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. Read on...

Tips on Theme

How can you make your story’s theme as powerful as O. Henry’s in “The Gift of the Magi”?

Plan First

Plan your theme first. Just as you would check a compass before starting out on a hike to make sure it’s set toward true north, so you need to know your story’s direction clearly before you begin writing it. Without having a clear idea of the message you want your story to convey, it will end up disjointed, confusing, or worse—having a message “tacked on” at the end as an afterthought.

Read on...

 

Excerpt from Courage By Darkness, by Jeri Massi

This month’s book excerpt is from chapter two of Courage By Darkness by Jeri Massi. The theme of the novel (including this excerpt) is facing one’s fears and finding true courage.

One Sunday morning after Sunday school, I thought that maybe I would stay in the classroom until Annette went by in the hallway. Then I wouldn’t have to walk with her or listen to her. So I stayed really quiet by the back desks, and I saw her go past in the hallway, looking for me. You might wonder why I never just told Annette that I didn’t want to be friends with her, but there are two reasons: for one thing, I’m a chicken, and for another, Annette would beg and bully and maybe even threaten to tell on me. Usually whenever she says she’s going to tell on me, I’m not even sure what I’ve done. But I get scared; so I give in and do what she wants.

Anyway, just when I thought she might be gone, in walked Mrs. Bennet, who I guess was collecting all the lesson books or something. She almost missed me; then she stopped and tilted her glasses down on her nose to see me better and said, “Why, Jean, are you hiding from someone?”

I didn’t want to lie, so I just nodded.

“Who?”

“Somebody.”

She sat down at one of the desks. “Has somebody been unkind to you? Is anybody picking on you?”

“No, I guess not.” I looked down. You really couldn’t say that Annette picked on me, not the way most people think of it.

“Come here,” she said, not sternly. I walked up to her.

“I saw Annette out in the hall waiting for you,” she told me. “Is that whom you’re hiding from?”

I nodded. I figured I would get a lecture about being fair to my friends and being nice and all that, but Mrs. Bennett didn’t say anything for so long that I looked up at her. Upstairs, the organ started playing. That meant fifteen minutes until church started….

“Are you a little bit afraid of Annette?” Mrs. Bennett asked me.

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