Your Story's True North

That idea is what you need to have in mind from the very beginning. That idea is to your story like the North Star is to someone trekking through a forest at night. It is a guide to keep you heading in the right direction, to keep your story off those slippery side roads of pointless scenes, meaningless dialogue, and extraneous details. The more you can craft the plot, the setting, the characters’ interaction, and the imagery in your descriptions to point to that single idea, the more unified and powerful your story will be.

We call the single idea that shines through a story its theme. The most memorable stories have strong themes, but they never state them directly. They merely hint at them through the telling of the story. The best stories convey a powerful, universal theme that all readers can relate to, a theme that leaves them feeling a little wiser. Let’s examine the way a famous short story does this.

In O. Henry’s story “The Gift of the Magi,” Della sells her most precious possession—her long hair—to buy a gold watch chain for her husband, Jim, for Christmas. But when the time comes to exchange gifts, she finds out that he has sold the watch, a family heirloom, to buy her a pair of beautiful jeweled combs—combs that she cannot wear with her new short hairstyle. O. Henry comes close to stating the theme at the end of the story. He says that Della and Jim were like the magi, the wise men who brought their treasures to Christ, because they unwisely gave up their most expensive treasures for each other. But then he counters that statement by saying, “Of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest.”

But O. Henry doesn’t say what the real message of his story is. Why was it wise for this young couple to sacrifice their treasures for each other? We have to read deeper into the story to figure that out. We have to take into account all of Della’s thoughts and actions throughout the story—her tears at having no money to buy Jim a present; her longing to give Jim the watch chain as something “worthy of the honor of being owned” by him; her difficult decision, made standing before the mirror, to have her long hair cut and sold; her excitement about Jim’s homecoming as she prepares his dinner; and her statement to him: “Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered, but nobody could ever count my love for you.” Aha. Now we see it. Della was wise because she loved enough to give up everything for the one she loved. When we read a little deeper, we see that the story is not really about wisdom after all. It’s about sacrificial love.

We could state the theme of O. Henry’s story this way. True love is willing to sacrifice its most precious possession for the one it loves. That is a great statement. But what if O. Henry had written that at the end of his story? Wouldn’t that have taken some of the power and punch out of it? Because this theme was O. Henry’s guiding star throughout the writing of his story, he didn’t have to state it directly. The whole story points to it so truly that we can’t miss it. And it’s a story we have a hard time forgetting.

Looking for More Articles?