Chapter Twenty-Four
The Thematic Details Column
Of the three major plotlines (the dramatic action plot, the character emotional development plot, and the thematic significance plot), the thematic significance plot brings meaning to the effect the two other plotlines have on each other. Even if you’re just pre-plotting story ideas, it’s never too early to begin thinking about the themes of your story and the meaning your reader will be left with in the end.
Begin by tracking the general theme(s) in each scene. Common story themes include the following:
- family
- relationships
- revenge
- jealousy
- rivalry
- betrayal
- love
- death
By the time you’ve reached the end, you’ll likely experience that “eureka!” moment: “Oh, so that’s what my story is all about.” At that point, you’ll be able to form a thematic significance statement that sums up your story’s deeper meaning.
Case Study: The Stone Diaries
Carol Shields begins her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Stone Diaries in scene.
Birth, 1905
My mother’s name was Mercy Stone Goodwill. She was only thirty years old when she took sick, a boiling hot day, standing there in her back kitchen, making a Malvern pudding for her husband’s supper. A cookery book lay open on the table: “Take some slices of stale bread,” the recipe said, “and one pint of currants; half a pint of raspberries: four ounces of sugar; some sweet cream if available.” Of course, she’s divided the recipe in half, there being just the two of them and what with the scarcity of currants, and Cuyler (my father) being a dainty eater. A pick-nibble fellow, she calls him. Able to take his food or leave it.
[cut to paragraph six]
And almost as heavenly as eating was the making—how she gloried in it! Every last body on this earth has a particular notion of paradise, and this was hers, standing in the murderously hot back kitchen of her own house, concocting and contriving, leaning forward and squinting at the fine print of the cookery book, a clean wooden spoon in hand.
| Scene Tracker: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Time and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | 1905 3:00 P.M. July in a kitchen | 30 years old; has a passion for cooking | Make Malvern pudding for dinner | Cooking | X | +/- | “Stale bread”; “murderously hot kitchen” |
The opening scene continues for almost six pages, but these paragraphs are enough for our purposes.
The theme is the why—your reason for writing the story, what you want your readers to take away. The theme of The Stone Diaries can be summed up in the following words: “Beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary women lie extraordinary lives.”
Shields opens her story with foreshadowing and tension by stating that the mother will take ill. Then, rather than jumping immediately into the cause of the sickness and what happens next, she backs up. By using ordinary details—a wife preparing pudding for her husband’s dinner and her absolute passion for cooking—Shields effectively introduces the theme and tone of the story to come. She presents authentic details in the first paragraph of her story and thereby establishes what her story is about and what it is not about.
Note the Change in Emotion Column for this scene. Though Shields begins by telling the reader about the mother’s illness, when we meet the mother in the next sentence, she is not yet sick. The mother’s emotion at the beginning of the scene is positive in that she is doing what she most loves to do—cooking. However, by the end of the scene, six pages later, the mother is sick. Therefore, the scene ends in the negative.
Don’t give up on a book you’re writing until you finish at least the first draft.
Case Study: All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy uses many telling details to bring the scene alive and lend an air of foreboding: “floorboards creaked under his boots,” “along the cold hallway,” “guttered candlestub,” “face so caved and drawn,” “the yellowed moustache,” “the eyelids paper thin.” Although the character shows no emotion, “in the distance a calf bawled.” Because the use of “bawling your eyes out” is common when expressing sorrowful crying, weeping, or sobbing, when the reader reads about a calf bawling, he consciously or unconsciously transfers the sense of sorrow to include the protagonist.
There are other details, however, that actually enhance the story’s theme, which is:
“When a boy is coming of age and the only life he has ever known is disappearing into the past, that boy must leave on a dangerous and harrowing journey to claim his place in the world.”
