Looking to elevate your story’s theme? Josh Wilcox, experienced developmental editor and bibliophile, knows all about it. Enjoy this guest post on how to craft incredible themes from our amazing guest poster and be sure to check out the other posts in his series, like this one on Scenecraft 101!
All right, let’s get this out of the way. Am I asking you to die for your writing?
Yes.
Okay, before everyone gets up and leaves, let me be clear. I am not Keifer Sutherland. I simply
agree with him.
The world deserves your book written with real heart, real pain, and real sacrifice. Flatlining gives us that through three specific things:
- A deep, heartfelt anchor to the core of your story.
- Inspiration for you to bleed on every page.
- Real catharsis, when the book is complete.
Want this for your writing? Then you’re dying to have a theme! I’ll die with you, revealing my own, personal flatlined themes so you can see how deeply my stories matter to me.
But I Hate Themes as much as I Hate Dying!
Wasn’t high school English death enough? Conjuring up a theme for some book that made you hate it, reading, and possibly writing?
Theme can be one of the worst four-letter words in writing (To those of you saying theme isn’t a four-letter word, I say, ‘It is so long as you misspell it.’). However, we’re not looking to create word-vomit themes like, ‘This book is about how the fates of individuals are shaped by their personal histories and the broader forces of political history.’
If you died a little inside reading that, good. Let’s run it all the way to the flatline, then bring a real theme back.
Flatlining Up a Theme
I know what you’re thinking. ‘Josh, I haven’t seen Flatliners in so long, if ever, and certainly not the money-grab remake. What does dying to explore the human psyche have to do with writing?’
Everything. Don’t believe me? What if I said you just needed to die a little bit?
Still no?
Okay. Fine. How about if a piece of emotional pain inside you needed to die?
Maybe?
I can work with that. We’ll start by transforming our theme into a letter.
Your Theme is a Letter
The problem with what we traditional think of themes is they are so generic as to be meaningless. Your story is unique. Your theme needs to be too. Instead of, ‘This book is about how the fates of individuals are shaped by their personal histories and the broader forces of political history,’ what if the theme was, ‘This book is about how I didn’t protect my friend from a hate crime in high school and because of that, she sustained an injury that cost her a scholarship.’
Better, right? But still not specific enough. To give your manuscript real impact, it needs to say something to someone.
If it doesn’t, all those words might just be lost like tears in rain. Which is why it’s:
Time to Die for Your Theme
Death is a source of truth. Let’s go back to that emotional pain we’re flatlining. This could be the negative pain associated with someone specific.
It could be a positive pain associated with someone you cherish so much it aches.
Let’s flatline that pain to give you a way to express it. I’ll bleed first and to show you how much I care about this topic, dear readers, I’ll not flatline once but twice.
My Real Negative Pain
After twelve years of learning martial arts, I had two people destroy my dream of becoming a professional instructor by making up lies about me. I built this pain into the thematic letter of Forsworn, an adult fantasy novel I’ll be launching shortly.
My Real Positive Pain
In high school, I had two incredibly close friends, people that I loved and cherished. I’ll never see them again. I built this positive pain into the thematic letter of my YA speculative novel The Midnight Train, which will be releasing after Forsworn.
These two examples both feature two people, but that’s coincidence. Your pain can be from one person. Three. Any specific number, as long as you can write a letter to them that is deeply personal.
The Flatline
Now, we die. Picture the person or persons behind your pain. You’re in an empty movie theater with them and you’ve only seconds left to live. In the moments before you die, what would you say to them? What short, hard-hitting letter would you hand them knowing they couldn’t respond, couldn’t argue, that they would only have the chance to receive it because you’re now dead?
This is your theme. This is the anchor of truth your story will be built upon that lends it reality.
Don’t stress over this letter. Don’t judge it. Just try to get it as close to your truth as you can.
Remember, you’re dying and you just have a moment to give them something. For me, this is what I came up with.
Forsworn’s Letter:
I’m a person, damn it, and I didn’t deserve what you did.
The Midnight Train’s Letter:
I’ll never see you again, but I love you and treasure every moment we had.
Can you say something that is absolutely true to the source of your pain with no strings attached? Here are a few other examples for my past and upcoming works.
I would’ve loved you forever, but now I only want you to burn.
The world and my stupid dreams will always take me away from you, but my love for you is always at the heart of it.
I want to drink in life until it consumes everything, and I want you to go out in that blaze with me.
Probably not ground shaking to you, but deeply personal to me. Once you’ve done the same, once you’ve died and found our letter, it’s time to come…
Back From the Dead
Relaxing as it is, we can’t stay dead! We’ve got a book to write. Put this message at the top of your keyboard or somewhere you see regularly. With flatlining, we’re not running with some esoteric theme. We’re writing for a purpose. Our novel is the movie that kicks on after our death before the person responsible for our emotional pain. Writing it with our flatlined letter will give it:
- A deep, heartfelt anchor to the core of your story.
- Inspiration for you to bleed on every page.
- Real catharsis, when the book is complete.
A Heartfelt Anchor
If you’re plotting or brainstorming, think about who you’re writing this letter to. What characters, what scenes, and what arc would deliver this dagger or love letter best? This will help you create a heartfelt anchor in the core of your story.
For Forsworn, I knew I had to have two villains who betray the hero and a world that treats him and his friends inhumanely. Also, scenes where the villains proclaim their acts as righteous and where the hero suffers through wondering if he deserves suffering. All of which builds up to his declaration that he is a human and didn’t deserve what happened, and provides proof of it. Finally, I wanted the hero to triumph in the end, but in the opposite of a traditional fashion.
For The Midnight Train, I knew my hero had to face a tragedy that she would fight to undo, romance in a John Green fashion, and a world where people begin disappearing. My letter told me I had to have characters fighting for each other but also a larger cause. A bittersweet ending where love is shown to be real but incapable of altering the past. And kittens.
Inspiration to Bleed
Before you write each scene, take a moment, perhaps by going for a walk, where you think about your letter. What will happen in this scene to say what you’re after? Bleed on each page with the message you want to send.
For Forsworn, this meant showing constant unfairness, betrayal, and the fight against those in power. Also, innocence and its loss. But most importantly, the hero and his friends carrying the conviction that they deserve better.
For The Midnight Train, I lay under the same tree every day until I felt the scene in my head would do my lost friends justice. There had to be love and heartache, hope and doubt, and an undercurrent of gratitude, all with the zany adventures and gaffs of our lives together.
Real Catharsis
When you write, ‘The End,’ you won’t have just completed a novel. You’ll have gotten something real off your chest. I don’t have empirical evidence of Forsworn and The Midnight Train‘s effects on my life. I can say that I treasure both more than any of the manuscripts I wrote without a flatline letter.
Theme is Dead
You’ve done it! Old-school themes are dead and now we’re screaming, “Long live all the magic we made.”
You’ve found a new definition of theme, instilled a real heart in your story, bled on your pages, and experienced the catharsis of having sent your dying letter.
So what next?
Please subscribe to this blog and check out other ways to key in your writing, including the forthcoming Master Scenecraft: Turning scenes into magic, where we’ll talk about how to use your flatlining as a key component to making every scene strike the chord your readers are hungering after.
