Themes that drive the story

SHUTTER ISLAND and KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE

In the four years I’ve been working toward a second novel (honesty only, here), I’ve found that there are three basic things I aim to have when I start working on a project in earnest: I need characters I care about, some kind of plot, and something to say. Today I’m writing about that third piece, which may be controversial to some writers. Do you really need to know a book’s theme at the outset? Should you write toward an ending that conveys a particular message? Do you need to know why you’re telling the story?

Stephen King has said no—it’s enough to follow an idea and figure out why you were so compelled after you’ve written the first draft. (He does say “you owe it to the book and to yourself to lean back (or take a long walk) when you’ve finished and ask yourself why you bothered.”) He likens finding your story’s theme to stepping back and seeing the forest after you’ve been busy working up close with the trees. I think he has good points, and his attitude—that theme is “really no big deal”—can be a healthy mindset if you’re at risk of overcomplicating things for yourself on the first draft. Suspense stories tend to be complicated enough, right?

But other writers have encouraged the consideration of theme from the outset of a project. Not perhaps from the first kernel of an idea–that is whatever it happens to be. But author and therapist Eric Maisel wrote a potent little book called Deep Writing, in which he counsels writers to focus on writing what is meaningful to them. To that end, he advises writers to consider the themes of their own life before they embark on a writing project, and he keeps that meaning at the forefront of his drafting advice.¹

Similarly, another craft book I loved, Thorn Necklace by Francesca Lia Block, teaches use of theme in drafting, not just revising. She advises students to consider the “underlying beliefs” of the story they’re writing; the “deep message” or “core belief” of the story. She even suggests that students draft a scene that directly states the story’s theme, not necessarily for use but at least for exploration.

Who’s right here? Maybe that’s the wrong question—maybe no one’s wrong. Maybe (the lawyer in me grins) it depends.

When I set out to write The Damage, which is the only book I’ve gotten over the publication finish line, I started by writing up an outline. In it, under the heading “themes/motifs,” I wrote: “protagonist’s (feminine?) goodness” and “deathbed.” If you’ve read that book, you’d probably agree that the concept of “goodness” or morality is one of the story’s main themes, and certainly that the deathbed meeting between two characters was an important part of the story. When I think back on when I started that book, there were other things driving my writing process–things I wanted to say about myself, the justice system I had been working in, and even romantic love. I didn’t enunciate these things in my outline, but they were in the back of my head as I wrote. Whether I could have articulated it at the time or not, I had stuff I wanted to say.

As I turn back to the project I shelved this past spring–the one I was calling Other People’s Kids–I find that I’m ready to approach the idea again from a new angle. I’ve made some significant changes to the characters (including full additions and deletions of people), and significant changes to the plot. But the things I want to say haven't changed. Do I know the story’s precise theme, as one might describe it in an English paper? No. But that’s exactly why some novelists write novels—because we can’t cut to the chase and just say the pithy thing. We have to show it in long form.

I was scanning my book shelves for a suspense novel that (1) has a strong theme and (2) I haven’t already dissected on this site. I realized I have two books of very different ilks that would make for a good compare-and-contrast lesson in writing thematic stories of suspense. Ready? They’re VERY different. One has you trapped at a mental institution in a hurricane (Shutter Island) and the other is has you jetsetting with wisecracking retired assassins (Killers of a Certain Age). Both have strong themes, but how those themes are used to enhance the suspense experience is quite different. I don’t need to spoil the ending of Killers for this piece; I have to come close to spoiling Shutter Island, but I’m hoping it’s old enough that people won’t mind.

The overarching theme in Killers of a Certain Age is how older women are seen as disposable, both in American society in general but also specifically in the workforce. This theme informs the entire book, starting with the title and the brilliant opening hook. There, four female friends are on a luxury cruise arranged by the secretive institution that had long employed them as assassins; they have been forced to retire from the profession simply due to their age (which, if my memory serves, is early 60s for all of them). On their celebratory retirement cruise, they recognize a young coworker and quickly realize he is there to kill them–their former employer meant for their retirement to be quite permanent.

