So this is an elaboration of an answer in comments to personhead![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zeborahnz who said she actually had written at least one story theme first after I had said I thought that didn't happen very often and I thought a theme was a thin thing to hang a story on. The story she described, even though she had only included a couple of details in its description, sounded really rich and thick, so it provided the necessary counterexample pretty well, I th8ink.
For me, I don't know what a story is about till I've figured out most of what happens in it. Or rather, the story is about the people in it, and a relationship, and something Hegelian or Levi-Straussian that happens there, and when I figure out what the Hegelian or Levi-Straussian thing is, that's the plot and the theme, I think. And the rest of this answer I'm cutting and elevating to a post because it does go on.
The guy who gave me the pep talk about trouble and terror last night has twice asked if this or Afterwar were about goodness, and I was flummoxed because I don't think so. I do know that one of the what-ifs I have in mind is "what if the people I'm most interested in are not horrible? Where's the untoward thing that makes the story happen?" -- knowing full well that there is always an untoward thing. And that the world is full of deeply terrible, deeply trouble-producing untoward things even without the villains dominating the landscape. So is that a theme?
I hope it's not the theme because that's certainly not a story. Whereas I think "constructed thing in the form and chemical makeup of a person becomes a person in order to survive," is a part of a story, and "the wish-granting creature's point of view" (which is really where I started) is a part of a story.
So my writing group thinks that I'm writing about the theme of what it is to be human, and I don't think it's wrong to find the theme there, but I'm not actively doing that. I'm actively writing about the problem of how the magical creature, made to only do what it's told, comes to be able to do what it needs. Is that a theme? Overcoming essential passivity? It may be a life theme of mine. But I don't know. Because I'm very sure that my magical creature, just like the litle grey hare in the story by Howard Pyle in the Wonder Clock,or the White Bear in some version or another of its story, has to embrace what looks like mutilation and death to come out the other side, human and in one piece.
Though the fairy story he comes across and embraces is "Puss in Boots." In which the magical creature's aid to the poor young man wouldn't be magical if Puss were a person, and the end of the story is that Puss gets to retire in a wing of the castle where the young man and the princess live happily ever after. His climactic scene is not like Puss in Boot's, where the king decides to marry off the princes to the young man. It's more like the one in "Peterkin and the Little Grey Hare," maybe. Or maybe the White Bear, ("Snow White and Rose Red," at the moment, not "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," which actually for me are the same story even though they're not: in my mind Snow White and Rose Red must undertake to rescue the White Bear from the goblin court together, and it's there they meet maybe not the White Bear's brother, but another helpful creature who has to have his head and feet and tail cut off like the little grey hare and that's the one Rose Red gets. I should probably write that, huh?) except that all that happens to him is that once the dwarf who turned him into a bear is dead, the bear skin falls off and he is revealed as a prince. There's a fox in some Howard Pyle book, and I cannot find it in the Wonder Clock, though I thought that was where it was. I can recall a picture of the young hero riding on the fox's tail after having done something unconscionable to a giant in order to win a princess from an unpleasant king.
it's interesting, maybe, that here I am thinking in terms of fairy stories and what I'm saying is that I don't think in terms of themes -- but people generally talk about fairy stories in terms of their themes. Except the ones who talk about them in terms of their elements which is I guess more comfy for me. Story elements is a broader concept and it allows me to think about all these things at the same time -- plot, character, episode, theme, and all the other things that come in to building a story.
Those annotations on "Snow White and Rose Red" that I linked to before are of really uneven quality. Why does the person think they have to give a dictionary definition for spinning?
zeborahnz who said she actually had written at least one story theme first after I had said I thought that didn't happen very often and I thought a theme was a thin thing to hang a story on. The story she described, even though she had only included a couple of details in its description, sounded really rich and thick, so it provided the necessary counterexample pretty well, I th8ink.For me, I don't know what a story is about till I've figured out most of what happens in it. Or rather, the story is about the people in it, and a relationship, and something Hegelian or Levi-Straussian that happens there, and when I figure out what the Hegelian or Levi-Straussian thing is, that's the plot and the theme, I think. And the rest of this answer I'm cutting and elevating to a post because it does go on.
The guy who gave me the pep talk about trouble and terror last night has twice asked if this or Afterwar were about goodness, and I was flummoxed because I don't think so. I do know that one of the what-ifs I have in mind is "what if the people I'm most interested in are not horrible? Where's the untoward thing that makes the story happen?" -- knowing full well that there is always an untoward thing. And that the world is full of deeply terrible, deeply trouble-producing untoward things even without the villains dominating the landscape. So is that a theme?
I hope it's not the theme because that's certainly not a story. Whereas I think "constructed thing in the form and chemical makeup of a person becomes a person in order to survive," is a part of a story, and "the wish-granting creature's point of view" (which is really where I started) is a part of a story.
So my writing group thinks that I'm writing about the theme of what it is to be human, and I don't think it's wrong to find the theme there, but I'm not actively doing that. I'm actively writing about the problem of how the magical creature, made to only do what it's told, comes to be able to do what it needs. Is that a theme? Overcoming essential passivity? It may be a life theme of mine. But I don't know. Because I'm very sure that my magical creature, just like the litle grey hare in the story by Howard Pyle in the Wonder Clock,or the White Bear in some version or another of its story, has to embrace what looks like mutilation and death to come out the other side, human and in one piece.
Though the fairy story he comes across and embraces is "Puss in Boots." In which the magical creature's aid to the poor young man wouldn't be magical if Puss were a person, and the end of the story is that Puss gets to retire in a wing of the castle where the young man and the princess live happily ever after. His climactic scene is not like Puss in Boot's, where the king decides to marry off the princes to the young man. It's more like the one in "Peterkin and the Little Grey Hare," maybe. Or maybe the White Bear, ("Snow White and Rose Red," at the moment, not "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," which actually for me are the same story even though they're not: in my mind Snow White and Rose Red must undertake to rescue the White Bear from the goblin court together, and it's there they meet maybe not the White Bear's brother, but another helpful creature who has to have his head and feet and tail cut off like the little grey hare and that's the one Rose Red gets. I should probably write that, huh?) except that all that happens to him is that once the dwarf who turned him into a bear is dead, the bear skin falls off and he is revealed as a prince. There's a fox in some Howard Pyle book, and I cannot find it in the Wonder Clock, though I thought that was where it was. I can recall a picture of the young hero riding on the fox's tail after having done something unconscionable to a giant in order to win a princess from an unpleasant king.
it's interesting, maybe, that here I am thinking in terms of fairy stories and what I'm saying is that I don't think in terms of themes -- but people generally talk about fairy stories in terms of their themes. Except the ones who talk about them in terms of their elements which is I guess more comfy for me. Story elements is a broader concept and it allows me to think about all these things at the same time -- plot, character, episode, theme, and all the other things that come in to building a story.
Those annotations on "Snow White and Rose Red" that I linked to before are of really uneven quality. Why does the person think they have to give a dictionary definition for spinning?