend his funeral. Despite all those lavish parties that filled the house, his house is emptied almost the minute he dies.

 

Nick starts out busy with his job in New York, attending Gatsby’s parties, and enjoying a casual relationship with Jordan Baker. Even he seems to find his cousin Daisy enchanting—dreamlike. The prose, which casts her in an ethereal and impossibly graceful light, cannot be ignored. Gatsby is presented to the reader as this legendary, enigmatic, absorbing character. Notably, the narrator is writing about events years in the past, in a nostalgic mood. He is mostly swept along in the plot, observing and assisting, but not standing up for much or pursuing his own goals. When Gatsby waits below Daisy’s window after the crash, Nick tells him that “You’re worth the whole damn bunch of them put together” He then admits to the reader that, up until that point, he had disapproved of Gatsby. From that point, though, Daisy seems cold and phony to him. He closes by reflecting that we are all boats against the current, etc.

 

Both Jay and Nick are disillusioned with things they had previously idealized.

For this reason, I don’t believe that the story is ‘about’ the American Dream. I believe that it’s about disillusionment of dreams in general, and one of the main illusions that is explored and then broken is the American Dream. Remember, themes are also used to ‘make universal ideas resonate’. The American Dream is a specific thing that is covered extensively, but when we talk about the ‘central theme’ I think it’s better to say it’s about the disillusionment of dreams (the general thing which resonates), rather than focus on the specific American Dream, which would miss some things out.

There is a particular focus on nostalgia. Gatsby idealizes his past relationship to such an absurd degree that even being with her in the present can’t measure up. Nick writes about the events years later, infusing the prose with a glow of nostalgia and enchantment.

So my take on the main theme of The Great Gatsby is: ‘Nostalgic dreams cannot sustain you.’ Or maybe, ‘Nostalgic dreams will be the death of you.’

Or maybe, to borrow and mangle the text’s own words, ‘Dreams of colossal vitality—lost love, the American Dream, dreams of conquest and glory—will in reality, always tumble short.’

The main reason it works for me is that is contains all the other proposed themes within it.

This is how they fit in:

-          It is about love, beauty, and jealousy – it’s about how Gatsby’s nostalgia over his love for the beautiful Daisy turned into jealousy. But once he had her love, it became hollow.

-          It’s about how Daisy is reduced to an ‘idea’ with no agency – because Gatsby’s nostalgia prevents her from ever becoming ‘real’ in his eyes.

-          It’s about the American Dream – especially all the ways the Dream turns out to be hollow. The explicit mentions of pioneers and so forth cast the American Dream as a way of striving nostalgically for a past that never really was. In short, all the wealth that Gatsby built up didn’t get him friends, a wife, a family, or any real happiness. The American Dream as a path to happiness is debunked by the text.

 

Remember in the last section, where I said that author intent is supported when something comes up again, and again, and again?

I’m going to support my argument by showing you how many times ‘dreams’ comes up:

-          There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.

-          No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

-          After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.

-          There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.

-          I think that voice held him most with its fluctuating, feverish warmth because it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song.

-          Her face bent into the single wrinkle of the small white neck. “You dream, you. You absolute little dream.”

-          …But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the dead dream fought on …

-          But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.

-          … he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye.

-          If that was true [Gatsby] must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.

-          A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about …

-          West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams.

-          Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity to wonder.

-          He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.

So what did F. Scott Fitzgerald intend to say with The Great Gatsby, if anything?

We can’t know for sure … but if he wasn’t making a point about the disillusionment of over-worked dreams, all these quotes that explore that idea are a HELL of a coincidence. For me, I’m happy to say that Fitzgerald did intend something in this neighbourhood, at least. There are too many instances to be arbitrary, random, or pure coincidence.

I don’t need to hear it from him. I’ve built a case, and I’m confident in my method.

 

The value of themes:

 

What do themes ‘add’ to a story?

I think it’s a mistake to think that only oddball nerds like me, who pick apart stories with tweezers, can get something out of a story that’s full of subtext, themes, and symbolism. I think that themes add something intangible to a story, and the better the themes are done, the better the story. I’m not alone in thinking that.

One analogy I can use to explain this is that of flavour balancing. In cooking, the main tastes are: sweet, sour, salty, umami, bitter, and spicy (and a few more depending on who you ask). Flavour balancing is the concept of making sure that a given dish or beverage has a—you might have guessed—balanced flavour profile.

Each of these main flavours has a way of counteracting or enhancing the others (think of salted caramel, or sweet and sour pork). The important thing is that they counteract other flavours, and have huge impacts in the overall taste, **without necessarily being noticeable.**

If an ingredient can impact a dish without being noticed, then I believe themes and subtext can impact a story without being noticed.

Sweet and sour, for example, counteract each other. If a chef is designing a dessert that is ending up too sweet, they only have to put in small amounts of something sour to reduce the sweetness. Diners can then eat that balanced dessert, and not a single one of them will notice that sour citric acid has been added. But all of them notice that it tastes great. And all of them would have noticed that the dish was too sweet if the balancing hadn’t been done.

You miss it when it’s not there.

I think it’s also a good analogy because writing stories in a way that makes conscious use of themes is a balancing act. If a character gets up on a soapbox and preaches the message of the story, most people yawn. That’s being too obvious. That’s too much salt in the salted caramel.

But if the story keeps its elements in a good balance, then the themes can fly under the radar and enhance the experience.

All this prompts the question—how exactly do themes actually improve a story?

If themes can help a story, does this mean they can also hurt it?  

To answer this, I’ll point to something you already know and love: subtext in dialogue.

I think subtext in dialogue is uncontroversial, unlike subtext on a thematic level.

Everyone who pays any attention to any writing guide will learn that characters don’t say, “You have made me so upset! I am angry and hurt!” Instead, they might say, “I can’t even look at you right now!”

We want dialogue scenes to employ good subtext. This is for a few reasons:

-          Subtext is a common way for people to communicate in real life. Euphemisms, veiled threats, and sarcasm are common examples of saying one thing and implying another. Making characters behave in a believable way is Good Writing 101.

-          It follows the 2+2 = ? principle. Readers and viewers are more engaged when they have to interpret the meaning of the dialogue and action. If everything is handed to them, they switch off.

