Writing Tip: Finding the THEME ~ Brian McDonald

[OokamiKasumi]

How to Find a Story's THEME.
by Brian McDonald
Snatched from: Adelaide Screenwriter: Screenwriting, Movies, Tuckshop & Charm School.
http://adelaidescreenwriter.blogspot.co ... ow-to.html

Brian McDonald is an award winning screenwriter who has taught storycraft at several major studios, including Pixar, Disney and Industrial Light & Magic. Visit his writing blog: Invisible Ink blog.

Before we begin, you'll first need to understand Mr. McDonald's definition of STORY.

"A story is the telling, or retelling, of a series of events leading to a conclusion."

Brian McDonald, "The Godfather," and how to find the Theme
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The way to find a story’s theme is to look for clues as to what the story is proving.

Think of the three acts this way:

Act One: The Proposal
The proposal is where the theme of the piece is first introduced in some way. For instance you might introduce a pacifist character who believes there is never a cause for violence. Or you may have a character who strongly disbelieves in anything supernatural.

In The Godfather we are introduced right away to the idea of Justice-versus-Revenge. It’s the very first thing that happens in the film. We learn that even in this world of gangsters and crime, there is a sense of what is just. Marlon Brando, the Godfather, tells us explicitly the difference between justice and revenge when a man, whose daughter was nearly raped and was beaten so bad that she was hospitalized, asks the Godfather to kill the men who did this. The Godfather refuses to kill the men because the girl did not die—that would not be justice, he says. But he will hurt these men as much as the girl was hurt.

That is not justice. Your daughter is still alive.

Then we are introduced to the rest of the gangster family—the Corleone family. We meet Michael Corleone, one of the sons. He is not part of the family business. He must be squeaky clean for the story to work, so when we meet him, he is in uniform—he is a war hero—and he is with his girlfriend, who is beyond squeaky clean.

Michael tells her a story about his father and a violent threat he made to get a man to sign a contract. Michael says, “My father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.” The girlfriend almost can’t believe what she’s heard. Then Michael says, “That’s my family, Kay, it’s not me.”

That's my family, Kay. It's not me.

So we know who Michael is, we know who his family is, we know the rules for this world, and we have an idea that this piece will explore the idea of Justice-versus-Revenge. And we know that this family is close—they love each other.

More things happen in Act One of this film, but you get the idea.

Act Two: The Argument or Proof
In Act Two, you set out to explore the thematic premise of the first act. You argue—prove or disprove—that theme. The very first thing we learned in the story is that revenge is not good. That’s one aspect of the theme. But there is also Michael’s statement, “That’s my family, Kay, it’s not me.” Now Michael must be forced, by the story, to confront that idea. Is it him?

Michael’s father is shot in a gang hit. He does not die, though he is badly hurt and is hospitalized. Michael goes to see his father and finds out that some men are coming to finish him off. To save his father’s life, he moves his bed into another room to hide him from the would-be killers.

Just lie here, Pop. I'll take care of you now. I'm with you now.

This is the beginning of Michael becoming more like the rest of his family. It starts off innocently enough. Most of us would do the same thing. This is his father and he loves him.

Then, at the hospital, Michael is roughed up pretty good by a dirty cop who works with the rival gangsters.

Take a hold of him. Stand him up. Stand ’im up straight.

Michael is angry and decides he wants to kill these guys who did this to his father. Notice, how like the girl in the opening of the story, the Godfather is alive, but badly hurt and hospitalized. These two characters are in the very same condition. But what does Michael do—seek justice? No, he seeks revenge. He kills the men responsible and sets off a violent gang war.

... a guarantee: No more attempts on my father's life.

He flees to Sicily to avoid being killed himself, but the retaliatory violence reaches him even there and kills his young wife.

There was something wrong in seeking revenge rather than justice—it brought even more violence.

Act Three: Conclusion
This is where we see what the other acts have added up to. What the third act of this film asks about Michael is, Who is he now? Does he learn the lesson that revenge isn’t worth it, or not?

No, he doesn’t. He orders a ruthless killing spree of his enemies.

"Do you renounce Satan?"
"I do renounce him."

In the end, Michael is corrupted. His statement, “That’s my family, Kay, it’s not me,” is no longer true.

So you ask yourself, what does the story prove? Does it prove Family is all? I don’t think it does.

You can express a theme in many ways, even with the same story. The purpose of drama is to prove a point through the use of emotion, so sometimes themes can be hard to put into exact words. But a few ways to state this theme might be:

-- It is better to seek justice than revenge.
-- Revenge corrupts.
-- Revenge brings pain to the avenger.

Or, if you word it in character terms, you might say something like:

-- Anyone can be corrupted.
-- No one knows what he is capable of becoming, given the right circumstances.

