FICTION WRITING
How to explore a theme to make fiction writing more interesting and sophisticated
One of the easier ways to make a piece of fiction writing more interesting and sophisticated is to deliberately explore a theme. This guide will explain why this is useful and provide a series of potentially useful themes that you could explore in your own fiction writing.
This guide is part of the Fiction writing series:
A theme will give you an anchor for the whole of your story – it is something you can keep coming back to throughout your story, so it feels unified and focussed.
A theme will help your story feel like it is really about something, rather than just seeming like a sequence of events.
A theme will help you come up with a concept for your plot. The conflict at the heart of your story will probably be based on whatever theme you choose to explore.
A theme will give you a focus for your description. You can match the mood of your description to the theme, and it’s something that you can use to create some sophisticated symbolic description, including through pathetic fallacy. See the guide to describing settings for more detail on this.
A theme will give you a focus for your characterisation. It is the thing your character will be thinking about in the story, and it could be the thing your character will learn about or discover in your story. See the guide to creating characters for more detail on this.
Why this is a useful thing to consider when you plan a piece of fiction writing
One of the easier ways to make a piece of fiction writing more interesting and sophisticated is to deliberately explore a theme. When you first start to plan your piece, you should have a big idea that you want your writing to revolve around. Now, this might seem like it’s making your life harder rather than easier (“It’s hard enough coming up with a story in 45 minutes – I also need a theme? Sheesh!”). However, having a theme actually makes lots of the writing process easier.
Here are five reasons why:
How to choose a good theme to explore
So, what theme should you choose? Well, a broad theme might be stated in the question you need to answer, especially at GCSE (e.g. Write a story about loneliness), which will give you some direction. However, even if you’re directed towards a broad theme like loneliness or self-discovery or romantic love or whatever, you still need to decide what specific aspect of this broad theme you want to explore. In other words, you need to decide on what specific theme you want to explore.
The best approach to take here is to choose a specific theme that you are personally interested in – something that you tend to think about in relation to your own life or the lives of people around you, something you have opinions about that you can convey through your story. This will ensure that your story sounds authentic; it will give your story credibility.
Here are some universal themes that you might be able to explore in the stories you write, depending on your personal experience:
Growing up and coming-of-age – the loss of innocence, changing bodies and minds, adolescence, ambition, nihilism (the belief that life is meaningless), megalomania (the belief that you are more important than other people), etc
The relationship between children and parents/carers – conflict, power, freedom, drawing boundaries, etc
The complexities of friendship – trust, betrayal, loyalty, status, making do, etc
Insiders and outsiders - loneliness and isolation, fitting in, authenticity, etc
A person’s relationship with their past and future – memory and regret, hopes and dreams and fears, etc
Romantic relationships – having them, not having them, wanting them, not wanting them, etc
Loss – grief, heartbreak, etc
Mental health – depression, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders, etc
Happiness and the good life – what it takes to be happy, what a successful life is, happiness vs. pleasure, etc
There are lots of other themes too, of course, so please don’t let this list constrain you. But if you’re not sure what ideas matter to you, then this list might be a useful starting point when you’re trying to come up with a story. There are intersections between these themes too, of course, so you can mix them together in various ways, if you want.