-          It gives a chance to use juxtaposition, or to undercut what a character is saying. E.g.: ‘ She fumbled with her cigarette packet. “Everything is going fine. I’m great,” she said. She slipped, and all her cigarettes fell out and landed in a puddle. “See? Just doing amazingly well.” ‘

-          Giving a scene or a character more depth and more levels is widely recognized as a good thing to do. Subtext in dialogue gives more depth to the dialogue.

 

And here are some reasons you will want your story to have well-constructed thematic subtext:

-          Themes are a common part of real-life communication. Many people tell anecdotes or stories with a point to them. (This is how I got over my break up; This is how I succeeded in getting fit; This is why you shouldn’t believe everything you hear) Those who speak while never making a point are recognized as rambling on, saying nothing.

-          It follows the 2+2=? principle. It is not engaging for a character to simply say “Happiness is a good feeling but sadness is also valuable.” It is more engaging to see Joy and Sadness personified, like in Inside Out, and learn their respective value through a journey.

-          It gives a chance to comment on real-life situations. From Animal Farm to Black Mirror to The Handmaid’s Tale, many stories which seem to be speculative or fantastical have a lot to say about our world.

-          Giving a story more depth or more levels is widely recognized as a good thing to do. Thematic subtext in a story gives more depth to the story.

 

The process of understanding 2+2=? while reading a story is one of the greatest pleasures of fiction.

All of you, I’m willing to bet, already believe in ‘2+2=?’ as a technique for dialogue. All I’m saying is that the same principle works to enrich the structure of a story—its themes.

Have you ever noticed when a scene of dialogue is bad and clunky due to a lack of subtext?

Many readers who have never really come across the concept of subtext feel that something is ‘off’ with the scene as well. They might not be able to express why, but they know what they feel.

I have observed a same thing when a story has inconsistent or poorly implemented themes. I can spot why a story feels ‘off,’ why it doesn’t quite come together. Stories like that always feel like less than a sum of their parts.

Other people, including writers, who don’t have a proper working definition of themes will also feel that same gut-feeling of incompleteness. The story might have great scenes, or interesting characters, but the story itself is forgettable.

It’s like a dialogue scene without subtext: there aren’t enough layers there to engage you. Even if it’s only your subconscious that’s being engaged by themes, it’s your subconscious that notices when that crucial ingredient is missing.

The next time you come across a story that feels hollow, like there is some ‘special ingredient’ missing … have a look at the theme of the story. Did it come across clearly? Was it haphazard? Did some scenes say X, while others said Y?

On the flip side, when a story really, really resonates strongly with you, have a look at the themes it is built around. More often than not, these stories that you love most, and still enjoy year after year—they might have a few flaws, but they almost never have poorly constructed themes. Because the theme is the part that resonates.

In all my years of looking at stories, trying to break them down and understand them, and then also building them up to see them as a whole without slicing them into little pieces, I have found themes to be a consistent bedrock.

A story with admirable themes can still be bad (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), because the themes are really just the foundation. Stories that are built on shaky foundations are almost always … wobbly. And the greatest stories of all time, the ones that endure, the ones by long-dead authors that still resonate with us today—they invariably have something *more* to say than the words on the page.

 

Conclusion, and a final word on ‘Symbolism’

 

So, back to the example in the title. The blue curtains.

Here’s one iteration of the original meme:

>Student: The curtains are just blue.

>Teacher: No! The blue curtains represent the character’s depression.

>Author: The curtains are just fucking blue.

What if the author just wrote some random, throwaway description? Then, what if some English teacher opined about how the blue curtains represent depression over a century later? Wouldn’t that author turn in their grave?

I can’t give you an answer that pertains to the actual blue curtains. They are a strawman, built for the specific purpose of being easy to knock down.

I have a hilarious little irony to point out to you. ‘The curtains are fucking blue’ is, itself, an example of symbolism.

A symbol is a device that uses one thing to represent another, right? The ‘blue curtains’ represent a wider problem. They represent the frivolous pursuit of literary analysis, and the hubris of a teacher that inserts meaning where it doesn’t belong. The physical curtains are transformed into abstract ideas—the very essence of symbolism and motif.

The delicious, delicious irony of that is just perfect to me. In an attempt to debunk the idea that fiction has symbols, the author of that meme used a symbol.

They also had a message—a central theme—when they made that meme. The message is: Teachers will take random descriptions and elevate them to literary significance. Or perhaps, Literary analysis is all arbitrary, and therefore bogus.

So … by denying that fiction can use one thing to mean another, the maker of this meme made a mini-story in three acts, complete with a symbol and a central theme.

Let’s all pause for a moment to appreciate that, then move on.

I think Gatsby’s green light is the real example that most people have in mind when they reference ‘blue curtains’. I personally love the book. Nowadays I re-read it every year. I did, however, have to take an 8-year break after high school before I could stomach going back into it. Learning to analyze a book, at least in a school setting, is the surest method to get you to hate it.

So, right here at the last minute of the essay, let’s return to the green light.

What does the green light ‘mean?’

>“… he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light …”

>‘ “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.” ‘

>“It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”

>“I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could fail to grasp it.”

>“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”

 

You tell me what you think the green light means, after all that I’ve told you.

Is it:

A)      Greed

B)      Jealousy

C)      The American Dream

D)      Something else?

No wrong answers. Just remember: you have to show your working. I’ve shown mine.

Here is the secret of symbols, motifs, and other similar techniques: they are all subservient to the main themes. Don’t pick out a random green light and figure out what it means—that’s backwards. A symbol is just a piece of the puzzle, it doesn’t mean anything on its own. It’s like a single letter in a sentence—you can’t understand what role it has unless you read the whole sentence first. At the same time, if that letter was taken out of the sentence, what would be missing?

So, having said that. Figure out the overall theme first, and then figure out how the particular symbol is used within that theme.

What does the green light mean?

You tell me.

 

WRITING WITH ADHDEPISODE 1: THE SHAME

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 30.

I had always had it, it turns out. It just concealed itself as a lack of self-discipline, a touch of anxiety, a hint of depression, and a dash of social awkwardness.

A lot of adults around the world have ADHD and don’t realise it. It’s that kind of disorder that hides easily. From the outside, an ADHD person who can’t tidy the house just looks lazy. A gifted ADHD kid who grows up to be anything but a doctor, lawyer, or spaceship engineer—that’s just someone who wasted their potential. A gifted ADHD kid that does become a doctor or lawyer, but feels inadequate—they just need to be grateful for and proud of what they have achieved.