I’m sure there are more ways to word it, but whatever you think the theme is, it has to be something that the characters and events prove, through the movement of the story.

Brian McDonald
http://invisibleinkblog.blogspot.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So...
-- What is your story trying to prove?
-- What conclusion is your story trying to reach?

Think about it.

[Sapphi]

So... what if the story you're writing has multiple themes?
I mean, there is a main theme, but also some lesser themes.

Should you introduce all of those themes in Act One and conclude them all in Act Three?

[Guerin78]

So... what if the story you're writing has multiple themes?
I mean, there is a main theme, but also some lesser themes.

Should you introduce all of those themes in Act One and conclude them all in Act Three?

Yes and no.

If you're saying that your main plot has multiple themes, then I'd take another look at it. Most likely, you have things in your main plot that really ought to be subplots. Either that, or you're defining your theme too narrowly, and those "multiple themes" are really all part of a single, broader theme.

If you are talking about subplots: every subplot is its own complete story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The theme needs introduced in Act One of the subplot, and resolved in Act Three of the subplot. Those might be the same as Act One and Act Three of your main plot, but they don't have to be.

[OokamiKasumi]

So... what if the story you're writing has multiple themes?
I mean, there is a main theme, but also some lesser themes.

I agree with Guerin78, if you have more than one theme going on in your story...

Most likely, you have things in your main plot that really ought to be subplots. Either that, or you're defining your theme too narrowly, and those "multiple themes" are really all part of a single, broader theme.

This leads to the questions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- What are you trying to say overall with your story? What verses What?
-- Do these additional sub-themes add to what you're trying to say, or pull attention away from it?

If your sub-themes pull attention away from your master theme, then you may have a far more insidious problem going on in your story: LOSS of FOCUS on what you're trying to do with your story.

When you're writing a full length novel (100,000 words) you have room for a few sub-themes, but if you're writing a Game -- not so much, unless you're designing a game that will take hours to complete. (For beginners, I suggest starting small with only one master theme, just to get feel for how theme works in a story before trying something complex with multiple themes.)

Another way is to design a game that changes its theme by way of player decision; menu choice.
-- This type of game is actually comprised of Multiple Stories, each governed by their own theme. This also makes for one hell of a game. I have seen a few commercial games that actually do this; some with more success at staying focused than others. However, this is not easy to accomplish because overlapping story-lines can turn a good solid theme to a confusing mess in a hurry.

Here's a good example of an Online game that does this: Fallen London

As Guerin78 said...

...every subplot is its own complete story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Therefore, the most practical way to stay focused on each individual story-theme would be to write out each one individually, and treat them as a separate story; Act One, Act Two, and Act Three, beginning to end -- even if they overlap in places.

I suggest an Introduction, Act 0, to set up the main character, the world they live in, and what is Normal for that character and their world. End Act 0 with a Situation, an event that triggers a Decision Point, where the character/player needs to make a choice. This Choice is where the game should branch off into a storyline that is governed entirely by one theme, and end the story/game with that theme alone.

This will also encourage the player to play the game again to explore your other themes.

Should you introduce all of those themes in Act One and conclude them all in Act Three?

NO. You introduce your subplot themes when they are NEEDED to tell the story, and end them when that theme reaches its Conclusion, wherever in the main story that may occur.

For those who've never handled multiple sub-themes before, making a game like this is much trickier than it looks because each theme is its own story. When you put multiple themes in a branching story, it is very easy to lose track of what theme you are working with.

To get used to identifying and concluding sub-themes, I suggest first writing a kinetic novel, a game without choices and Finishing it. It never hurts to practice a technique you plan on using in a larger game, or have an additional finished game in your portfolio.

[Guerin78]

When you're writing a full length novel (100,000 words) you have room for a few sub-themes, but if you're writing a Game -- you Don't. No matter how many words Renpy says your game has, over 50% of that is going to be Code, not Story.

This is incorrect. Ren'Py only counts words in text boxes (and possibly menu items), so the word count you get from Ren'Py is your story length.

I'm actually going to disagree with the rest of that quote, too. There is absolutely no reason you can't explore multiple related (if they're not related, they belong in separate stories) themes in a VN if your VN is long and complex enough to handle it.

(I had a whole bunch of other stuff here, on the subject of game length and community expectations, but I think I'll make a separate post on Creator Discussion for it, as it's really too big a topic for this thread.)

[OokamiKasumi]

Ren'Py only counts words in text boxes (and possibly menu items), so the word count you get from Ren'Py is your story length.

Really? I was under the impression that Renpy counted everything. My mistake. Thank you, I removed it.

I'm actually going to disagree with the rest of that quote, too. There is absolutely no reason you can't explore multiple related...themes in a VN if your VN is long and complex enough to handle it.

