Everything a writer learns will help their writing.
First example: after twenty-something years of teaching college students, I've learned that classes get categorized in three groups: "I loved that class", "It was okay", and "Why did I have to take that class?" The number one class in the third category was Philosophy, otherwise known as "that class where you argue totally unimportant things". I sympathized with these students because I'd taken philosophy myself. I had discovered the purpose of philosophy was to come up with a internally coherent argument about unseen and unknown things. There's no way to objectively test if your argument is correct. (in the words of my mother, "What difference does it make if we have free will or not? We can't change it!")
When I took philosophy, I said what countless other students said -- "what am I going to use this for?" Years later, I started writing novels, which required different skills than short stories and poetry. Because I wrote fantasy, I had to build talents and powers and magic and the like that were internally consistent. (Trust me, Harry Potter fans have convinced me that every single discrepancy in magic will be noted by the readers -- Just look up "Elder Wand" and you'll get an earful.) The jump from internally consistent arguments to internally consistent magic systems wasn't that big. So now I finally get to use philosophy for something useful!
Another example: Moulage. According to my annual report last year, I am a nationally recognized moulage expert. (This means I've been moulage coordinator for two (going on three) of the disaster training exercises for the Consortium for Humanitarian Service and Education.) Moulage, by the way, is otherwise known as casualty simulation. Yes, that means I make ordinary people look like victims for emergency and disaster training. I taught myself how to do this after some lovely people mistook me for an expert, and I keep getting better as I go. But the reason I mention it here is because I have had to study many, many gory pictures to do my art -- closed abdominal injury, disembowelments, burns, open and closed fractures, gunshots ... If people get wounded or killed in my writing, I either know what the carnage looks like or I look it up.
In short, a writer can't say "I'll never use that", because that most arcane or useless bit of information can, and will, come in handy.
********
If you've read this far: I will be taking the train out to upstate New York on Wednesday to serve as Moulage Coordinator for the third exercise in the CHSE series, New York Hope. I hope to have time to write, even on the train. I would post pictures of my handiwork, but it's ... gross.
Monday, August 7, 2017
Sunday, August 6, 2017
A bonus -- This Unseen Bird
This unseen bird (I think)
leaves me gifts every morning --
a feather heartachingly red,
a pristine moth coccoon.
Or I imagine things --
I've never seen the bird,
he may not even be red,
he never speaks to me.
I prefer to believe
this unseen bird
leaves me gifts every morning.
********
This is a rough draft and subject to change, as always. My goal was to write a poem using more everyday language. I read a lot of ee cummings when I was younger.
leaves me gifts every morning --
a feather heartachingly red,
a pristine moth coccoon.
Or I imagine things --
I've never seen the bird,
he may not even be red,
he never speaks to me.
I prefer to believe
this unseen bird
leaves me gifts every morning.
********
This is a rough draft and subject to change, as always. My goal was to write a poem using more everyday language. I read a lot of ee cummings when I was younger.
Writing for Change
Full disclosure here: I am female, cis/het, white (mostly), married, 53, educated, neurodiverse, middle class, and not beautiful according to Western standards. I tell you this not to present you with a set of labels to call me, but to hint at which social injustices I have faced in this society and which I have not.
I also am a member of the Religious Society of Friends (otherwise known as Quakers), and nowadays we've thrown off plain dress and plain speech (thee didn't know that?) but have retained our sense of social justice as something important to work toward.
I carry this sense of social justice into my writing. I carry it imperfectly, given that I have not experienced life as a lesbian, as a black person, as a Moslem, a transgendered person, or a person with visible disabilities. Why would that matter? Because I am an outsider to others' experiences. I do not experience the small insults others do every day -- nobody suggests rape as a solution to my gender preference, nobody calls store security on me while I'm shopping, nobody tells me my religion is satanic, nobody calls me a cripple. Most of us miss these aggressions; others experience these and worse daily.
