Last week I participated in an awesome Q&A led by author Lori Wilde over on the eHarlequin boards regarding theme. Specifically, how to make sure you are proving your theme in every scene. Can we say total enlightenment?

Here’s why:
I’ve never been a big planner, plotter, or outl

iner. It doesn’t seem to work for me, and I’ve often found it to be a total time waster. I have to just dig into my story and write and figure it out as I go along. BUT, by having a concrete theme BEFORE you begin writing, you don’t need to plot, but your story will already have a direction. Make sense?

First thing I learned about picking a theme, your lead character should determine your theme.

Lori talked about ‘closed’ themes vs. ‘open’ themes. For example, in my current WIP, I had figured fairly early on that I wanted the story to be about forgiveness (this is considered an open theme, by the way, because it is very broad). The reason being that my heroine blames the hero for an event in her past and needs to learn to forgive him. But then, Lori also mentioned that to really get to the heart of a story, you should find a way to work both your characters growth into the same theme. Which, of course, confused me. Again.

But not for long. Lori opened my eyes about how you could define forgiveness into a closed theme and give the story greater strength and direction, tying both character motivations together into the one theme! Yay! So, here’s what I got: If I define forgiveness in terms of a closed theme, I could say the theme is “letting go of the past leads to happiness”. Therefore, my heroine needs to learn to let go of her need to blame the hero, and he has to let go of his need to control (and forgive whatever made him so controlling!). See? See how forgiveness now works for both of them! I feel like doing cartwheels. LOL.

Lori had a lot more great stuff to say on theme….and if you’re interested, I suggest you head on over to the Q&A archives on eHarlequin and check it out. I can’t wait to dig deeper into my characters and make sure each scene is proving my theme!