The Weekend Writer: Using Theme To Help With Writing

Wow, folks, once again it's been a year since I've done a Weekend Writer post.  However, I've been inspired on this subject recently and have a few planned.

This week's inspiration came from a virtual talk author Sharon Dukett gave last month about her memoir No Rules. Oh, you missed it? Lucky you. The Blackstone Library in Branford, Connecticut, which sponsored the event, has made it available on YouTube.

I was really struck by something Dukett said about theme. Now I have written before about how I think many people--writers, reviewers, people who write book marketing copy--don't have a good grasp of what theme is. They use it to mean subject, while some of us think theme has more to do with a world view that adds another level of meaning to a story. Dukett said something that I think supports my argument.

At one point, she explained, she was working with a 170,000 word draft, which she needed to cut down to no more than 100,000 words. How did she do it? She used theme. She realized that the theme she was working with was her own awakening to feminism. She eliminated anything that didn't relate to that.

Notice that she did not say that the theme of her book was feminism. That is a subject so vast it would not have helped her do what she needed to do. She said the theme of the book was her own awakening to feminism, a much narrower concept and one that has a specific meaning in the context of her life. Presumably, it helped her give her memoir a shape that it wouldn't have had if she had just been writing about what happened to her, one event after another.

Theme can help you, Weekend Writers, if you understand what it is.

The Weekend Writer: Make Sure Everything In Your Book Supports Your Story

I keep mentioning that I worked reading into some of my goals and objectives for this year. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Even during stressful, demanding times, there's always room for reading, right?

Well, one of my objectives for Goal 2 Work on YA Thriller is Read YA Thrillers. Sounds great, doesn't it? Recently I started what I thought was a YA thriller as well as a YA thriller-ish piece of science fiction. I didn't finish either one of them. I was always having to stop to read material that didn't seem to have anything to do with the story I believed I was reading. I just couldn't maintain interest.

What, Exactly, Do You Mean, Gail?

For a story to work, everything in it must support it in some way. At the very least, if something appears in a story, it needs to support character, theme, or plot. If it doesn't, it stops the forward momentum of the story. Readers have to pause to take in this new material that doesn't relate to anything they've read before and, they may find, won't relate to much they're going to read.

For instance, eight or ten years ago, the YA blogosphere got hopped up because an agent, whose name I really don't know, went on record as saying that YA needed romance. Indeed, there is a lot of romance, or at least romantic entanglements, in YA across the board. But if the romance doesn't support the story, the writer has to stop the story to talk about young love.

Okay, the first book I quit reading involved a murder and potential victims getting weird murder-connected communications a year later. I thought that sounded thrilling. I thought that was the basic story, these young women getting messages and perhaps being targeted. I may have been wrong, though. The story may have been about something else, something deep and not thrilling. Especially since there was a lot of love interest going on in the first more than third of the book. There was a torn-between-two-lovers situation and another couple. I read quite a bit, wasn't clear on what these romances had to do with the story I thought I was going to read, and if the story was something else, I never figured out what it was. I may have got almost to the mid-way point on this one.

The second book I quit reading involved four young people fighting a terrorist group plotting attacks in the future. Thrilling! And sci-fi, which is good for me to read because I have an adult sci-fi project to shop around at some point. But the action kept stopping so characters could talk about how one of them was bi-sexual, one was gay, and one was transgender. We also had to pause for the hints that some of these characters were attracted to one another. It wasn't clear to me how this supported the terrorist story or how it was going to. So I gave up on that one, too.

All the romantic and quasi-romantic diversions in these books kept slowing the story down because they didn't seem to be about the story. Especially with the science fiction book, I felt as if I was sometimes reading filler.

An Example Of Romance Serving Story

Before some of you write me off as not appreciating romance, consider a book in which I think it works very well, because it is definitely part of the plot of in a story.

