Writing from theme... no more writer's block.

kylekmd

kylekmd

Well-known member
You guys are sick of this, I know, but I get PMs about it all the time. So, I'll post it once more.

WRITE FROM THEME.

It will save you weeks, maybe months, of writing and re-writng.

As M.C. Walker points out in his excellent screenwriting book, POWER SCREENWRITING: The 12 Stages of Story Development,

"Theme is the wellspring from which the writer draws all characters, dialogue, subtext, description, action, locations, and transitions. Everything that happens in a screenplay is a direct by-product of the writer's theme."

Trust me, a screenplay written entirely from THEME is so much more emotionally satisfying to read and write. The screenplay becomes a symphony of purpose, emotion and meaning fused by and fueld by the theme.

There, I feel better now.
 
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Put on my miner's hat and went digging in my basement, found POWER SCREENWRITING; I had bought it a couple of years ago, forgot about it until you jogged my memory Kyle! Going to give it a read this next week. :)r

kylekmd said:
... As M.C. Walker points out in his excellent screenwriting book, POWER SCREENWRITING: The 12 Stages of Story Development,....
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On my rewrite, I decide to change the theme from "not everything is black and white" to "not everything is as it seems" and I went from 110 pages and had to cut down to 58 pages.

THEME is everything if it's nothing (don't ask me what that means).

Thanks, Kyle.
 
I'm reading the stephen king book, and I'm suprised that he doesn't worry about theme until the 2nd draft. that's when he sees what his stories are about, then he enhances the elements in the story that support the theme.
 
He also writes off the cuff (thus his thick books that scare me off, LOL). Something to keep in mind though is that a novel can go on and on and on and on (as King's books do, LOL) in length, whereas a script is pretty tight in terms of its min and max length, and thus need for tighter structure; perhaps even with theme from the start. But it is an interesting point about King's waiting on theme until he sees what his story is about.

Tormod said:
I'm reading the stephen king book, and I'm suprised that he doesn't worry about theme until the 2nd draft. that's when he sees what his stories are about, then he enhances the elements in the story that support the theme.
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But what do you guys think about finishing a first draft by just writing it out as it comes, and then go indepth and locate the themes that made you want to write the story? is this just as good as getting the theme from the start, or will it make for a LOT of unneccesary rewrites?
 
For me theme is what motivates me to write the story from the start, and keeps me writing scenes. But if your suggested method works for you, give it a try. Whatever method gets a person through a first draft rather than no draft is a good method, imho, LOL.

Tormod said:
But what do you guys think about finishing a first draft by just writing it out as it comes, and then go indepth and locate the themes that made you want to write the story? is this just as good as getting the theme from the start, or will it make for a LOT of unneccesary rewrites?
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Just finished reading that book. Excellent read. I am keeping this book in my top 5 reference books for screenwriting, always close at hand. ~randall
 
It's just an approach. A lot of people do it the other way quite successfully--write the story first and let the theme emerge.

I need to be prepared and know where I'm going, it's just the way I'm hard-wired. Makes things so much easier for me later. Plus, I can't remember the last time I've had writer's block using this approach.

Some people turn out great work the other way.

We're not all like S. King, though. Few are.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO WRITE. DO IT REGULARY. AND FINISH YOUR SCRIPTS. IT's THE ONLY WAY TO BECOME A BETTER WRITER.
 
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kylekmd said:
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO WRITE. DO IT REGULARY. AND FINISH YOUR SCRIPTS. IT's THE ONLY WAY TO BECOME A BETTER WRITER.
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Yep. We can discuss theory and technique till the Sun balloons into a red giant and swallows up the Earth, but it really all comes down to just sitting your bum down into the chair and writing.

I find that sometimes I'll be afraid that the scene I am about to start writing is going to suck and that I'm not prepared. When I actually get going there are usually all kinds of things that just come out that I couldn't have planned for, but are totally valid lines of dialogue or description that add to the story in beneficial ways.

My problem is that I over think and over analyze things a bit much. Sometimes it is just better to write and see where it takes you, even if you don't have a particular scene or sequence totally mapped out yet. A lot of times, just sitting down and forcing myself to get in the heads of the characters squeezes out some great stuff that sets me on the right path in the long run.

For me, knowing my theme from the get go helps me stay on course when I get stuck since it seems to be the unifying principle of the story. When I hit a weak spot in my outline I can at least continue to write from instinct, using theme to keep the vehicle on the road so to speak.
 
I find that I start with what I think is the theme, but then find in the process of writing that the theme was really something else entirely. The second draft is rewriting the first-draft to eliminate the false theme and follow the real theme.

To eliminate the false theme problem on the current screenplay, I spent a lot more time developing the characters and theme (and I'm usually pretty thorough to begin with) to the point of writing a paragraph for every beat in every scene. And yet halfway through writing the screenplay (very boring writing when everything is planned-out beforehand, BTW) I again found that the real theme remained hidden until the characters were talking and moving around on page.

So I'm still not a believer that you have to start with a theme. You need to have one when you're finished, and having one to start off with makes writing a lot easier. But I think you'll find it eventually. And if you don't then that's probably a good sign that you need to go back and rethink your story.
 
 
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