The thematic details are the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him and the death of his grandfather. Both of these details serve as a metaphor for the death of the only life this boy has known.
| Scene Tracker: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Time and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | Just before dawn | Speaks the truth | View of dead man | X | Portraits; grandfather’s death | ||
Case Study: The Sea-Wolf
The theme of The Sea-Wolf is “Through ambition and courage, man is able to survive against all odds.” In the first scene, the protagonist ends up in the freezing-cold water and fog with only a life preserver. Throughout the latter part of the scene, he shows panic rather than courage over and over again. This is an effective beginning in that the character has room to develop into a brave and ambitious man.
| Scene Tracker: The Sea-Wolf by Jack London | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Date and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SU | |||||||
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | Jan. Mon. A.M. | Blames others; intelligent; writer | Write essay | Stranger appears | X | +/- | Water like the grip of death; strangled by sea water |
Case Study: White Oleander
White Oleander chronicles a troubled mother/daughter relationship. Its theme is “To find a place for oneself, one must first break away.” Although the author does not use any thematic details to illustrate the theme, she does use ominous details to foreshadow the horror to come: “poisonous blooms” and “dagger green leaves.”
| Scene Tracker: White Oleander by Janet Fitch | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Time and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | Nighttime Santa Ana | Deeply identifies with mother; 12 years old; afraid; takes care of mother | Give mother comfort | Roof w/ mother | X | poison blooms; dagger green leaves | |
Case Study: Where the Heart Is
The theme of this novel is “Home is where the heart is.” Novalee’s long-term goal is to live in a house, any kind of a house. Up until now “she had never lived in a place that didn’t have wheels under it.” Therefore, by beginning Where the Heart Is in a car, Letts establishes right up front Novalee’s reasons for wanting a house: The car is falling apart, and a TV tray covers a rusted-out hole in the floorboard the size of a platter.
| Scene Tracker: Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Time and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Conflict | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | In a car headed for CA | 17 yrs. old; 7 months pregnant; superstitious about sevens | To use the restroom | Riding in a car | X | -/+/-/+ | Broken-down car; rusted floorboards |
Case Study: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the theme is, “Man has a collective tendency to go overboard toward generosity and forgiveness.” Aunt Polly embodies this theme in the first scene, but there are no thematic details to illustrate the point. Therefore, we leave the Thematic Detail Column blank.
| Scene Tracker: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene (SC) or Summary (SU) | Date and Setting | Character Emotional Development | Goal | Dramatic Action | Conflict | Change in Emotion | Thematic Details |
| Ch. 1, SC 1 | Fri. Aunt’s house | T: Small, smart, fast, liar A: Took in dead sister’s son | Escape | Tom/Aunt trouble | X | -/-/+ | |
Tracking Your Story
With your Scene Tracker in front of you, refer to your manuscript and fill in under the Thematic Details Column any and all thematic details in each of your scenes.
The first time you fill in your Scene Tracker, you may not have worked out the theme of your entire project yet. For many writers, the theme does not reveal itself until the first or second rewrite. Therefore, if you do not have a theme, fill in the column with general details and do not worry about details that focus specifically on theme. Plot any details in the first passage that contribute to the overall meaning of that passage or to the entire story. List sights and sounds, smells and tastes, textures and details of your story’s setting. List language details true to the time, such as slang and vocabulary. Attempt to use only the details that reinforce the character, the action, and/or the theme of your story.
In important scenes that turn the action of the story in a new direction, try to incorporate all five senses. Sensory details pull readers into the story in a way that allows them to move from thinking about your story to feeling it. The sense of smell generally evokes the strongest visceral reaction from readers. Use details for emphasis, but do not pile them on excessively—as in all things, balance is key.
Hang a list of the five senses—smell, hearing, taste, sight, touch—next to your computer as a reminder to integrate all of the senses into your scenes.
Once you are aware of your theme, return to the Scene Tracker and mull over each detail, searching for inspiration. Sometimes transforming a bland, trite, or stereotypical detail into an original, specific, authentic one imbued with thematic meaning is easy. But often it is a stretch and involves a shift in perspective.
Imagine your story as becoming a classic and read in the future, and attempt to use specific details that are authentic to the time period in which you are writing. For instance, in the first scene of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we read: “There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.” The roundabout is an authentic and specific detail of the time period in which this story takes place.