I happen to have just finished the adult novel My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. In this book the narrator and her sister are both attracted to the same man who is only attracted to one of them. A twist on the torn-between-two-lovers scenario that is so popular in YA. In this case, this romantic entanglement absolutely supports the plot, which is all about how the narrator will deal with her murderous sister. It creates tension. It definitely makes readers want to move on. It made this reader, anyway.

It's not just romance that can stop a story. Humor writers have to be careful to note use random jokes. If material doesn't support character, theme, or plot, it doesn't matter how funny it is, it will distract readers and discourage them from continuing reading.


This explains why a couple of days ago I edited out a lengthy HGTV joke in Chapter 17 of a new project. It didn't do anything and would have left readers wondering what it was doing there and if they needed to remember it going forth.

Reading For Research Month, Day 11

Today at Reading For Research Month we have another post on theme, this one by Janie Reinart. Earlier Baptiste Paul called theme "the big ideas" in a story. Reinart writes about universal themes.

I was able to get only one of today's books.

Today's Picture Books

My Beautiful Birds by Susanne Del Rizzo is a very good story set within the world of Syrian refugees. Thematically, I think it's about endurance and the passage of time making it possible to move on. Ah, yuh. That's pretty universal.

Can I use a universal theme in my picture book manuscript? Why, it's interesting I should ask myself that this evening. I was just thinking this morning that I've been working with the same theme for more than ten years now..."Can we control our lives?" Hey, how universal is that? Seriously universal, that's what it is. And, yes, it's the theme of my picture book.

Unfortunately, while I was engulfed in thinking about my work themes, I was driving on a highway and missed my exit. Didn't even notice until I realized I was almost home.

ReFoReMo Books Read To Date: 27

The Weekend Writer: Theme And Climax

Last month I did a Weekend Writer post on theme, directing you to material on the difference between subject and theme and theme being about meaning. 

Today I’m directing you to K.M. Weiland’s post What Is the Role of Theme in a Story’s Climax? at Helping Writers Become Authors. This is something I’ve never thought about. Not for a moment. I’m probably the only writer in the English-speaking world who didn’t get much from Robert McKee’s Story, which Weiland refers to. However, she raises some interesting and potentially helpful points.

• Theme makes a story more important than just what happens in it. 
• “If your theme is a question, then the climax is the answer.” Sometimes theme is a question. Is there such a thing as a just war? for instance. Is there any hope that we can do our jobs and connect with other human beings? (I’m thinking Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad  books with that one.) How should we live our lives? (Saving thePlanet & Stuff) If your theme is a question and you want to make the climax answer that, it seems as if that would be extremely helpful.
• It would be helpful because, Weiland says, “Creating a thematically sound climax involves much more than the climax itself. In order to create a climax that resonantly answers your story’s thematic question, you first have to build an entire story that asks the right question.”  Meaning, I think, that if you know your theme, and you have a climax in mind that will support that theme, you can build the rest of the story upon that. 

This is dependent, though, on knowing your theme. Many times I’ve read about writers who said they don’t know their themes until the book is done. I certainly didn’t give any thought to theme with my early books.

Theme can’t help you during the writing process, if you don’t know it at that point.

 

The Weekend Writer: Theme. What Is It?

Theme isn't particularly well understood. In fiction, it is not a lesson for readers to learn. That's a sermon or the way teaching material is organized. Nor is it a topic. I've often thought of theme as a world view the writer is dealing with.

The Difference Between Subject and Theme by Steven Pressfield does a very good job of describing the difference between, ah, well, subject and theme, just as the title says. Pressfield does a whole series on theme at his blog.

Also check out Grace Joliffe's post Theme at Practical Creative Writing. Theme, she says, is about meaning.

Many times writers will say they aren't aware of theme until after they've completed a work. These two articles help explain why that's not a good idea.

The Annotated "Saving the Planet & Stuff" Unplanned Post: Ripped From The Headlines!!!

Oh,  my gosh.  The  Saving the Planet & Stuff storyline involves Michael discovering that a major store chain has been selling insulation with mold. The Earth's Wife, the magazine he's working for,  has the opportunity to blow this story sky high, but the new managing editor has kept the story from publisher Nora Blake because he wants to take The Wife in a different direction. Michael finds himself in a dilemma that involves one of the book's major themes--how do we decide what is the right course of action, the right thing to do?