Right?

That’s how it can appear, but the reality is more complicated.

ADHD has a lot of symptoms. What is common between us is a lack of dopamine and [let me google how to spell this quickly …] norepinephrine. Our brains have problems with motivation and reward.

Some people respond to this imbalance by being very messy. Others are fastidiously tidy.

Some are gregarious, the life of the party. Others keep quiet, out of fear of being seen as awkward.

We can have trouble starting a task. We can have trouble focusing on it. We can have trouble focusing on anything else—what I call tunnel vision. There are times when people call my name, but I am too absorbed in what I’m doing to answer.

All these opposing symptoms make the disorder hard to diagnose, and hard to understand.

Amphetamine medicine gives us the chemicals we lack. It helps many of us a lot, but it isn’t perfect. I have a good dosage of medication that I respond well to, but I still have ADHD.

This condition has a special relationship to writing fiction.

I love writing as much as I hate it.

I get so much writing done, but it’s so very, very, far short of what I want to be doing.

I have improved over time, but I’m still ashamed of how bad my writing comes out.

Why do I write at all, if it causes so much strife?

Why I write

I have always been ‘a creative type.’

At any given time in my life, I have been seriously engaged in:

Acting

Writing

Songwriting

Playing the trumpet, piano, drums, guitar, and/or singing

I acted throughout school, and a little bit after. I played in the swing band, concert band, and a barbershop quartet.

Then, when I was at university, I wrote, recorded, and produced two Pop-Punk EPs instead of studying. (I think the music is catchy, but I wish I could re-do the lyrics)

Then I tried to write an animate a series of internet shorts about goblins. (That one didn’t go anywhere)

Then I started writing Fantasy novels, and so far that one has stuck.

I still go back and dabble with music from time to time.

So, to answer the question at the top of this section, I write because I have to have something creative going on.

The experience of sitting in an empty room with only my brain for company is a dynamic and thrilling one. I don’t have to sit and think of storylines or characters. They just pop up in my brain, like pesky notifications on a phone.

I have to write almost as an act of washing the dirt off my brain. If I let all those story ideas build up, my brain might develop scaling and grime like the area under a shower nozzle. So I write and I write, and all the ideas that swirl around get a place to live.

It’s a good system. My brain—partially because it has ADHD—give me free ideas all the time. I write them down, and we’re all happy.

Right?

THE SHAME

ADHD never lets me off easy.

A big component of my experience with it, is that I never feel lasting pride for things I have accomplished.

Instead, I feel intense shame and guilt. I set bars for myself that are unfair, and I get upset at myself for not reaching them.

This part of the experience is much better now that I’m on medication.

But for 30 years, it was not good.

It doesn’t only affect writing. But writing creates something of a perfect growth medium for shame.

The bar I set:

I want to be the best writer who ever lived. Whospeare? F. Scott. Whatgerald? Virginia Huh? They’ve all been forgotten next to Timothy S Currey.

It’s an arrogant thing to even say that’s my goal, but we’re being therapeutic here. It doesn’t pay to pretend I don’t have the flaw of arrogance when it comes to this.

The real, rational part of my brain just wants to have a good time writing, and to write good stories. But the shame doesn’t come from the rational part, does it?

It is a foolish bar to set, but that’s the nature of things. I’m not satisfied with imperfection in myself, because I haven’t really felt satisfaction with myself before. My brain takes this to logically mean that if I could only achieve perfection, then that long-awaited satisfaction would arrive at last.

With meditation, medication, and daily reminders to see a more constructive and positive view, I have been able to relinquish this unrealistic goal. By just a little.

Still, what do I do to pursue that goal?

I write every single day, and I read lots of good fiction, of course.

Actually, no I don’t.

On good weeks, I do write pretty consistently. But every single day? That has never happened. I don’t think it ever will.

It is nigh impossible to write thousands of words a day with a brain like mine.

But weirdly, even writing is a bit easier for me than reading.

Maybe I spend too much time watching TV and playing PC games. Maybe I spend all my time at my day job focusing my eyes on things, and the prospect of reading is just too fatiguing.

Whatever the reason, I have to set aside blocks of time to read. It’s something I’m ashamed of, but it’s true. I have to set aside reading ‘appointments’, with the same reluctance as booking in a scale and clean at the dentist.

I like reading. I enjoy the books I read. But I only read a few books a year. I wish it was a few books a month.

Why this is, I don’t fully know.

Naturally, I blame the ADHD. It is nice to have a scapegoat.

I think the root cause is the fact that reading was ‘just for fun’ when I was younger. Back then I would devour the larger Harry Potter books in a few afternoons. Now that I’m serious about writing, reading books is homework.

It’s homework that I have to choose to subject myself to.

Since the diagnosis and the medication, I have gotten better at reading. There is still internal pressure there, and shame when I go more than a few days without reading. But in the end, I read more, and I feel less shame.

Writing is still a challenge, even though it’s easier than it used to be. The act of sitting down and putting my hands on the keyboard is tough emotional labour. It is for anyone. It’s just that ADHD can make that particular hurdle a little higher.

On any day that I don’t write, I feel ashamed.

On any day that I DO write, I still feel ashamed. Why? Because whether I wrote one thousand, two thousand, or five thousand words, I still could have written more.

How can I hope to ever be the greatest writer of all time if I don’t bother to write a classic novel every single afternoon?

The answer is that my goals are silly goals to have, and shame is a silly thing to feel in response. I know these things, way deep down in the hard-to-access, rational part of my brain.

But I know it’s possible to get better at this stuff. I have improved to get to where I am now, and I just need to keep going on that same trajectory.

Growth mindset - look it up.

So what, Tim? Writing is hard for everyone!

Yeah, yeah, I hear you.

Isn’t it annoying when people like me bellyache about how hard it is to be a tortured artist?

Every writer hates sitting down and writing. The logical thing for me to do, therefore, is shut up and put up with the slog like the rest of them.

I have a purpose for writing this, though, which I’ll get to.

I do have ADHD. That part is not bellyaching. I have a fancy doctor’s signature on my prescriptions and everything.

ADHD does affect things that relate to writing. If a non-ADHD person says writing is hard for them, then I am saying that with ADHD, it is harder.

