How Themes in Your Writing Can Help You the Author

Some famous author, and of course, I cannot remember who, and Google has failed me, once said they were tired of people asking him/her what the theme of their novel was as “Themes are for critics and academics to figure out, not for authors.”

Given I can’t remember who said it, I’ll go with what Google did serve up – David Benioff, one of the screenwriters of Game of Thrones, said “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports.”

I’m not going to get into all the many good things having themes in your writing can do for your story, like giving it depth, or something consistent to constantly test characters, setting and plot against to see if your choices make sense. What I will say is that for me, having a theme makes me more likely to be happy with a piece and less prone to self-question as the rejections pile up. The reason is, having something more meaningful to say than “bad guy hits good guy” and on something that I feel passionately about, makes the story dearer to me. It means I end up trusting the story, more than the rejections. And so I think there are mental health benefits to the author of addressing themes as it means your work has meaning to you. Which is really valuable in keeping you writing, keeping your morale up, regardless of the fate of the individual piece.

Do you use themes in your writing? Why? Is it to help just the story, or also how you feel about it? Also, how do you keep alive your love of writing, and your belief that what you are doing is worthwhile when individual pieces are not finding publishing homes? Let me know in the comments below!