Well, just now I read that Home Depot is phasing out toxic vinyl flooring from its stores! Now moldy insulation that causes hallucinations isn't toxic flooring "linked to a laundry list of ailments." Plus it sounds as if Home Depot is acting pro-actively in requiring the the chemical in question no longer be used in flooring it carries while the company in Saving the Planet & Stuff doesn't. But except for all that, I see a parallel. It's there! I'm not hallucinating. (Well, not much.)

Man, what luck that I republished Saving the Planet & Stuff  a mere two years before this happened so everyone can ooh and aah over how prescient I was, huh? Also, what luck that I still haven't replaced the flooring in my kitchen. When I go shopping, I'll be checking out the chemical content of those vinyl squares I'm looking at.

Update To Add Excerpt

A reader asked for a Saving the Planet & Stuff excerpt related to the mold storyline described above. Ask and ye shall receive!

     "Oh, you're familiar with the story I'm working on?" Doug asked, sounding pleased.
     "Sure. I saw the e-mail about the hallucinations, remember? What kind of hallucinations are we talking about, anyway?" Michael asked.
     "They involve sounds. People have been hearing things," Doug explained.
     "Voices telling them to do stuff?" Michael asked hopefully.
     "I wish! There's no way they could keep a lid on that kind of story. No, these hallucinations involve hearing annoying songs. There was one person who would hear Frank Sinatra singing and see all his furniture dance along."
     "Wow," Michael said appreciatively. "So people have been seeing things, too. And hearing Frank Sinatra. That's bad."
     Doug laughed. "I'd be seeing a doctor if it were happening to me."
     "Isn't it funny the way everyone carries on about how awful heavy metal is, and it's Frank Sinatra who people hear when they're hallucinating?" Michael asked.
     "Ironic, isn't it?"

The Annotated "Saving the Planet & Stuff" Part Ten: Do Environmentalists Play Well With Others?

 Every Day Is Earth Day

Environmentalists have specific interests. They are interests that not everyone will appreciate. I am not a particularly serious environmentalist, yet I had a bit of a rep with my older son's first grade teacher because I wouldn't send disposable items into school. Little Will volunteered to bring in spoons for Ice Cream Sundae Day in the spring. "But your mother will want to send real spoons instead of plastic," Mrs. F. objected. "I'll fix it," Little Will promised. And he did, because I felt guilty about making problems for my child. Then I felt guilty because, sure,  I could have made my kid hand out stainless steel spoons, pick them up after they were used, and bring them home dirty in one of the  grocery bags I save to reuse. I wouldn't have made him wash them. I would have done that. Instead, I bought plastic spoons and sent them directly into the transfer station with just a brief stop in a first-grade classroom.

It's hard to have fun, even with your family, when you believe everything you do matters so very, very much. That's a point made in the following excerpt from Saving the Planet & Stuff. 