Here’s the purpose:

Your situation may resonate with mine. Don’t go ahead and use Doctor Google to self-diagnose, BUT, if you have a sneaking suspicion that your experience may be undiagnosed ADHD … look into it.

The only person who can diagnose you is a trained psychiatrist. (psyCHIatrist, not psychologist). It is best if you get one who is specially trained in adult ADHD. It’s hard to catch, and many of the symptoms overlap with other disorders. Not every doctor or psychiatrist understands ADHD. The first doctor I went to told me that ‘ADHD is when little boys can’t sit still’—an unfortunately common perspective.

If you pinky swear not to diagnose yourself based on it, I can share a short list of symptoms or experiences that are common to ADHD people. Again and again I will repeat: see a real specialist.

Symptoms and experiences include (but are not limited to):

Trouble with motivation and focus (either being unable to focus, or becoming intensely focused on one thing)

Messy and disorganised, or sometimes highly organised to aid a ‘mental calm’ feeling.

Emotional regulation problems, incl. anger, irritability, shame, sensitivity to rejection (last one is commonly felt but not scientifically proven)

Sometimes but not always fidgeting, getting up out of seat, strong feelings of restlessness.

A decline in academic results as education progressed (gifted in elementary, skated by in high school, failed out of college, that kind of thing)

Trouble with sleep / insomnia (often from random thoughts that spin and spin and spin and won’t let you sleep)

History of depression, anxiety — especially if resistant to SSRIs. 70% of people who have anxiety may actually have anxiety as a result of ADHD as opposed to other primary causes (citation needed, I think I saw that on a TED talk once)

[Please don’t use this list as a medical diagnostic tool or a scientific source. It’s just a bunch of things I experience, noticed in others, and read about online. If you think you have ADHD, SEE A SPECIALIST]

None of this is conclusive. Even if you feel strongly that all these symptoms and more describe your life, it may not be ADHD.

But if, like me, you end up getting the right diagnosis?

Trust me. It’s worth it. Ask your doctor.

[Note: I’ve included all this, despite my need to include a thousand warnings and caveats, because I was once someone who didn’t know they had ADHD. I came across random stuff online that clued me in, I got my diagnosis, and now I know. I think the best thing for me to do morally is try to spread the word so that more people can get diagnosed, even if I’m not a qualified professional]

Wrapping up: The Shame

A lot of ADHD people report feeling guilt or shame on a daily basis.

It’s a kind of abstract, floating shame, that just follows you around wherever you go. You feel like you are never enough, that you can’t get things right, that you have something to prove. It’s hard to feel proud of your accomplishments, because the ADHD part of the brain likes to forget positive things faster than usual.

Right now I’m living with the shame, negotiating with it.

I know its games, and the rational part of my brain knows that shame isn’t appropriate. Dealing with it is about reminding myself constantly of this fact.

The thing that bothers me most about it is the link between shame and motivation. Those two are always in an intimate dance together.

The shame demotivates me. The demotivation makes me feel ashamed.

For me, it’s important to try and calm myself and be mindful of my emotions before I sit down to write.

I need to remind myself: I only ‘need’ to sit down and write a little bit. Often, I’ll get carried away and write plenty. What this really does is reduce the pressure, and lower the bar.

I need to remind myself when I’m done: I got some writing done today. Woohoo!

I need to take my medication at an appropriate time, in an appropriate dose, and manage my diet and hydration to make sure it’s working properly.

At least some level of The Shame might be inevitable. But between medication, emotional regulation, and taking things one step at a time, it’s possible to feel less of it, less often. Whatever your relationship to The Shame —ADHD or not— it is possible to make progress. I know I’ve been making fairly good progress.

As my shame has diminished, it has even made room for a little bit of The Pride.

I’m proud of the books I’ve written.

It feels nice to write that.

FROM IDEA TO OUTLINEPart 1: From Character to PlotA “How to Write” Essay

Series Intro:

This essay, and others in the series, is not really intended for people that improvise their books. Folks who work that way might get something out of it, of course, but they are not the intended audience. I am talking to plotters. Intensive plotters.

If you read books but don’t really write them, you might be interested anyway. You might gain a new perspective on how stories come together.

These techniques and processes come from a lot of sources, one of which is just my own experience. I have read almost every book there is on writing, I have read and written my share of fiction.  What I won’t do is just give you a rundown how I personally prefer to do things. I’ll give you a set of techniques and tools that will hopefully help you: flesh out your outline; save time in editing; and have a better finished product. More importantly, I’ll be trying to help you understand things better.

If you already have a finished draft, you can still use a lot of these ideas when you are constructing your editing plan. For the purposes of this essay I will focus on novel-length genre stories with dynamic character arcs; so nothing too ‘literary’, but also nothing like classic James Bond where the static character just shows up for new instalments.

From Character to Plot

For many of us, the first nucleus of a story idea is a character that springs to mind as if from nowhere. We might have a mental image all in a flash: how they look, how they talk, what they yearn for, and how they dream. Or we might just have a vague impression of a type of character we want to try, and we flesh them out from there.

However the idea comes to you, this first essay is going to lay out where to go once you have got a character in mind. Every step will assume the character is fully realised and fleshed out, so the first step is to ensure that that is the case. I’ll also assume they’re your protagonist.

So what elements of character will impact the plot?

There are surprisingly few attributes possessed by characters that impact the plot. They ought to have varied and meaty enough to carry a story, but still they don’t amount to a huge list of dot points. They are, by my assessment:

-          What is their external goal?

-          What is their motivation—why do they want it?

-          What lengths will they go to for that goal?

-          What flaw is blocking them from getting it?

-          What will it take for them to change their flaw?

If you are an act structure nerd (like me), you will probably notice that these character attributes line up almost perfectly with certain plot beats. More on that later.

The goal of these questions is that you get so familiar with them that you can see *through* your character to a plot on the other side, as if you have X-Ray vision. You can start to see what should be happening, rather than picking out random plot points that seem neat to you at the time (and later discovering that they fall flat).

Let’s pause for a second. Why did I choose those dot points?

Aren’t there a few questions missing? What about the character’s strengths? What about their childhood friends and their favourite sundae toppings?

