As
part of my participation in My
500 words, I am posting what I write each day.
I get asked questions like
this sometimes: What makes a book great? What’s the most important thing for
a fiction book to have?
I will see plenty of answers,
some are obvious, like a good plot. Other answers say good characters. I try to
always answer the same thing. What makes a story great is when the author
believes in their theme. The theme is the truth that’s proved by the story. To
me, the writer has to passionately believe in that truth. If they do,
everything else should follow. They will take the time and make the effort to
develop life-like characters and an engaging conflict to drive the plot. How
this conflict is resolved says everything about who the writer is.
The best stories that I have
written are the ones that have a theme I believe in. I don’t always start with
the theme, but I keep it in mind when I’m plotting. Whenever I am faced with a
choice of how the story will go, I refer to the story’s theme for direction.
I have a story idea for my
November novel. A little girl is left at a mountain fortress to be raised by
holograms. Okay, I had a premise and a title, The Snowdrop Princess. But what
was actually going to happen in the story? How much of this was going to be
based on the story I told my kids years ago? I needed a theme.
I had some ideas for what
would happen in the story. God forgive me for jumping on the dystopian genre
bandwagon, but the story is in a future where the government is rebuilding
after a collapse of civilization. This government wants to create a prison
that’s humane, but safe. Why not have it guarded by holograms? In fact, history
shows that there is a mountain fortress populated by nothing but holograms.
I can see a complicated
conflict here. It needs a lot of development still. And my theme, what truth do
I believe in that I want this story to prove? What will be the DNA of this
story’s structure?
It’s times like this I wish I
could take a sabbatical like last year, where I went out to the desert, scores
of miles away from another human being. I had notebooks and pens and I sat and
worked on Sidewinder. That turned into a pretty good first draft and
it’s on its way to becoming a good novel. Is there magic in a sabbatical?
Well, yes. But it’s just not
possible this year. And while there is mojo in a sabbatical, I can dig it up
elsewhere. And I did. I know my theme.
Like I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s
writing, I had a story opening in mind that led me to want to write The
Snowdrop Princess as my November novel. Then, two nights ago, something came to
me, and now I’ve got a choice to make. I thought of a story opening I wrote a few
years ago, not knowing where to take it. I thought someday I would use it for a
November novel. And the other night I realized it keeps with my theme more than
the other idea I had.
On a different note to anyone who reads this:
Thank you for indulging me these “cliffhangers” as I end uncertainly like this so
often. It’s not to draw readers back. It’s to draw me back to writing tomorrow.
And thank you, too, for reading. Your support is encouraging.
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