     "Aren't golf courses already environmentally friendly?" he asked. "You know, green grass and no buildings. And I bet those little golf carts get terrific gas mileage."
     Nora rolled her eyes. "Golf courses are ecological disasters—all those chemicals to kill weeds. Plus, they're a terrible drain on the water table. But one of my daughters-in-law plays golf with her parents, and I have a grandson who is on his high school golf team. I could play with them, if I knew how. Golfing is just awful, of course, but my kids and grandchildren don't want to go on wildlife tours with us or visit native craftspeople or travel to the desert to view lunar eclipses. We have nothing to do together. And it's amazing how quickly you run out of small talk about drilling for oil in national parks." She sighed. "We need to do a multigenerational eco-recreation article for The Wife. Other people must be having these problems."
     No one I know, Michael thought.
     "There isn't anyone in your family who wants to take the alternative-energy tour with you? Your kids don't want to visit strange worlds?" he asked. "Because a windfarm has got to be a really strange place."
     "Their idea of visiting strange worlds is walking through those foreign pavilions in Epcot at Disney World," Nora said sadly.
     "Oh, those are good."
     A guilty look flashed across Nora's face. "I went golfing while we were on this last vacation. Just once. My son and daughter-in-law took me along when they went to play with her parents. Now, of course, I didn't really know what I was doing because I'd never done it before, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It was like going for a walk with friends on a nice day, but at the same time playing a game."
     "Yeah, I think that's what golf is supposed to be."
     "Then we went out to lunch. I wish I could find a golf course with a vegetarian restaurant. At least if there were a restaurant at a golf course that wasn't involved with destroying other life-forms … well, maybe that would help to make being there seem less wrong."
     Michael stared at her. "Being at a golf course is lame and uncool, but it isn't wrong. Wait. What am I thinking? Of course being lame and uncool is wrong."
     Nora gave him a patient smile. "If we want to see changes made in our world, we can't support and use the very things we want to change. What reason would there be to change them?"
     Michael shrugged. "Microsoft changes Windows every couple of years even though tens of thousands of people use it just the way it is. And I bet Bill Gates doesn't refuse to use Windows while his employees are working on it."
     "I suppose change can come from the inside," Nora said thoughtfully.
     "Or not at all, because golf is just a game."
     Nora laughed. "Nothing is just a game," she said as they got up and started to clear the table together.

Environmental Theme

I've said here before that I'm not sure what an environmental theme is. "Climate change" isn't a theme, to me. It's a topic. The same with "the environment" or "the rain forest." In my humble opinion, theme needs a verb.

Saving the Planet & Stuff has more than one theme. But its environmental theme is that environmentalism is hard. Environmentalism is a lifestyle that requires thought and choices every single day. Michael doesn't become a big-time environmentalist as a result of his experience with Walt and Nora. But he comes to understand what their lives have been about.

The Weekend Writer: Revision Means Getting Rid Of What You Don't Need

I'm in the midst of a big revision right now, and I'm doing things a little differently. I had two influences.

The Plot Whisperer

In The Plot Whisperer Martha Alderson writes about making sure that scenes include dramatic action, character development, and thematic significance. I'm working with a chart to keep track of those three elements in each chapter. What about material that doesn't relate to any of those things?

Some Disappointing Reading

For several years, one of my sons and I have been slowly making our way through a beloved fantasy series. I gave him the next volume last year for Christmas. He passed it on to me earlier this year with the comment, "It's not very good."

I finally started reading it a few weeks ago, and I have to agree with my offspring's assessment. Right away I could tell what was bothering me about the book. There was lots of clever, even amusing, material that didn't relate to any story. It didn't deal with the dramatic action and character development Alderson wrote about, and that early into the story I had no way of knowing if it had anything to do with thematic significance. This somewhat random wordiness made the book  slow reading. It was difficult to tell just what the narrative line was, so I had little desire to follow it. In fact, I've put the book aside.

What Does This Mean For My Project?

Taking the two influences together--Alderson's contention that dramatic action, character development, and thematic significance be included in every scene and my reading of a book with scenes that included a lot of material that didn't relate to any of those things--led me to become hyperaware of material in my manuscript that had nothing to do with action, character, or theme. What I'm finding is that a lot of that material no longer seems necessary. It drags down my reading. So it's being cut.

Right now I'm not missing it.

The Weekend Writer: More On Theme

Well, last week when I started writing about finding your story with theme, I failed to define the term. I don't think I made a big deal about defining other terms, such as characters, but theme is iffy. People often have trouble working out just what it is. What it is not is a moral or lesson. Teachers and people of the cloth deal with lessons. Writers do not.

Theme is more of a life issue that the writer is interested in exploring. To go back to last week's examples, an author writing about the impact of divorce on children should be able to do so without hammering readers with a moral lesson on the subject. Working a story around a quite unsavory character who commits one mind bogglingly generous act can raise the question of whether or not people can redeem themselves in such a way without insisting that, yes, anyone can do it.