I have chosen each of those dot points with explicit plot goals in mind. I certainly could have included a character’s strengths, but I have elected not to because a) most people already know their character’s strengths and b) it is easy to let your character’s cool strengths and powers get in the way of a compelling story. You are outlining right now; there is time to think of cool strengths later in the process.

What is their external goal?

This should be the first question you ask, and while outlining the plot you must come back to it. This question is what keeps your story focused. This is what will keep you from going off into the weeds with side-plots and side-characters that drag the pacing and waste everyone’s time. Even if you aren’t an outliner, if you keep a concrete goal in mind while improvising the story, 9/10 times you will have a much stronger first draft.

Indiana Jones wants to get the Ark before the Nazis get it. Romeo wants to be with Juliet, and vice versa. Walter White wants to sell meth to secure his family’s finances.

Before you get into the deeper parts of the character, you need to make sure that there is a goal they can a) actively pursue, and that b) is concrete and not abstract. If you have written an outline or first draft in which the goal is very fuzzy and either too abstract, or impossible to pursue, that’s okay. One of the most common plot frameworks that end up in a lot of writer’s ‘abandoned projects’ folder is what I call the Depressed Protagonist story. These protagonists are hard to write, and they can be done, but it would require its own essay to address. (I typed and deleted about 17 paragraphs trying just now…)

Let’s say you’ve written a character or outline where the central goal is too abstract, or impossible to actively pursue. You might be able to keep most of your plans intact if you can find a way to condense the nebulous goal into a really concrete one.

Say you have a lawyer who wants to reform some massive aspect of the legal system. Just give them one case that *represents* the change they want to make. Let their case be a baby step in progress—it’s still a hopeful story.

Say you have a knight who wants to ‘protect his homeland’. Give him one threat to go and fight. (Or many threats, if in series).

Whatever the goal is, boil it down to its essence, and make it something that can be pursued. Make it something that can be achieved or failed. Things like ‘justice’ or ‘peace’ are too big to grasp in a story. Just tweak it to ‘justice with this case’ and ‘peace at the end of this battle’. If you have a depressed or nihilistic character who ‘just wants to figure out life’, you must give them a concrete goal that centres around this question. You cannot just have a mopey, middle-aged accountant who has decided there is no meaning in anything. You *CAN* have a mopey accountant who, by night, is a graffiti artist. He might dodge the police, lie to his wife. He does it all for the cheap thrill because, well, nothing matters, right?

Remember: I’m talking about genre fiction, no literary fiction.

We don’t stray too far from characters that actively do things in genre fiction, and for good reason.

 

What is their motivation—why do they want it?

If you can answer this question in the outline stage, you’ll have a much better chance of sustaining the audience’s attention.

In many novels and screenplays, this question is answered explicitly somewhere between the halfway point and the final climax (sometimes earlier). The characters are often in a low-light setting, like around a campfire, and they’ve been through enough trials together to let their guards down. In Zombieland, this is the scene where Woody Harrelson wipes his tears with money. Whenever someone reveals their history, especially the loss of a loved one, it often comes at this point, and with the purpose of revealing their motivations.

It doesn’t have to go there, it just usually does.

Newer writers will not always recognise that the question must be answered much earlier than that scene. It just won’t necessarily be explicit to the audience until later.

In really top-quality stories, this ‘why’ question can often be the subject of the first scene, or of a scene somewhere in the first act. Think about ‘surrogate daughter/son’ stories. I am referring to Aliens and The Last of Us, here. You could also apply it to UP!

In surrogate child stories, somewhere in the first act, the protagonist loses a child. Then the plot ‘gives’ them a child to look after out of nowhere, as if by magic. Often the adult is ‘forced’ to look after the child, or they are at least reluctant.

The audience has seen their loss and their pain, so the audience sees the inherent tension without being told. The adult forced into this situation is torn between the immediate needs of their surrogate child, and the pain of the child they lost.  

So try and make your character’s motivations as clear as possible. Let the audience at least *feel* why the protagonist would be motivated to do a thing, even if you’re waiting for later in the story to reveal the explicit reason. If it’s a past loss of a loved one, let them get a bunch of hints about the loss, even if they don’t know who died. If it’s someone who’s a perfectionist because of overbearing parents, give the audience at least a flavour of their upbringing early on.

Audiences want to care about your character. Give them a reason *why* they should care—and give it early on in the plot. Mysterious motivations work well for side characters and antagonists, but almost never work for a protagonist. This is among the most common mistakes newer writers make.

Best case scenario, this question should determine the focus of your first Act. So keep it in mind when outlining.

What lengths will they go to for their goal?

Once this question is answered, you should have a grasp on 80-90% of your plot points. Even if they change later, you should start to be really firm on what the plot points should be.

There are two sides to this question: The abstract (how badly do they want it) and the concrete (actions they take in the plot).

If you can start to know the actions and strategies the protagonist will employ, they will be more active, your plot will feel motivated, cause and effect will fall into place, and it will become easier to show your audience different dimensions to your character.

The brilliant thing is that different characters, confronted with the same problem, will try different actions in different orders.

Imagine four or five culturally well-known characters being locked in a jail cell. When first locked in a jail cell, there are dozens of things a person could do.

-          Beg to be let out

-          Rattle the bars

-          Scream

-          Cry

-          Reason with the guards

-          Joke around

-          Immediately sit down, go quiet

-          Curl up, tremble

The list goes on and on.

Expand lists of actions like these out to a plot level, and the actions your character takes will determine the plot beats. It will stop them being so wishy-washy and reactive to the plot. It will ensure you have a variety of ways of showing the audience how they deal with conflicts. It does so many jobs.

So answer this: How much does you character want to accomplish the goal? What concrete actions will they try (in what order) to get it?

Note one: Make them want it very, very strongly. If they don’t naturalistically want it strongly at the start of the story, make the motivation kick up several notches quite early, before the halfway point. The stronger they want it, the stronger the audience will attach to their attempts. A character who barely wants to do stuff is death to a story.

Note two: The order a character takes actions is much more revealing than you might think. Back to the jail cell example: can you think of a character who would rattle the bars, then break down and cry? Compare them to a character doing those same things in a different order. Small change, but I think it reveals different things.

 

What flaw is blocking them from getting their goal?

This one was worded very, very precisely.

You’ve all read about how characters need flaws. They do, but not just to ‘flesh them out’. They need it for the plot. The plot doesn’t work without it. The character won’t work if their flaw isn’t impacted by the plot.

