Writing Advice from the Bookshelf: Billy Mernit on Theme

The first and foremost, most obvious rule of working with theme is that it can’t be artificially imposed on the material—or artificially expressed. . . .

Actually, if you’re working with a viable theme . . . it’s already being expressed without such on-the-nose soapbox pronouncements. Your characters are embodiments of thematic concerns; they’re the ones arguing the sides of your possible truth. And who wins the argument is crucial. A writer’s attitude, belief system, and/or point of view gets expressed in three places: in the growth of the main character, in the resolution of the story, and in the storylines of its subplots. . . .

What has your character learned by meeting, losing, getting? Answer that question, and you enter the realm of theme. . . .

Where your protagonists end up is the clearest indication of the point you’re trying to make. . . .

Any storytelling component that doesn’t conform to a [story’s] theme confuses and diffuses a [novel]; an audience intuitively feels the wrong turn taken.

Mernit, Billy. Writing the Romantic Comedy. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2000. 95–96. Print.