I agree. However only a handful of game-makers on this forum are skilled enough to create a game long enough or complex enough for multiple themes, and those that are already know how to balance multiple themes. The Beginners reading this tutorial don't.

I don't like encouraging beginners to try something large and complex -- not right off the bat. It's a fast way for them to overextend themselves, and possibly stop them from ever finishing their game.

Even so, I adjusted that line for better clarity.

[Sapphi]

Thanks for the advice

For clarification, I'm not working on a game, but a kinetic novel. So I guess what I can draw from your response is that it needs to be long enough to adequately explore every theme, and that all of these themes must support the main one somehow.

The first criteria is not hard to reach... the second, however, is the one I worry about.

In one of the books I read on writing whilst waiting for class to begin in my college's library, I saw and wrote down this advice:

If you think of a story you admire and someone asks what its point is, you're likely to answer "Well, it's about a lot of things." In other words the story wasn't reducible to a single idea - it probably raised more questions than it answered.

So if you were to ask what my current story was about, I could probably tell you... or if I were strapped for time, I would simply say, "Well, it's about a lot of things."

For instance, the main theme in my story is the conflict between the need to be loved and the fear of being vulnerable. But there are lesser themes, like the importance of literacy and the conflict between professionalism and compassion (Specific: Medicine as a career vs. as a humanitarian calling)

What I'm starting to think is that when people say "What are you trying to say with your story?" maybe I'm not reading/answering that question correctly. Maybe I do only have one theme proper, but address lots of other ideas...

[Guerin78]

I don't like encouraging beginners to try something large and complex -- not right off the bat. It's a fast way for them to overextend themselves, and possibly stop them from ever finishing their game.

While I agree with you, I think that as a community we too often err in the other direction. No, a beginner shouldn't try to write a 300,000 word epic as their first project. On the other hand, if you go below a certain length, it probably means one or more of:

• You've only shown us a tiny fragment of the full story.
• You didn't give your protagonist a goal to achieve.
• You let your protagonist reach his or her goal too easily.
• You're telling too much, and showing too little.

For instance, the main theme in my story is the conflict between the need to be loved and the fear of being vulnerable. But there are lesser themes, like the importance of literacy and the conflict between professionalism and compassion (Specific: Medicine as a career vs. as a humanitarian calling)

What I'm starting to think is that when people say "What are you trying to say with your story?" maybe I'm not reading/answering that question correctly. Maybe I do only have one theme proper, but address lots of other ideas...

The first and third you mentioned actually do fit together well: They can both be broken down as "emotionally open vs. emotionally closed." The literacy question, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to fit--although it's possible you can think of a way to make it work, it's also possible that it would just be better suited to a separate story of its own.

[OokamiKasumi]

What I'm starting to think is that when people say "What are you trying to say with your story?" maybe I'm not reading/answering that question correctly.

Go to YouTube and watch this interview with Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone. He was a master storyteller who specialized in using Theme in everything he wrote.
Rod Serling - Writing for Television

While I agree with you, I think that as a community we too often err in the other direction.

LOL! There's not a whole lot that can be done about that because this is a community of hobbyists, not gaming company professionals. (Though, I think PyTom is...) However, there are a couple of actual published authors hiding out in here, (I'm one of them.)

Some of the people of this community do make larger commercial games, but compared to what an actual gaming company can produce, they are still very small scale; a 3 to 5 person team of friends that share a blog site on a shoe-string budget. The bulk of the games being produced here are done by a single creator on a non-existent budget, working alone on the graphics, the story, and the coding. That's a LOT for one creator to handle, especially if they've never actually written a story before.

No, a beginner shouldn't try to write a 300,000 word epic as their first project.

Sigh... That doesn't seem to stop them from trying.

On the other hand, if you go below a certain length, it probably means one or more of:

• You've only shown us a tiny fragment of the full story.
• You didn't give your protagonist a goal to achieve.
• You let your protagonist reach his or her goal too easily.
• You're telling too much, and showing too little.

Add to your list:

• There's no actual Antagonist/Villain.
• There's no actual story Conflict.

I've seen a few good stories in kinetic novels, but not so much in multiple choice visual novels. My guess is that this is because most of the creators are artists and gamers instead of story-tellers. They simply don't know how to write a story. They're great with character essays, and short scenes, but not whole stories. The dead give-away for me is the lack of 'conflict' beyond "Will they get the guy/girl/prize?"

Sadly, this is also true in far too many of the professionally produced commercial games I've run across. They're clearly using professional artists, but I seriously wonder if they're using actual fiction authors for their scripts. Unfortunately, these commercial games are what are being using for 'successful' models.

The first and third you mentioned actually do fit together well: They can both be broken down as "emotionally open vs. emotionally closed." The literacy question, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to fit--although it's possible you can think of a way to make it work, it's also possible that it would just be better suited to a separate story of its own.