The formula is so simple you will kick yourself if you’ve missed it.

Make the plot exacerbate their flaw

Are they afraid of heights? Put them up high.

Are they afraid to commit? Force them to commit.

Are they easily tempted? TEMPT THEM.

Their flaw isn’t just there to make them seem relatable, like a real person, or to arbitrarily ‘flesh them out’. It is there as a function of plot.

If they seem more relatable, then that’s a great side-effect. But many of fiction’s greatest characters are not ‘relatable’ to me at all, so don’t let that goal distract you.

If I can convince you to see character and plot design in this way, a lot of your problems will disappear before you even begin drafting. So many times I see a movie or read a book, and something feels off. When I turn on my editing brain, I see that the character’s flaw has nothing to do with anything.

“If you can put Batman into a Superman story, it’s not a very good Superman story.” – uncredited comic writer in Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald.

One of the most crucial things this step does, in linking the flaw to the plot obstacles, is that it will make your story character specific. It will make everything feel more focused, it will cut down on fluff and extraneous scenes, it will make the plot more compelling.

In Empire Strikes Back, Yoda cautions Luke that he is not ready. Luke’s flaw here is recklessness. The plot obstacle is that he fails against Vader because he is not ready. The relationship is linear, simple, clear. And it contributed to Empire being the best Star Wars movie. Objectively.

In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s flaw is that he thinks being with Daisy will be perfect, and solve the deep problems of his heart. His romance with Daisy falls short of his dreams, and he ends up being killed. He fails because of his flaw. His wealth obsession was NOT just there to ‘flesh him out.’

Conversely, Simba puts aside his selfishness and takes his place as king in the ‘great circle of life’. This realisation leads to his triumph, because he overcame his flaw. (Side note: the message of The Lion King boils down to the song ‘Hakuna Matata’ being wrong which is weird to my inner child. How could a song I love betray me?)

Next time someone tells you flaws merely ‘flesh a character out’, don’t take the bait.  There’s more to it. ‘Try/fail’ cycles? More like ‘this story will fail cycles’. Don’t just add arbitrary conflict.

 

What will it take for them to change their flaw?

At this point, I’m hoping you’ll be familiar with the process. This question answers what your climactic scene/s will be.

In the ideal story, the climax will crystallise a character’s central flaw and force the character to either succeed or fail.

In classic tragedies, the character succumbs to their flaw, and usually dies. In most other stories, the flaw is overcome and the protagonist wins.

The trouble is selecting an event or framing for the final confrontation to be in some way linked to the character’s central flaw.

It can be very easy to go for the showy fireworks, to make something that logically follows all other events, to write what feels most natural. It can and should be all these things, but if you take care of the preceding things first it can be hard to make a climax that crystallises the flaw. If you crystallise the flaw first, in your outline, you can be sure to add fireworks, drama, spectacle, tight logic, and a naturalistic progression of events.

I would even recommend the climax being the first thing you outline. It’s much easier to make all the signs point towards a fleshed out ending, than to make all the signs first and ask yourself where the eff they are headed.

Sorry to harp on about Star Wars, but Vader’s final fight with Luke, and then the defeat of the Emperor, is the perfect ‘crystallisation’ moment. It is the final dilemma. Either Luke will kill Vader and become evil, or he will overcome his temptation and remain on the light side. The plot gives him only two ways to go, which seems silly and reductive on paper, but it always works well in narrative form. For a moment it seems like Luke will be tempted and turn bad. But Luke does overcome his flaw, and thereby he triumphs. He doesn’t defeat the Emperor himself, which makes his ultimate triumph the redemption of his father. Since it’s so simple, it can be hard to see how clever this decision is. Lackluster movies will simply have Luke stab the Emperor and win.  In Return of the Jedi, though, by simply refusing to be tempted by the dark side, he proves himself worthy on an innate level. His actions prompt his father to turn to the light side. It only makes sense because the climax was an attempt to convert the enemy. In Luke’s case, he wanted to convert his father, and in the Emperor’s case, he wanted to convert Luke.

Imagine if it had had better choreography, a double-bladed red lightsabre, and an awesome choir score, but had nothing to do with the crystallisation of the character’s flaws. That would have been bad. Wouldn’t it?

So let your climax be decided by character. Ask yourself: How can I crystallise the characters flaw in one final dilemma? And how can I make the audience believe it could go either way?

Conclusion

There is no reason for ‘character’ and ‘plot’ to be designed separately. They work better together.

When you are outlining, you might often start with character but feel they have ‘nowhere to go’. You will be treading dangerous ground if you start writing plot points without paying attention to who your character is.

So first ask: What does my character want?

If you give them something concrete and achievable to strive for, the rest will fall into place relatively easy. How and why do they strive for it? What events will show the audience how much they care?

How are they obstructing themselves? A dynamic character will usually have external obstacles, but for best results they should always have massive internal obstacles. Don’t let those obstacles be just anything.

Let the flaw decide the plot.

Let the plot exacerbate the flaw.

Then, finally, let the climax decide whether the flaw has been overcome, or whether the character succumbs to it.

The easiest thing in the world is to fail to do these rather simple things. One way to get better at designing stories with these in mind is to watch and read critically. Does the story let us know why the protagonist wants X? Does the climax have anything to do with their flaw? If things fall flat, was it one of these things that caused it?

Honestly, about 50% of the time people say ‘It was a good idea, but bad execution’ the things I have covered in this essay were ignored.

A story needs to have focus. The protagonist needs to have agency. Motivations need to be clear. Obstacles need to relate to flaws. These simple questions will help you smooth out all these problems before they become problems.

Oh, and also, the people who say ‘Pantsing leads to more naturalistic stories, but plotting leads to lifeless stories’ are missing one thing: there’s a right and a wrong way to outline. I’m willing to bet that if everyone mastered these techniques, outliners wouldn’t be called ‘lifeless’ quite as often.

 

(This blog post was originally posted to the /r/Fantasy subreddit as part of a series)

Below are some of my thoughts about the prose techniques used by Mervyn Peake in the opening of Titus Groan.

The sample, and some preliminary thoughts.

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

What stands out to me?

Right off the bat, a few things leap out at me. There is a fair use of figuratives, longer sentences divided into clauses (some parenthetical), some personification in particular, and some interesting word choices. Specifically, many of the word choices come in contrasting or unusual pairs (eg ‘chill intimacy’, a pairing of opposites).

