The Overlying Theme

Often when we read our favourite novels more in depth - certain themes emerge which such as life, death, love, family, hubris etc.

Sometimes it might only be on the final draft that an author realises that something is pulling the novel together from above - overlying theme.

Discuss here some themes you want to work into your novels.


I'll start - in mine i hope to have a subtle hint of the philosophical theme - Free will Vs Determinism or Religion Vs. Atheism

The big thing with The Enigma is that death is a part of life and you really can't have one without the other. Another major thing is this: DON'T go messing around with things that will hurt you.

I only have one story with an overlying theme. It's my ghost story, Lovely Dreams. How love lives through death and to the next life. You may lose a love, but that love will live on forever.

emilycross wrote:

Often when we read our favourite novels more in depth - certain themes emerge which such as life, death, love, family, hubris etc.

Aye, I know what you mean there.

Often times the themes aren't even intentional, but can be honed during a draft and give the novel an overall run of symbolism and meaning. Stephen King does this well, even given his primary genre choice.

My main novel works on the theme that regret is forever, that its better to try, because death isn't the worse thing that can happen. Sometimes life is.

With tSotD, I didn't really assign a theme to it when I began. It just sort of...emerged. It's family, really. I didn't really notice until I stopped to read the entire thing. Family honor and how families don't dictate what you are.

Mine began and still has the main theme of letting go, of everything and the little things, but it has a few other not so intentional themes.

So, question, just to get the thread up and running again: Do you intentionally work big themes into your work or do you just sit back and see what happens?

What do you mean by big themes?

Just...themes. Maybe some morals. Do you work them in, or just let them work out as they want? Like...do you just write the story and not worry about the message, or to you work the story around the message you want to tell?

I'm not sure my stories really have a theme. I'm not writing to get across a message. I'm writing to tell a story that I think sounds interesting in my head, so I want to know what happens, and I'd like to share it if I'm writing it down anyway.

Maybe this is something I should think about working into my stories in the future, but on the other hand, I don't think a story needs themes, really.

I usually sit back and see things unravel. Some of my stories have themes I don't notice or won't notice until it's almost over. It's kind of cool to see something unravel like that and be so unnoticed.

Some of my themes are clear to me before I begin. E.g. the one I just finished and am about to start editing is about a woman moving to a remote rural community. So ideas of being an outsider versus community and belonging were clear from the start, and I could consciously bring them into the open as I wrote. But other things usually emerge for me as I write - or, as you say, Emily, only when I reach the end of the draft.

In this book the other themes which emerged were saints and sinners (and redemption), death and bereavement and loss generally; sibling rivalry; seeming and reality (pointed up by the MC's making tapestries depicting things in the book - so that the idea of the image and the reality is concrete as well as conceptual/psychological), and then I suppose the difficulty of opening up to another person fully when you are no longer young and have been through love and loss (since it is a love story between two divorcees in their forties/fifties).

Rosy, Gobblegobble, Emily, and all:

I didn't exactly have a theme when I started my Invaders trilogy. I just wanted to write something set in medieval England, that involved, well. . . .at this point, never mind. But one theme that seems to have emerged during the writing, as I've come to learn more and more about my characters, is what happens when you deny or ignore feelings and instincts. A lot of the action is driven by this, though my novel(s) are not exactly "character driven" in the usual sense.
Anne G

On one of my works, I actually got the idea for a plot from that old saying "Things aren't what they seem..." etc. I guess that's a theme, right? But mostly, themes just kind of come to me when I've finished the story and I go, "Hey! There it is!" I really don't try for them.