I want a socially just world. I imagine the world as a banquet, and I want to see everyone at the banquet. I want to feast on gravlax and fufu with palaver sauce, and oh-my-G-d Middle Eastern desserts. I want everyone to feast and to talk to each other and to share. And those who are uncomfortable with the other, I want there to be counselors nearby who will talk to their wounded inner child and their not-okayness and prepare them to sit at our table instead of taking it all away from us.
Full disclosure: I was harassed as a child because I was "different" (i.e. neurodiverse), and female, and fat, and gifted. The harassment accelerated into violence. This could by why I want a socially just world. I don't want anyone else to suffer. It bothers me that I might not have noticed all the injustice if I had not experienced it.
I have to try the best I can to bring in the topic of social justice into my writing, hoping that I am doing so constructively rather than destructively. Here is what I have pledged myself to do:
1) Don't be timid about putting people who are not necessarily "dominant culture" in my writing. Admittedly one of my favorite characters is Gideon, an avant-garde Jewish architect who designed exquisite bridges when manic but could not hold down a job when depressed. Less like me, however, is Arminder Kaur, a fourteen-year-old Sikh who dreams of being a "saint-soldier" defending the oppressed.
2) Avoid stereotypes, but thoughtfully include cultural norms for other cultures. One of the sensitive places in writing in this regard are accents. If the only people who have accents are foreigners and African-Americans, you've written stereotypes. I can point out that the downstate New York accents I ran into when I taught out there had many interesting pronounciations -- "cawd", "SHU-ah", "Ant - AUCK - tica". Remember these if you're going to put in other accents.
3) Do not make white characters the "saviors" for people of other groups. People who are not white, straight, etc. will be allowed self-determination. Movies from Avatar to The Blind Side feature the "white savior" trope, and it's really insulting.
4) Dominant culture will not be the standard by which other cultures are judged. An overweight person will not be harassed into losing weight (as if that worked!), Guardsmen will be allowed in a pacifist ecocollective if they lock up their guns while on site.
I will offend someone. I will fall short, because I'm human and because I walk around with privilege others don't have. We all will offend each other at the banquet table because we're different. But my responsibility is to write for the world I'd like to see.
I also am a member of the Religious Society of Friends (otherwise known as Quakers), and nowadays we've thrown off plain dress and plain speech (thee didn't know that?) but have retained our sense of social justice as something important to work toward.
I carry this sense of social justice into my writing. I carry it imperfectly, given that I have not experienced life as a lesbian, as a black person, as a Moslem, a transgendered person, or a person with visible disabilities. Why would that matter? Because I am an outsider to others' experiences. I do not experience the small insults others do every day -- nobody suggests rape as a solution to my gender preference, nobody calls store security on me while I'm shopping, nobody tells me my religion is satanic, nobody calls me a cripple. Most of us miss these aggressions; others experience these and worse daily.
I want a socially just world. I imagine the world as a banquet, and I want to see everyone at the banquet. I want to feast on gravlax and fufu with palaver sauce, and oh-my-G-d Middle Eastern desserts. I want everyone to feast and to talk to each other and to share. And those who are uncomfortable with the other, I want there to be counselors nearby who will talk to their wounded inner child and their not-okayness and prepare them to sit at our table instead of taking it all away from us.
Full disclosure: I was harassed as a child because I was "different" (i.e. neurodiverse), and female, and fat, and gifted. The harassment accelerated into violence. This could by why I want a socially just world. I don't want anyone else to suffer. It bothers me that I might not have noticed all the injustice if I had not experienced it.
I have to try the best I can to bring in the topic of social justice into my writing, hoping that I am doing so constructively rather than destructively. Here is what I have pledged myself to do:
1) Don't be timid about putting people who are not necessarily "dominant culture" in my writing. Admittedly one of my favorite characters is Gideon, an avant-garde Jewish architect who designed exquisite bridges when manic but could not hold down a job when depressed. Less like me, however, is Arminder Kaur, a fourteen-year-old Sikh who dreams of being a "saint-soldier" defending the oppressed.