A closer inspection reveals moderate use of alliteration (which, going forward, I won’t distinguish from assonance. The repetition of sounds will just be called alliteration to keep it easy.)

In contrast with a lot of ‘minimalist’ authors, whose prose is best appreciated for its invisible craft, this sample seems to show a prose style that incorporates a fair amount of visible techniques. I will go over a few elements of visible and invisible craft over the following sections, and we shall see what interesting things we can learn about this excerpt!

Figurative techniques: Metaphor, Simile, Personification.

Metaphor and its cousins are some of the most potent tools in a prose writer’s arsenal. By taking two unrelated objects or concepts and directly comparing them, one can often achieve a more vivid effect than is otherwise possible.

Their use can be a double-edged sword since they are so visible. Good ones and bad ones both tend to stick out.

Some quick definitions:

- Metaphor: Directly comparing two things, usually with a ‘be’ verb. Eg. ‘He was a strong bull.’

- Simile: Directly comparing two things with a ‘like’ or ‘as’. Eg. ‘He was strong like a bull.’

- Personification: A particular metaphor that gives an animal or inanimate object human qualities. Eg. ‘The wind wrapped icy hands around her throat.’

Now, to run the numbers for the Gormenghast passage.

“Swarmed like an epidemic”

“like limpets to a rock”

“like a mutilated finger …”

“They sprawled over the sloping earth”

“each one half way over its neighbour”

“held back by the castle ramparts”

“laid hold on the great walls”

“pointed blasphemously at heaven”

“owls made of it an echoing throat”

“by day it stood voiceless.”

“Time-eaten buttresses”

(Simile 3, personification 9)

Twelve uses of figurative language in all.

That’s pretty dense for a passage that is six sentences long. The main culprit here is the sentence beginning ’They sprawled’ which has a metaphor or simile in each clause.

In particular, the most-used technique at a count of 9 was personification. They are first used to give life to the descriptions of the hovels surrounding the castle, later to compare the tower with a mutilated finger, and lastly to make it into an ‘echoing throat’ that is silent by day.

If it isn’t clear from a glance, Mervyn Peake’s aim here may just have been to give the reader a mental image of a dilapidated, almost diseased Castle Gormenghast. It certainly works for me.

For our purposes, I think it gives us a good look at how figurative techniques like simile, metaphor, and personification can be used to make things more vivid. So far, this section has been nothing you wouldn’t see in a Grade 10 English class. Let’s try and have a bit of a deeper discussion, then.

Why might an author, specifically, choose to use figuratives? On the other hand, what stops them from using them all the time?

Well, they are visible to the reader. A great metaphor will delight the reader. A terrible one will disgust them. There is no quicker journey to being labelled a ‘purple prose’ writer than the shortcut through Terrible Metaphor Lane.

So why take the risk?

Here are a few of my thoughts. I’ve done my best to learn a lot about these topics, but at the end of the day, its just opinion and perspective.

One reason that figurative language is alluring is because it is (or can be) very compact. Writers love compact writing. It can take a lot of words to say: “He had a squashed face with a little nose, floppy jowls and mean, watery eyes.” When you can instead say: “He looked like a bulldog.” There’s nothing stopping you from doing a combined approach, but with the simile example here, you can see how three descriptive phrases can be condensed into one.

Another reason is due to my favourite subject (I have a hundred favourite subjects): cognitive psychology! Hooray!

Let’s rewind to the start of a scenario: a writer sitting in front of a blank page.

Their task is to describe a cave, and make it vivid to the reader. This writer might have a mistaken idea of vividness and go off on the wrong track.

Let’s say they describe the exact dimensions of the cave. Then they describe the precise geological make-up of the cave, the humidity and temperature, and the presence of nitrogen/oxygen/ other gases.

That kind of thing is not vivid, because it is not how the human mind works. We cannot easily imagine a thing that is given in blueprint form. Mental pictures are built up in the reader’s mind by summoning up existing concepts and sensory memories.

I have no idea how to imagine the humidity and temperature of a cave when it’s given in numbers. Not vividly, anyway.

But if the writer uses metaphors, then it’s possible for the reader to use something they have already encountered to make it feel real. The human mind categorizes things as schema. A schema is much more experience-based and observation-based than a strict set of geometric measurements. When a human brain thinks of ‘tree’, it is not necessarily thinking of how trees are biologically defined. The brain takes a shortcut right to the ‘schema’ of a tree, which is defined in the brain as ‘all those times I saw a tree-looking thing.’

So a writer wanting to make an imaginary thing they are describing feel more vivid, it makes the most sense to access the schemas in the mind of the reader, as opposed to writing a set of instructions for how to ‘build’ the shape of the object. Since schemas are experience-based, this also means that in comparing and contrasting familiar things, writers can access all the associations that are common to those schemas. These associations can be emotional, cultural, or even meta-textual.

Because of this, figuratives often give reader a mental image as well as emotional information, which is perhaps even more crucial. In the Gormenghast example, the figuratives were used to create a sense of dilapidation and disease. When describing a cave, the intended emotional atmosphere will largely dictate the kind of simile used.

A spooky or thrilling cave might have stalactites and stalagmites that look ‘like the fangs of a beast.’ A mysterious cave might be ‘black as the dark side of the moon.’ A cave used as a sanctuary might be ‘like a hidden fortress.’ Do forgive these terrible examples, they’re just for illustration.

There are other reasons to opt for using simile & metaphor, but these are some that I think are important considerations.

So, in terms of the ‘Gormenghast’ passage, what can we learn about the liberal usage of figuratives? For me, the primary advantage they give is a strong, well-reinforced sense of atmosphere. Mervyn Peake succeeds in summoning images to my mind—mutilated finger, hovels crowding around like an epidemic, an echoing throat of a tower—and in doing so opens the book with a vivid portrait of Castle Gormenghast, as well as firmly setting a tone.

Rhetorical Devices

I will keep this section shorter because, while there may be devices I can’t spot, they don’t seem to be something Mervyn Peake does very often in this passage.

The most visible and obvious one, for me, is the final sentence. Two balanced clauses separated by a semi-colon, structured in parallel. The parallel here is ‘soft’ rather than ‘hard’, which I’ll explain here.