In The Plot Whisperer, Martha Alderson says that theme reflects the story's view about life and how people behave, which is a far cry from teaching a lesson about life and how people should behave. She also says that a character's transformation over the course of a story often involves theme.

According to Alderson, if you're working on creating a plot (which we haven't discussed yet) before you sit down to write, you can try to work out where theme comes into the story, just as you work out where action comes in. That will be discussed more thoroughly another weekend. But the point I want to make here is that in order to do any planning with theme, you first have to know what theme/world view you want your story to reflect. So it's better to give that some thought before you start writing then to decide after you've finished that, Oh, I guess that's my theme.

The Weekend Writer: Hunting For Your Story With Theme

If a story is something that happens to somebody and its significance, which is how I define it, theme is a big part of the significance. It helps give a "so what" to the tale.

It's not unusual to hear writers say that they don't give much thought to theme until after they've finished a project. That was certainly the case with me in the early days. However, theme is particularly important in children's and YA writing because theme is part of what defines a children's/YA story versus an adult story. Simply having a child or teenage character does not automatically make a work one for children or teenagers. Even building a book around an experience a child/teenager could be expected to be part of doesn't automatically make it a children's/YA story.

For instance, a story about  child/YA protagonists observing their parents' divorce with a theme relating to the impact of a family breaking up on children can end up being a children's/YA book. A story about child/YA protagonists observing their parents divorce with a theme relating to the impact of a family breaking up on an adult, married couple is almost certainly going to be an adult book. Two similar situations can  end up being two very different books simply because of the theme.

How can theme help find a story? It probably shouldn't be the first element of fiction to be developed. If you have a situation and you've given some thought to characters and setting and from whom's point of view the story will be told, you can start thinking about the significance of  the whole mess in order to generate some more material. The more material you have, the more likely your story will appear.

Try to avoid thinking of theme as one word. As a general rule, with one word you're thinking of a topic, not a theme. "Love," for instance, is a topic. "The destructive nature of love," "the healing nature of love," "love as a redeeming force" could all function as themes. "Love," all by itself, doesn't give a writer much to work with. It's a very static thought. "The destructive nature of love" is far more dynamic. The energy in a dynamically stated theme helps move the story forward all by itself. Will someone be destroyed by love or will someone destroy someone else because of love? Writers starting out with either of those themes know something immediately about what will happen in their stories.

Plot Vs. Theme

For a couple of years now I've been writing about my lack of enthusiasm with the Wants/Obstacles/Resolutions writing plan often lauded as a way of creating plots. I don't find it very helpful because:

1. You're supposed to give characters something to want. Well, what are they supposed to want? And, for that matter, what characters? Then there's the matter of coming up with obstacles for them to overcome so they can get what they want. Who is supposed to come up with those things, anyway? This seems to me like pulling a plot out of...ah...nowhere.

2. It also seems to be less a method of creating any kind of plot than it is a method of creating a formulaic story about overcoming adversity, the adversities being the obstacles to getting what the protagonist wants. Even if you're not talking a traditional problem or victim story, but a journey story, survival story, or romance in which the protagonist wants to get somewhere, live, find love, there's an overcoming adversity aspect if you are simply tossing in problems for characters to overcome. There's nothing wrong with formula stories, if you happen to enjoy the particular formula involved. But telling writers to use a give-them-something-to-want-and-then-keep-it-from-them formula is not really telling them how to create a plot--which is, by the way, supposed to be a series of causal steps leading to resolution and not just problems to overcome.

I recently finished a reread of Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. The author, Rust Hill, says of formula stories "...the formulas were sometimes wonderfully nebulous, like the almost equally famous "Twelve Basic Plots" (or however many it was), which would present one of the so-called "basic" plots in a single word like SEARCH, then start listing: "Search for identity," "Search for loved one," "Search for the father," and so on. The categories never seemed to have much connection to plot; if they had any relevance at all, surely it was to theme."