2) Avoid stereotypes, but thoughtfully include cultural norms for other cultures. One of the sensitive places in writing in this regard are accents. If the only people who have accents are foreigners and African-Americans, you've written stereotypes. I can point out that the downstate New York accents I ran into when I taught out there had many interesting pronounciations -- "cawd", "SHU-ah", "Ant - AUCK - tica". Remember these if you're going to put in other accents.
3) Do not make white characters the "saviors" for people of other groups. People who are not white, straight, etc. will be allowed self-determination. Movies from Avatar to The Blind Side feature the "white savior" trope, and it's really insulting.
4) Dominant culture will not be the standard by which other cultures are judged. An overweight person will not be harassed into losing weight (as if that worked!), Guardsmen will be allowed in a pacifist ecocollective if they lock up their guns while on site.
I will offend someone. I will fall short, because I'm human and because I walk around with privilege others don't have. We all will offend each other at the banquet table because we're different. But my responsibility is to write for the world I'd like to see.
Friday, August 4, 2017
My First Big Mistake, or How I Shot Myself with Chekhov's Gun
In yesterday's blog, I commented that I didn't put great store in Chekhov's Gun, or the principle that one should only include objects in a story that will come into play later in the plot. I learned about the principle at about the time I wrote a novel for the first time (i.e. when my husband remarked that, if I was going to keep writing short stories around the dream I interrogated, I might as well write a novel).
I took Chekhov's Gun to heart, writing extremely sparse descriptions of people and places, figuring that description would distract from the plot if they couldn't drive it. Big mistake -- I had written 300-some pages with almost nothing but dialogue driving the plot. Don't get me wrong -- I love writing dialogue; I think it's one of my strong points. But the lack of description turned the book into something resembling cream of mushroom soup -- bland, pale, lacking distinction.
And I, being too close to my work, saw nothing wrong with it and sent out a few queries to agents. Sixty-five to be exact. I got sixty-five rejections (I think; not all agents send rejections). I read my work again, and Richard read my work again, and he pointed out that I needed more description. I didn't know what he meant at first. It took me a while to realize that I didn't have to take Chekhov's Gun quite that seriously, and I decided to examine the spirit, rather than the letter, of Chekhov's Gun.
What I didn't realize was that Chekhov's Gun refers to objects that can be used, not all inanimate objects in a scene. The hideous 60's wallpaper in the protagonist's living room can set up a lot of information about the protagonist -- it may reflect her "living in the past", it could show that she can't afford to redecorate her living room or that she hasn't noticed the outdated decor. But even though she's not going to USE the wallpaper in the future, it deserves to be described. People deserve to be described (although I get irked by the JD Robb version: "... although she didn't like looking in mirrors, she looked in the mirror at her eyes the color of good whiskey; her choppy hair the color of deerhide..." This character who doesn't like looking at mirrors is now sitting in front of one with a thesaurus.)
On the other hand, objects that can be used by the protagonists or others are subject to the Chekhov's Gun rule. If the writer points out the blender in that kitchen, or the gun in the canister of flour. or the TV remote in the living room, they should use it later in the story. If the character reads a book called "Starved Rock Murders", the writer should take her to Starved Rock State Park later, preferably when there's a murder. If the writer singles out a specific landmark, you should use that landmark later, but if it's part of a large amount of landscape description, not so much.
It was a learning experience -- describe, describe, describe; let important objects play in the background; don't emphasize any old object that won't be used later. And seek out readers before sending queries out!
I took Chekhov's Gun to heart, writing extremely sparse descriptions of people and places, figuring that description would distract from the plot if they couldn't drive it. Big mistake -- I had written 300-some pages with almost nothing but dialogue driving the plot. Don't get me wrong -- I love writing dialogue; I think it's one of my strong points. But the lack of description turned the book into something resembling cream of mushroom soup -- bland, pale, lacking distinction.