A hard usage of parallelism looks like: “He was a small boy, she was a big girl.” In this case the grammar is identical in both phrases, going [Article, verb, article, adjective, noun].

The sentence in question: “At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.”

So we get the grammatical parallelism of ‘at night / by day’ and the conceptual contrast of night and day. We also get the conceptual contrast of ‘echoing throat’ and ‘voiceless’, but beyond that the structure is only loosely mirrored. For one thing, in the first half, the tower is acted upon by the owls. In the second half, the tower is the active subject which ‘stood voiceless’ and ‘cast its long shadow.’

Nonetheless, soft as the parallel is, it still achieves the job of the technique, which is to balance and directly compare contrasting elements.

Peake could have easily said “Owls made lots of noise there, but only at night.” He didn’t, thankfully, even though what I wrote conveys mostly the same information. Contrasting opposing elements is often best done with some sort of framework or deliberate aim.

Like earlier, with similes that are vivid because they compare like things, contrasting elements (night / day; echoing throat / voiceless) are more vivid when they are juxtaposed. The human brain likes contrasts, both in senses and concepts. One reason is that contrasts make things clearer. Another is that, perhaps because they are easier to see and imagine, or perhaps for other reasons, they resonate more emotionally. Whatever the nitty-gritty cognitive reason for it, authors often use contrasts, masterful authors use it constantly.

For those interested in numbers, that’s 1 rhetorical device over 6 sentences.

Diction

Diction, the practice of choosing certain words, can be exhausting to analyse if you look at every single word. For the purposes of this post, I’ll simply pick out ‘notable’ word choices and give some thoughts about them. What constitutes notable is a bit subjective here.

- Circumfusion – uncommon word choice

- Chill intimacy – contrasting pair

- Black ivy – uncommon pairing

‘Circumfusion’ is defined as ‘Surrounded or poured around, as with liquid’, which is an interesting choice. In itself, it is a quite metaphorical way to talk about the cluster of dwellings around the castle. As the user who submitted this sample noted, it’s a strange but extremely appropriate and vivid word choice.

‘Chill intimacy’ strikes me as an effective example of juxtaposition. I’m sure there is a proper, probably Greek, term for this technique, but I’ll put it under ‘diction’ for simplicity.

‘Black ivy’ – this reminds me of a piece of writing advice I came across. It said that when using a modifier (adjective, adverb, etc), it should always be an unexpected word. Ivy, usually being green, is rendered just a little bit unexpected when described as black. It adds nicely to the atmosphere, and it is a good reminder to not always include descriptions that are strictly appropriate and expected, but to think outside the box from time to time.

Rhythm

This section, too, will be brief, because I spent too much time on similes earlier.

Rhythm can be analysed broadly, in terms of how sentences (or phrases / clauses) vary in length, or in terms of how particular alliterations and metrical tools are used. I will opt for briefly analysing this passage by the former, with the intention of doing a much more nitty-gritty analysis of a passage in the future.

One notable thing that Peake does is make use of parenthetical commas, that is, the tendency to make a pause within a sentence with a short phrase that could be put into brackets and / or removed without changing the sentence’s fundamental meaning.

Here is the passage broken down into words per sentence:

- 42 / 39 / 17 / 32 / 24 / 20

This reveals that the sentences cluster around two lengths – around forty, and around twenty words apiece. With this in mind, the pattern of the six sentences can be written as long / long / short / medium / short / short.

This pattern doesn’t reveal much in and of itself, except that we can say that the lengths definitely do vary, and that they start out generally longer and finish a bit shorter.

Looking at these and thinking about the publication date, I think we would have a more fruitful picture of the rhythms here if we split the passage up by periods AND commas. I’ll call these chunks ‘phrases’ (even though linguistically a ‘phrase’ is a very particular thing). Here is how the count of phrases comes out. I shall mark ‘parentheticals’ with a P.

- 1 / 2P / 7 / 32 / 6 / 8 / 6 / 11 / 8 / 2 / 3P / 11 / 9 / 6 / 5 / 1P / 4P / 7 / 2 / 5P / 17 / 10 / 10

My classifications of the parentheticals may be off, but even so, I think we have a clearer picture now of how the rhythms of this passage work on a macro scale.

The modern style of writing heavily advocates for shorter, simpler sentences. Titus Groan, being published in the '40s, is written in an older style. However, in terms of varying patterns of rhythm, the passage obeys the same laws as modern prose. Instead of following the ‘sentence variation’ paradigm, it follows a ‘phrase variation’ paradigm.

What stands out to me about this pattern is that the reader is given time to rest in the middle of a lot of the longer sentences. What might have seemed like a daunting 39 word sentence in the previous analysis is now more clearly seen as a few shorter phrases strung together. A lot of these longer sentences feature phrases that have 5 or fewer words, making them very manageable indeed.

I think modern readers who are perhaps wary of older books might be able to find pleasure in these older styles with a small shift in thinking. See the comma as a pause, the short phrases between the commas as time to rest. There is no need to separate every individual thought and description into shorter and shorter sentences—so long as the author knows how to give the reader time to rest along the way. It's not all about resting, mind you, but the rests in a sentence or passage are often a good place to start when feeling out rhythms.

Again, there is so much more to be said about rhythm, but I will leave it there for the purposes of this post. I hope to address rhythm more thoroughly in future posts.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

I am hoping that, in future, these posts can be a chance for me to dive even deeper. I will possibly try to string together analyses of passages that share common features, or perhaps that contrast very clearly with each other. I don’t think I’ll analyse every single passage under the same criteria. Some, for example, won’t use similes, but will use rhythmic devices. Others might be very heavy on rhetorical devices, and so on. There will certainly be other techniques and aspects of craft that I haven’t even thought of yet!

I have used this as an introduction and a chance to feel out the different ways of looking at these techniques. I hope I have done a good job of balancing the numbers side with the less tangible qualities of the prose. In future I would like to keep the same balance between them, but perhaps dig deeper on BOTH fronts, rather than leaning too far one way or the other.

To those of you who are interested, who wish to tune in next time, I hope that by digging deeper and deeper into samples of prose, we can heighten our enjoyment of reading. I am always willing to receive more samples, or take suggestions for other techniques to examine.

Did you want to see more numerical approaches, or less? Did I miss any metaphors or rhetorical devices? Let me know!

Until next time!