Rust didn't elaborate on his thinking. But I think the Wants/Obstacles/Resolutions or give-them-something-to-want-and-then-keep-it-from-them format isn't a plot any more than "search for identity" is a plot. It's a formula and formulas, as Rust says, are all about theme. "Searching for identity" is thematic. It's about a story's world view, a world view that determines that individuals need to learn who they are. "Overcoming obstacles so you can achieve your heart's desire" expresses a world view that that type of thing can actually happen.

Formula/theme may have an impact on plot. But it isn't a substitute for plot.

Distorting Truth

I've been thinking of giving a copy of one of my books to a therapist who is working with our ill family member, to give her an idea of what said family member was like decades ago. Except, of course, she wasn't like the woman I wrote about in this way and that way and a couple of other ways. So what would I say to the therapist when I give her the book? "Except for A,B,C, and D you can see what she was like back in her thirties, but she wasn't really like that a couple of decades later"?

I just read this post by Karen Russell at The Orion Blog. Russell is the author of Swamplandia, which I've been thinking about reading because it's an adult book with a child main character, and I'm always interested in how that happens. What's the difference between an adult book with a child main character and a children's book?

But that's not the point today.

Russell begins her post with Whenever I’m asked about the ratio of the real to the fantastic in my work, I will shamelessly plagiarize Flannery O’Connor, who said, “The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.” I struggle with this whole idea of "the truth" of fiction. I'm more interested in theme and story then some concept of the truth of fiction. But I like this idea of distorting the truth of a writer's experience to support theme and story.

So perhaps I will give the book to the therapist with a note that the reality of our lives was distorted to support the story.

After Plot, My Next Big Element To Pay Attention To Is Now Theme

Or maybe the two go hand in hand. I'll get back to you on that.

Check out Figuring Out Theme at Routines for Writers in which a writer/blogger struggles with theme.

For what it's worth, I've heard that some (many?) writers aren't aware of theme until after they finished a work. That is definitely the case with me and my early books. I think now that that's probaby a mistake, particularly for children's/YA writers. There are specific themes that help make a book a children's book rather than, say, an adult book that simply has a child main character. Therefore, I think those of us who are truly setting out to write children's books should be working with them.

NOTE: I am posting less because of your more positive family events--weddings and holiday weekends. Plus this year I'm reading a lot of Terry Pratchett's adult books, giving me less reading to post about. I have a little less material.

YA Vs. Adult Themes

I've written before about the Holmes on the Range books by Steve Hockensmith, because I felt that, thematically, they'd be of interest to older YA readers. You know, the YAs old enough to tolerate plenty of foul language and dead bodies in sad states.

The first three books, I thought, dealt with twenty-something young men (one all the way to twenty-seven) who were seeking a place in the world, deciding who they wanted to be. The whole Who am I? thing works for YA readers.

I just finished the fourth book, The Crack in the Lens. It's still fine reading (Hockensmith does some great work with the word "fudge."), but thematically it's different from the earlier books. Old Red, who still hasn't reached his thirtieth birthday, is no longer intent on becoming a deducifier like his hero Sherlock Holmes. Now he's wondering if he made the right choice in turning his back on cowpunching in order to become a detective. Do Holmes' methods even work? Yeah, there's plenty of whore talk in this volume, but it's the looking back and worrying about regret that make this book more adult than the earlier ones.

What am I going to be?/looking forward--YA

Did I make the right life choices?/looking backward--Adult

Hot damn. There's a new Holmes on the Range story coming out next month.

Using Theme While Writing

Earlier this year, I wondered if starting with theme would be a good way to go about writing. Writing and Ruminating has an interview with Jennifer Hubbard in which Hubbard talks about how she considers theme while writing. It doesn't sound as if it's her starting point, but she does keep it in mind.

Hubbard also has some interesting things to say about short stories: "We keep hearing how people have short attention spans now, how we live in a sound-byte society. And yet, short stories haven’t found as big a market as novels have, just like short films haven’t found as big an audience as longer feature films have. It seems counter-intuitive!"

This interview is part of the 2010 Summer Blog Blast Tour.