By tracking the thematic details in each of your scenes and seeing them hanging on the wall in front of you, the Scene Tracker becomes visual proof of how many scenes support your theme and how many stray away from it.
As we explore theme, you will begin to have a deeper appreciation of how to more deeply develop theme through details.
Choosing the Right Details
In a private consultation, a memoirist related to me the beginning scene of her story with a body lying on the floor with her arms outreached. Though the scene started the story with a bang, it was bereft of details and thus was not exploited to the maximum. The author did have a theme: “Through self-exploration, one is able to reconnect one’s divided soul.” The body on the floor represented the protagonist, who was hollow inside but a comedian and a colorful presence around others. With some plot coaching, the author was able to create a more layered scene by including thematic details of a bright, beautiful painting on the wall and absolutely no furniture, details that served as a metaphor for the protagonist’s life.
The change in this example is subtle; the room still lacks furniture, but adding the colorful paintings shows a deliberate choice in leaving the room mostly empty; it’s not an oversight. Plus, the paintings are in sharp contrast to the emptiness and, therefore, reinforce the theme.
Rather than use clichéd, general, or stereotypical details, you must research for just the right concrete, definite, and specific ones. Try to always stretch for the most original, authentic details you can.
Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, reported that her mentor, Kate Braverman, asked her once what a cliché was. Fitch replied that it was language that had been repeated so often as to be common. Braverman retorted that it is anything you have ever heard, even once. Fitch then set out to write her story using original language, metaphors, and details never before heard.
Write the first draft of your story without thinking about all these details. There will be plenty of time during a rewrite to mull over every detail.
If you would rather move on to the task of filling in your Scene Tracker, move to chapter twenty-five now. If you would like to learn more about theme, read on.
Theme as a Reflection of Your Life
If you are like me and find theme one of the more difficult aspects of writing a story, I suggest that you refrain from shying away from those things in life that are hard, and instead walk right into them. Take out your story and roll around in the pages for a few days or more. Stick with it, even if the rolling turns into a temper tantrum of flailing arms and kicking feet and moans of “I don’t get it! I hate this stuff!” Feel the fire of uncertainty and insecurity, and then go even deeper.
Had enough? All right then! Stand up and brush yourself off. Close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Now another deep breath. Open your eyes. Feeling better? My hope is that, in putting yourself through the emotional wringer, you might have discovered a theme or two that’s present in your life. Since our personal themes generally translate into our writing, by deeply exploring your own themes, you might find the energy of your story—the fire—and its theme. Once that happens and you have a sense of the big picture, everything else will follow.
Repeating Details
Search for just the right detail that supports the theme of your project. Use that detail repeatedly. Each time you recall it, you will be emphasizing your theme.
Philip Gerard says in Writing a Book that Makes a Difference that “plenty of strategies are available to the writer for giving greater weight and impact to the theme and connecting more powerfully with the reader.” One such strategy is to repeat thematic details. In doing so you can emphasize certain details, jog the memory of your readers, and/or establish rhythm. Let me give you a few examples of each of these.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is a story of Dinah, a woman only hinted at in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Let us agree, for our purposes here, that the theme of Diamant’s story is that the red tent is where a girl learns what it means to be a woman. The red tent was where women gave birth and were then pampered for a month afterward, the place a girl entered when she began menstruating, and the place she returned every month thereafter. Thus every time the red tent is mentioned or referred to, it gives thematic emphasis to the story.
An example of how the use of repetitions can jog memory is found in Ursula Hegi’s historical novel Stones from the River, which she wrote as an attempt to understand the part of the common man in Germany after the end of World War I and through Hitler’s rise to power. Keep in mind that although the detail Hegi uses to jog memory is not specifically a thematic detail, she is reminding us of a character who repeatedly deepens the story’s theme through his actions and inactions.
In chapter one, Hegi introduces Herr Pastor Schuler with a common, and thus universal, character trait.