And I, being too close to my work, saw nothing wrong with it and sent out a few queries to agents. Sixty-five to be exact. I got sixty-five rejections (I think; not all agents send rejections). I read my work again, and Richard read my work again, and he pointed out that I needed more description. I didn't know what he meant at first. It took me a while to realize that I didn't have to take Chekhov's Gun quite that seriously, and I decided to examine the spirit, rather than the letter, of Chekhov's Gun.
What I didn't realize was that Chekhov's Gun refers to objects that can be used, not all inanimate objects in a scene. The hideous 60's wallpaper in the protagonist's living room can set up a lot of information about the protagonist -- it may reflect her "living in the past", it could show that she can't afford to redecorate her living room or that she hasn't noticed the outdated decor. But even though she's not going to USE the wallpaper in the future, it deserves to be described. People deserve to be described (although I get irked by the JD Robb version: "... although she didn't like looking in mirrors, she looked in the mirror at her eyes the color of good whiskey; her choppy hair the color of deerhide..." This character who doesn't like looking at mirrors is now sitting in front of one with a thesaurus.)
On the other hand, objects that can be used by the protagonists or others are subject to the Chekhov's Gun rule. If the writer points out the blender in that kitchen, or the gun in the canister of flour. or the TV remote in the living room, they should use it later in the story. If the character reads a book called "Starved Rock Murders", the writer should take her to Starved Rock State Park later, preferably when there's a murder. If the writer singles out a specific landmark, you should use that landmark later, but if it's part of a large amount of landscape description, not so much.
It was a learning experience -- describe, describe, describe; let important objects play in the background; don't emphasize any old object that won't be used later. And seek out readers before sending queries out!
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Foreshadowing in the Forest
Grace has just been -- liberated? abducted? by the prodigy Ichirou and his chaperone, Ayana. Not that Ichirou needs a chaperone, because the Ichirou that retrieves her from her dorm room has grown five inches and grown rather kawaii (cute) in the nine months since Grace last saw him. After officially withdrawing Grace from Interlochen Academy and helping her pack, the three embark on a tense van ride where Ayana refuses to discuss the reason they're fleeing to a secluded cabin.
The three talk around the "elephant in the room" -- or rather, van -- which leads to discussions of cultural differences between Grace's blunt questions and Ayana's indirectness; discussions of how religion and death are perceived in Japan; and Grace's revelation of how she lost her parents.
The most fun part to write was Ichirou's brief speech about how men in Japan will not eat sweet desserts because they will be thought of as less masculine -- while eating a plate of French toast swimming with butter, syrup, and whipped cream.
Obviously this took a lot of research on Google (best search of the day: Japanese death taboos). That's not what I want to talk about today -- instead, I want to talk about foreshadowing.
Foreshadowing is a storytelling technique where the writer hints about a later occurrence in the story. It's best to do this with subtlety, so the hint doesn't tell the reader what to expect. Later, when the actual event happens, the astute reader will say, "Hey, wait a minute, didn't I read earlier that -- ?"
Chekhov's Gun is a related principle of storytelling that advises the writer that any object introduced to the story that doesn't have immediate purpose should be employed in the story later, and that things not important to the story should be trimmed away. I'm not a strong proponent of this -- if Tolkien took away any unnecessary scenery in The Lord of the Rings, the trilogy would be a brochure.
The reason I mentioned foreshadowing, though, is because what seems to be a conversation to develop characters further can also drop in bits of foreshadowing. In the section of my book I described briefly above, there were three bits of foreshadowing. No, actually four. I know where those tidbits will blossom in the book, so I could foreshadow. (You may even remember reading about one earlier.) Wait a minute -- that's how foreshadowing works.
A Different Magic
Never have I had a harder time picking an adjective in my life. There are moments I've had in my life that were -- amazing? Overused. Magical? Cliche. Wonderful? -- It seems we've taken the magic out of these adjectives. And in the moment I'm about to describe, I experienced magic, and I allowed it to change me. (Note: I know "Woodchuck" below to be a derogatory term, and I know that I'm showing classism, but I have to write this about the me I WAS rather than the me that I AM NOW. And I'm still learning about how I'm classist.)