I'm going to agree with Guerin78. The literacy bit doesn't fit, but the rest fits together with your main theme just fine. On the other hand, if you actually need it to make your story work, use it. As long as it ADDS something to your plot or to your characters go ahead and keep it.

However...
-- Anything that CAN be pulled out, SHOULD be pulled out.

[KimiYoriBaka]

There's no actual Antagonist/Villain.

why is this a problem?

They're clearly using professional artists, but I seriously wonder if they're using actual fiction authors for their scripts.

err...I don't think games should necessarily have to, if they're using the other forms of narrative well enough.

[Sapphi]

The first and third you mentioned actually do fit together well: They can both be broken down as "emotionally open vs. emotionally closed." The literacy question, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to fit--although it's possible you can think of a way to make it work, it's also possible that it would just be better suited to a separate story of its own.

I'm going to agree with Guerin78. The literacy bit doesn't fit, but the rest fits together with your main theme just fine. On the other hand, if you actually need it to make your story work, use it. As long as it ADDS something to your plot or to your characters go ahead and keep it.

However...
-- Anything that CAN be pulled out, SHOULD be pulled out.

I see. I think I can safely assert that I'm not just shoehorning a message into the story: if hardly anybody can read, then their lack of knowledge about certain topics combined with the tendency to rely instead on hearsay and propaganda sways their opinions which in turn affects the events of the story.

There's no actual Antagonist/Villain.

why is this a problem?

I'll take a stab at this and suggest that without an antagonist of some sort, there would be no conflict and it would be boring.

[J. Datie]

There's no actual Antagonist/Villain.

why is this a problem?

I'll take a stab at this and suggest that without an antagonist of some sort, there would be no conflict and it would be boring.

Not necessarily. Conflict can also come from the environment, like in natural disaster stories or those stories about people lost in the wilderness. It could also come from the protagonist tackling their personal demons. Of course, it's a lot easier to have someone or something sentient oppose the protagonist, since there'd be a reason why they're actively opposing them, but that's beside the point.

[Sapphi]

Not necessarily. Conflict can also come from the environment, like in natural disaster stories or those stories about people lost in the wilderness. It could also come from the protagonist tackling their personal demons.

Well, when I wrote my post, I was thinking "antagonist" in a very broad sense which is why I wrote "of some sort", since I have read stories where the protagonist was his own antagonist. (Heck that's my life...) According to Wikipedia, an antagonist can even be an institution.

[Shadow]

Not necessarily. Conflict can also come from the environment, like in natural disaster stories or those stories about people lost in the wilderness. It could also come from the protagonist tackling their personal demons.

Well, when I wrote my post, I was thinking "antagonist" in a very broad sense which is why I wrote "of some sort", since I have read stories where the protagonist was his own antagonist. (Heck that's my life...) According to Wikipedia, an antagonist can even be an institution.

The antagonist archetype is pretty much anything that consciously opposes the protagonist, rather than just gets in their way. Getting into genre fiction here, but there are a few types that slow the protagonist on her/his journey, and they sometimes can be mistaken as the antagonist. Most notably are obstacles (or guardians/people who act independently) which are simply bad things that happen. They have no ill intention towards the protagonist, they simply have a clashing will.

Antagonists are a mostly genre fiction thing, so stuff like overcoming natural disasters as the main conflict is another kind of story. I wouldn't use conflict and antagonist interchangeably, nor would I say you need both, since there is a whole world of fiction outside the Hero's Journey.

[OokamiKasumi]

I'll take a stab at this and suggest that without an antagonist of some sort, there would be no conflict and it would be boring.

EXACTLY!!!

In a person vs. nature story, Nature is the antagonist. Antagonist comes from the Greek: One who fights Against. That's all it means. If the main character is in conflict, an Antagonists is present, even if it's just an old man battling against the sea, a mountain climber trying for a summit, or a character facing their own fear. The Antagonist is what is in the way of the main character's progress, it is the source of the Conflict -- even if its the character's own self.

However, there doesn't have to be a Villain.

Truthfully, I added the word 'villain' for those who wouldn't recognize 'antagonist'. It's not a common word and there are many in this community who are not native English speakers, or even out of High School.

My point, however, is that in order to have a Story; even if it's only 100 words long, there must be a Conflict. It can be internal or external, but a Conflict must be present. That Conflict IS caused by an Antagonist, even if that Antagonist is the character themselves. If there is no Conflict then they only have a Scene, not a Story.

They're clearly using professional artists, but I seriously wonder if they're using actual fiction authors for their scripts.

err...I don't think games should necessarily have to, if they're using the other forms of narrative well enough.

If a production company is using professional artists they should use professional writers too.

I don't know about you, but when I spend money on a game, I expect the quality of the art to Match the quality of the story. In fact, I'll happily take poorer quality art if I'm getting a damned good story.