Already he felt the itch of his sweat on his chest and beneath his private parts, a sweat he detested yet was unable to restrain with anything except medicated foot powder that left bone-colored rings on his garments and a chalky trace of dust on the tops of his shoes.
In chapter three, she repeats this detail.
When Herr Pastor Schuler bent and reached beneath the cuffs of his trousers to scratch himself, Trudi [the protagonist] noticed that the skin on his legs was taut and shiny as though the hairs had all been scratched away. Specks of white powder drifted from under his cassock to settle on the polished black tops of his shoes.
She calls up the image again in chapter seven.
… the aging pastor, who had been getting thinner over the years as though—by scratching his scaly skin—he were wearing himself away, layer by itchy layer, until soon only his bones would be left.
And finally, toward the end of chapter ten, almost halfway through the book, his scaly skin again comes into focus.
[The new pastor] wished he could ask the old pastor about [the] confessions, but his predecessor had died the previous year, his poor, scaly shell so dried out that it had barely added any weight to the polished coffin.
Through the repetition of the scaly skin detail, we are not only reminded of who the man is, but we also are placed in the specific moment in the story; all of us can relate to the physical irritation elicited by itchy, scaly skin. The author goes to great lengths to reinforce the theme of the story; she wants us to remember this man over the course of the first half of the book because she uses his actions to show how, little by little, he and the other villagers made concessions as Hitler became more powerful, until there was no turning back. It is precisely this simple detail of scaly skin that drives home the idea that, if such a man as a pastor could fall prey to such human failings, then the same thing could happen to the very people we know and love. Ultimately this theme forces us to ask if we could have made those same small concessions.
Do not simply rely on memory or random personal experiences; research to find the perfect thematic details.
Hegi also repeatedly mentions a monthly chess game Trudi’s father had attended since he had been a boy, one that had been going on for four generations. In this example, the use of repetition establishes a sort of rhythm to the story while reinforcing the theme.
The men would take the chess sets from the birch wardrobe, sit down at the long tables, and play, their silence punctuated only by punched chess clocks and the clipped warning: “Schach”—“Check.” The white tablecloths would ripple, stirred by the rhythm of restless knees. Gradually, as it got warmer in the room, they would take off their jackets and sit there in their suspenders.
The chess game sets a thematic rhythm throughout Hegi’s story. By showing how this ritual changes during the onset of World War II, she demonstrates how a game that had been virtually unchanged for generations was tragically deformed.
See if you can come up with an authentic detail that’s specific to your story, yet universal, so when it is repeated, it draws the readers in and allows them to “be there.” The best details will also reinforce your theme.
I chose these brilliant examples of repeated thematic details with the firm belief that they came to their authors just like yours will come to you: through a lot of hard work and many rewrites. The search for just the right thematic detail will ensure that each new rewrite you undertake will give your story a sharper focus and greater depth. Even better, these sorts of thematic threads make the struggle to identify the themes you live your life by, and thus your story’s theme, worth the time it takes you to discover.
Inspiration for Thematic Details
Writers have a tendency to get stuck in their heads, focus on only themselves, and look inward rather than outward. They obsess about the stories they write to the point that they often miss the details of the world around them. If this sounds like you, try one of these strategies:
- Close your eyes. How many objects in the room you are sitting in can you describe in detail?
- Pull yourself out of a conversation you are having with another person and watch the interchange, as if watching a movie. Memorize the words the other person speaks. Note what she holds back and how she conveys meaning through nonverbal communication.
- Recount the last conversation you had. What did the other person say? Your answers, or lack thereof, may surprise you.
- Look at the details that surround you. What do they convey about where you are on your writer’s journey?
- Consider what you can let go of, both tangible and intangible, to move nearer to whom you dream of being.
- Whenever you are not writing, pay attention to the world around you and what others are saying. Carry a journal with you and jot down notes of your observations. Tune in to the details of the natural world.
These strategies will help you get out of your head and produce gems for the theme, mood, and nuances of your story. Most of a writer’s genius comes in the art of the finesse. How finely you craft your project before you let it go is up to you.