I expect that Deanna Raybourn wrote even the first draft of this book with a strong sense of theme, given how clear the theme is from the setup of the story. I would also expect that the theme aided her in writing: foes repeatedly underestimate the heroines because of their ages, and the women use their ages to their advantages, by avoiding attention (via social invisibility) and by using their hard-earned skills and contacts from a forty-year career. The book’s theme, while important, wasn’t too heavy, nor was Raybourn’s overall approach to the story. The theme and story worked hand in hand; I expect the theme helped drive Raybourn’s storytelling.

Shutter Island is quite different, in mood and clarity of theme. To stop shy of spoiling the ending, the story is about a US Marshal, Teddy, and his partner arriving on an island where criminal defendants who were found not guilty by reason of insanity are housed at a complex of locked hospitals. A hurricane hits the island while the marshals are looking for an escaped patient and Teddy is pursuing his own private vendetta against a man he believes is secretly being housed at the hospital. At the end of the story, what Teddy has known as his reality is turned on its head; the novel’s themes of mental illness, perception’s influence on “reality,” and the power of guilt are made clear. These themes are referenced throughout the book but are only really obvious in their full glory when you reach the twist ending about who Teddy is and what is happening. (Compare this to Raybourne’s Killers, where the theme is obvious from the jump.) 

I don’t know when, in the writing process, Lehane knew how the story would end or what influence its themes had on his writing process. Put another way, the twist ending and the themes are inextricably linked, but I don’t know whether the themes came first and drove him to write the ending, or if he had the idea for the ending and the themes naturally followed. Either could be the case, with the same outcome of an excellent, moving, layered story with a great ending. And this is partly because, no matter the order of events, Lehane layered the story with motifs so that the themes would resonate when all was revealed. A motif is an element of a story that’s repeated for thematic effect within a written work. Motifs I remember from Shutter Island are the escaped patient’s use of ciphers, Teddy’s quest for the lighthouse, and Teddy’s repeated dreams, which involved specific hints about his personal history and reality (the water, the floating logs, and the specific people he dreamed about).² Here, as the tension in the story draws tighter, the stakes increase, and the action heightens, the repeated motifs add to the reader’s excitement–they give the mind something else to puzzle over. (And isn’t that what we love in suspense?) Regardless of how the themes impacted Lehane’s writing experience, he used the themes and their motifs to drive the story and the reading experience.

I look at these two books as evidence that you could use theme to your advantage from the jump in writing a suspense novel, but there’s nothing to fret about if you don’t have any obvious themes in mind when you start a project. You can always find latent themes later, or build them in on a rewrite.

No matter the approach, the important thing is to layer your references to the themes, using motifs when appropriate, if you want your reader to feel the impact. And if you have strong thematic thoughts from the jump, let them work for you like Raybourn does.

As for me, I plan to approach my next project like Raybourn, allowing my strong internal messaging to drive me on my initial draft of this new story, but I’ll hold Lehane in mind–no matter what, the magic is in the revising, where the layers get woven.

Writers: do you think about theme early on? Readers: do you analyze for theme when you read, especially genre fiction?

1. Maisel encourages you to write a list of your life’s themes before you start working on a project: what are the common beliefs, messages, and topics that pervade my life? This can be an especially interesting exercise when you’re writing fiction. You may find that one of those themes of your life is connected to the new project.

2. Shutter Island spoilers here for those who’ve read the book: To me, the ciphers are a motif for the theme of perception’s influence on reality (the cipher has an apparent, surface level meaning, but upon solving the cipher a second, hidden meaning is revealed). This comes up again with the use of anagrams for the characters who have dual identities (e.g. Teddy’s full name is an anagram for Laeddis’s). The lighthouse Teddy seeks during the storm is symbolic of the truth that evades him. The dreams about the water, the logs, and Laeddis and the missing patient are twisted memories of his true life as Laeddis and the fate of his wife and children.

Dennis! Hot damn, I love you!