Should We Start With Theme? Can It Even Be Done?

I've been going through some old writers' workbooks gathering my thoughts for a project I'm getting started on. I keep finding notes I took on various books on writing that I read over the past few years. I often don't even remember the titles of these things. I'm hoping I absorbed something that I'm not aware of consciously.

I do recall Rust Hill's Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Today I found a note I made while reading Hill: "The theme of the story--begin stating it from the very beginning."

I've been thinking about theme a lot this last year because of a discussion at the child_lit listserv. In a discussion of what makes a book YA, some people said that theme was as important, or even more so, than point-of-view. This, then, would justify classifying a book as YA even when main characters are adults speaking of their adolescent past. I had always believed that that point-of-view was a factor that made a book adult because the main characters were recalling experience through the filter of an adult's mind. YA, I thought, was from the point-of-view of characters who were in the midst of living their young adult lives.

So over the past year I've been thinking that maybe writers should have a good grasp of their theme(s) while they're writing. That note I made sometime in the past reminded me of that. "The theme of the story--begin stating it from the very beginning." Maybe that should be the case with novels as well as short stories, which was what Hill was primarily concerned with in his book.

Here's the thing, though...I've read (and heard) authors say that they're only aware of their themes after they've finished a work. That was certainly the case for me with my early books.

If there are any writers out there, do you think starting with a theme would be a good jumping off point for writing a book? Better than other jumping off points?

Adult Books For YA Readers: Theme

Ah, theme. Theme is a gnarly thing to discuss because so many people think it is a moral lesson. Bah! I spit on moral lessons. Theme, in the Gauthier world view, is an abstract idea about how people live their lives around which a writer constructs a concrete story. That abstract idea doesn't necessarily involve telling readers how to live. It may just raise questions about how we live.

Some themes occur more frequently in books written for specific age groups. Common YA themes, for instance, will often involve: How we separate ourselves from our families; how we are like/different from our families/peer groups; what will we do with our lives; what do we believe in; what will become of us--Pretty much anything that relates to setting out on our lives and moving toward adulthood without actually being adults.

So adult books that include but are not necessarily limited to YA themes may be of interest to YA readers. At least, that's my argument.

Determining theme, of course, is more of an art than a science. For instance, in one of this week's study subjects, The Dead Father's Club, a possible theme could be how we determine a correct course of action, since young Philip isn't really all that keen on offing Uncle Alan but feels he ought to because Dad's ghost is insisting upon it. That definitely fits into the YA theme scheme of determing what we will do with our lives. But another theme could certainly be children's responsibilities toward parents. When is enough enough? Again, this would fit in with YA themes relating to how we separate ourselves from our families.

Yesterday I was talking about Mary Russell in The Beekeeper's Apprentice, who is a nonYA narrator because she is, technically, an old woman recalling her late adolescence, with adult knowledge of what is going to happen. Though Russell has a great voice, it's not the YA voice teen readers are accustomed to. I suggested this might not be a deal breaker because of theme.

In The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Mary Russell's family is dead. This is what you might call the ultimate separation from family. She accepts a new family in the form of her chosen father, Sherlock Holmes. She "chooses" a father (or falls over him on the first page of the book) who is her intellectual equal. Thus we're dealing with a character who is working out how she is like her "family." As Holmes' protege and an Oxford student she is determining what she will become and moving toward what she will do with her life. At the same time, as a theology student and a Jew who embraces her culture, she differentiates herself from chosen dad. Then, of course, since The Beekeeper's Apprentice is a true mystery (The Dead Father's Club isn't), one of its themes deals with the restoration of order, a love of which crosses over between young and adult readers.

Does theme trump voice when considering crossover potential for young readers of adult books? My guess is that it will depend on the reader.

Off the subject note: It has occurred to me that an adult reading this book who couldn't care less about Young Adult literature, might see themes relating to accepting parental responsibilities, parental love enhancing the parent's life, etc. As I said, determining theme is an art, not a science, and themes might be like communists in the 1950s--under every bush.