******
This incident happened in upstate New York, a place full of thick woods, looming hills, shimmering lakes, and secrets. Washington Irving wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, distinctly American fairytales, about those secrets. I lived in the Upper Catskill region, and the thunder in the hills did sound like giants bowling in hidden places. But at any rate, this was my brush with magic, and it wasn't what you might think.
I had made friends with the manager of a beer and wine supply shop. I would visit him in the summer when I got bored because I lived alone and I couldn't hang out at the coffee shop forever. Besides, I thought Scott was cute. I would never have dated Scott because our worlds were too dissimilar: I was a professor seeking tenure and wearing suits; he was what locals called a "Woodchuck" -- an impoverished resident of the Catskills who typically lives off tourism in the summer, and welfare in the winter.
I walked into the store that day, greeted by the now-familiar setting -- rough-hewn, dark wood; big squared barn windows; two-by-twelve shelves with boxes of rubber stoppers, gaskets, plastic airlocks, bottle caps and corks; a back room with the bigger merchandise like carboys and corkers and spargers. I wondered, not for the first time, if the space had been a stable or a work shed in an earlier life.
My friend Scott stood at the counter, ridiculously tall and skinny. His straight black hair fell past his shoulders in keeping with his Blackfoot heritage and set off pale skin befitting his German and Scottish heritage. He squinted at me through his thick steel-frame glasses and grinned. "My friend's coming over in a bit. He's bringing some hopped sparkling mead over to taste. Should be good."
I made wine and mead, which was how I'd found Scott's shop in the first place. I knew that mead could be divided into "wine-like" and "beer-like". I made the wine-type, of course -- slightly sweet, not bubbly, sometimes herbal. I'd never had beer-like mead -- bubbly, slightly bitter from hops. I decided to stay around, having nothing better to do.
Scott and I indulged ourselves in storytelling while waiting. Both sides of my family treated storytelling as a major ritual in getting to know people, and I honored the oral tradition by exchanging stories whenever I got the chance --
"... I woke up that morning, and my mother was gone. No, completely gone. All her belongings were gone, all the furniture was gone, and she had left me a note that said, 'You're responsible for the apartment now. I've moved in with my boyfriend.'"
Just as I had recovered from the ending, a stocky, sun-browned man with shoulder-length golden hair and goatee arrived with a bag, from which he pulled out two big brown bottles.
"Hey, Scott, do you have a bottle opener?" he growled, and I noted his leather biker's cap, wondering how it would look on me. I was not going to ask.
"Ha ha," Scott snorted and pulled out his bottle opener and three glass tumblers from behind the rough counter.
"Would you like some?" Greg asked, more gallantly than I had expected for a biker.
"Sure," I replied, and he poured me a tumbler full.
I took a deep drink, and then another. Smoother than beer, scented with honey and fragrant hops, I knew I tasted something rare and rich. I felt a tingle, almost like a shimmer of gold, slide from my toes to my head --
I sat down abruptly, feeling tipsy yet not tipsy. I felt -- not vague, but as if a golden mist had surrounded me, surrounded everything. Greg examined his mead against the light from the window, and it seemed that Arthur Pendragon, dressed in jeans and boots, drank of the Holy Grail. Scott limped across the room to look out a window, and I spied the Fisher King who had held the Grail before Arthur.
I excused myself, feeling small against such august personages, and stumbled into the sun, where I discovered that ordinary people had become mighty, and I, in turn, had become ordinary.
******
This incident happened in upstate New York, a place full of thick woods, looming hills, shimmering lakes, and secrets. Washington Irving wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, distinctly American fairytales, about those secrets. I lived in the Upper Catskill region, and the thunder in the hills did sound like giants bowling in hidden places. But at any rate, this was my brush with magic, and it wasn't what you might think.
I had made friends with the manager of a beer and wine supply shop. I would visit him in the summer when I got bored because I lived alone and I couldn't hang out at the coffee shop forever. Besides, I thought Scott was cute. I would never have dated Scott because our worlds were too dissimilar: I was a professor seeking tenure and wearing suits; he was what locals called a "Woodchuck" -- an impoverished resident of the Catskills who typically lives off tourism in the summer, and welfare in the winter.
I walked into the store that day, greeted by the now-familiar setting -- rough-hewn, dark wood; big squared barn windows; two-by-twelve shelves with boxes of rubber stoppers, gaskets, plastic airlocks, bottle caps and corks; a back room with the bigger merchandise like carboys and corkers and spargers. I wondered, not for the first time, if the space had been a stable or a work shed in an earlier life.
My friend Scott stood at the counter, ridiculously tall and skinny. His straight black hair fell past his shoulders in keeping with his Blackfoot heritage and set off pale skin befitting his German and Scottish heritage. He squinted at me through his thick steel-frame glasses and grinned. "My friend's coming over in a bit. He's bringing some hopped sparkling mead over to taste. Should be good."
I made wine and mead, which was how I'd found Scott's shop in the first place. I knew that mead could be divided into "wine-like" and "beer-like". I made the wine-type, of course -- slightly sweet, not bubbly, sometimes herbal. I'd never had beer-like mead -- bubbly, slightly bitter from hops. I decided to stay around, having nothing better to do.
Scott and I indulged ourselves in storytelling while waiting. Both sides of my family treated storytelling as a major ritual in getting to know people, and I honored the oral tradition by exchanging stories whenever I got the chance --
"... I woke up that morning, and my mother was gone. No, completely gone. All her belongings were gone, all the furniture was gone, and she had left me a note that said, 'You're responsible for the apartment now. I've moved in with my boyfriend.'"
Just as I had recovered from the ending, a stocky, sun-browned man with shoulder-length golden hair and goatee arrived with a bag, from which he pulled out two big brown bottles.
"Hey, Scott, do you have a bottle opener?" he growled, and I noted his leather biker's cap, wondering how it would look on me. I was not going to ask.
"Ha ha," Scott snorted and pulled out his bottle opener and three glass tumblers from behind the rough counter.
"Would you like some?" Greg asked, more gallantly than I had expected for a biker.
"Sure," I replied, and he poured me a tumbler full.
I took a deep drink, and then another. Smoother than beer, scented with honey and fragrant hops, I knew I tasted something rare and rich. I felt a tingle, almost like a shimmer of gold, slide from my toes to my head --
I sat down abruptly, feeling tipsy yet not tipsy. I felt -- not vague, but as if a golden mist had surrounded me, surrounded everything. Greg examined his mead against the light from the window, and it seemed that Arthur Pendragon, dressed in jeans and boots, drank of the Holy Grail. Scott limped across the room to look out a window, and I spied the Fisher King who had held the Grail before Arthur.
I excused myself, feeling small against such august personages, and stumbled into the sun, where I discovered that ordinary people had become mighty, and I, in turn, had become ordinary.
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Themes -- the implied content
How does a story's plot differ from a story's theme?
The plot describes the action of a story while the theme describes its soul.
Although themes aren't the same as plots, plots incorporate themes. A theme of "Family is important", for example, must feature a plot in which facing adversity makes the family stronger. A theme of "We make our own family" may have a plot in which four unrelated people experience adversity and develop close ties as a result. If the plot doesn't carry the theme, the theme never escapes the writer's brain.
Some themes are universal and archetypal. A professor named Joseph Campbell spoke on a universal theme called "The hero's journey" in a book called The Hero of a Thousand Faces. (Women scholars have argued his Hero is inevitably masculine, and I agree). The hero's journey consists of leaving home in a naive state, facing a danger, feeling insecure about meeting the danger, failing at meeting the danger, discovering his strength, and overcoming the danger. In other words, growing up. Choosing good over evil is also a universal theme, and if you've read any of the Harry Potter books, you're familiar with the theme. Fairy tales have great archetypal themes -- reread them!
Some themes are shaped by our times. One of my common themes is "Acceptance of the Other," whether they're a different color, race, nationality, love preference, or species (there are non-human humanoids involved). This theme might not have been possible three hundred years ago. One theme of my current book is "We should choose our own destinies," again not possible in the time of Calvinistic Determinism. Another is the previously mentioned "We make our own family" (or, in the movie Lilo and Stitch, "Ohana") .
Some themes are shaped by our culture. The ancient Greeks viewed Eros, or passionate love, as a chaotic force that induced destructive behavior in its victims. How would they have reacted to the "happily ever after" of today's romance novels?
One of the secrets of themes is that they should not be announced. Stories in which a character explicitly ties up the action by reviewing the theme with other characters -- I am reminded of one of the staples of my childhood, ABC After School Specials on TV. "Johnnie, I told you not to open the door to strangers!" (Also, "Johnnie, I told you not to invite the drug dealer in for pizza!") Your readers will find the themes, even subconsciously, when they feel themselves identify with them.
Themes, rather than plots, may be the way you perceive the world. If someone asks you what the book is about and you say, "It's about a battle off the coast of Antarctica", you're a plot person. If you answer, "it's about survival in the Antarctic during wartime," you're a theme person (see the difference?)
By the way, I'm a theme person. (My book is about a young person who discovers people who share her uncanny talent. Plot people grumble at descriptions like this -- but what HAPPENS?)
The plot describes the action of a story while the theme describes its soul.
Although themes aren't the same as plots, plots incorporate themes. A theme of "Family is important", for example, must feature a plot in which facing adversity makes the family stronger. A theme of "We make our own family" may have a plot in which four unrelated people experience adversity and develop close ties as a result. If the plot doesn't carry the theme, the theme never escapes the writer's brain.
Some themes are universal and archetypal. A professor named Joseph Campbell spoke on a universal theme called "The hero's journey" in a book called The Hero of a Thousand Faces. (Women scholars have argued his Hero is inevitably masculine, and I agree). The hero's journey consists of leaving home in a naive state, facing a danger, feeling insecure about meeting the danger, failing at meeting the danger, discovering his strength, and overcoming the danger. In other words, growing up. Choosing good over evil is also a universal theme, and if you've read any of the Harry Potter books, you're familiar with the theme. Fairy tales have great archetypal themes -- reread them!
Some themes are shaped by our times. One of my common themes is "Acceptance of the Other," whether they're a different color, race, nationality, love preference, or species (there are non-human humanoids involved). This theme might not have been possible three hundred years ago. One theme of my current book is "We should choose our own destinies," again not possible in the time of Calvinistic Determinism. Another is the previously mentioned "We make our own family" (or, in the movie Lilo and Stitch, "Ohana") .
Some themes are shaped by our culture. The ancient Greeks viewed Eros, or passionate love, as a chaotic force that induced destructive behavior in its victims. How would they have reacted to the "happily ever after" of today's romance novels?
One of the secrets of themes is that they should not be announced. Stories in which a character explicitly ties up the action by reviewing the theme with other characters -- I am reminded of one of the staples of my childhood, ABC After School Specials on TV. "Johnnie, I told you not to open the door to strangers!" (Also, "Johnnie, I told you not to invite the drug dealer in for pizza!") Your readers will find the themes, even subconsciously, when they feel themselves identify with them.
Themes, rather than plots, may be the way you perceive the world. If someone asks you what the book is about and you say, "It's about a battle off the coast of Antarctica", you're a plot person. If you answer, "it's about survival in the Antarctic during wartime," you're a theme person (see the difference?)
By the way, I'm a theme person. (My book is about a young person who discovers people who share her uncanny talent. Plot people grumble at descriptions like this -- but what HAPPENS?)
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