The Anatomy of Story (18 page)

ACCORDING TO HOLLYWOOD LORE
, it was Samuel Goldwyn who said, "If you want to send a message, try West-ern Union." He was right about not sending a message in an obvious, preachy way. But stories with powerful themes, expressed properly, are not only more highly regarded but more popular as well.

A great story is not simply a sequence of events or surprises designed to entertain an audience. It is a sequence of actions, with moral implications and effects, designed to express a larger theme.

Theme may be the most misunderstood of all major aspects of storytelling. Most people think of theme as subject matter, in categories such as the moral, psychological, and social, citing examples such as death, good versus evil, redemption, class, corruption, responsibility, and love.

I don't refer to theme as subject matter. Theme is the author's view of how to act in the world. It is your moral vision. Whenever you present a character using means to reach an end, you are presenting a moral predicament, exploring the question of right action, and making a moral argument about how best to live. Your moral vision is totally original to you, and expressing it to an audience is one of the main purposes of telling the story. Let's return to the body metaphor for story. A good story is a "living"

system in which the parts work together to make an integrated whole. These parts are themselves systems, each like character, plot, ami theme hanging together as a unit bur also connecting in myriad ways to each of the other subsystems of the story body. We have compared character to the heart and the circulatory system of the story. Structure is the skeleton. Continuing the metaphor, we might say that theme is the brain of the story body, because it expresses the higher design. As the brain, it should lead the writing process, without becoming so dominant that it turns the story—a work of artistry—into a philosophical thesis.

How writers weave their moral vision into the story covers a wide range of possibilities, depending on the author and the story form. At one extreme are highly thematic forms like drama, allegory, irony, "serious literature," and religious stories. They place heavy emphasis on creating a complex moral vision, with dialogue that highlights the complexity and contradiction in the characters' moral situation.

At the other extreme are such popular story forms as adventure, myth, fantasy, and action stories. Here the moral vision is usually slight, with almost total emphasis on surprise, suspense, imagination, and the psychological and emotional states, rather than the moral difficulties, of the characters.

Regardless of story form, average writers express their moral vision almost solely through the dialogue, so that the "morals" overwhelm the story. Stories like these, such as
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
and
Gandhi,
get criticized for being "on the nose" and preachy. At their worst, overtly moralizing stories are ponderous, causing their audience to shrink back from the author's oppressive lecturing, clumsy narrative, and lack of technique.

You never want to create characters that sound like a mouthpiece for your ideas. Good writers express their moral vision slowly and subtly, primarily through the story structure and the way the hero deals with a particular situation. Your moral vision is communicated by how your hero pursues his goal while competing with one or more opponents and by what your hero learns, or fails to learn, over the course of his struggle.

In effect, you, as the author, are making a moral argument through what your characters do in the plot. How does this sort of moral argument, the argument of action, work in storytelling?

The first step in making an argument of action is to condense your theme to a single line. The theme line is your view about right and wrong actions and what those actions do to a person's life. A theme line is not a highly nuanced expression of your moral vision. And written as only one line, it can seem heavy-handed. But it is still valuable because it forces you to focus all the moral elements of the story into a single moral idea.

The complex argument of action that you will eventually weave through the story begins, as always, with the seed, which is the designing principle. Just as the designing principle is the key to your premise line, so is it the key to your theme line.

The designing principle is what makes all the actions of the story organic. The trick to using the designing principle to figure out your theme line is to focus on the actions in the story strictly for their
moral
effects. In other words, how do the characters' actions hurt other people, and how, if at all, do the characters make things right?

The same techniques of designing principle that help you deepen your premise will open up your theme as well. Here are just a few.

Traveling

The traveling metaphor, or journey, is a perfect foundation for a moral line because you can embed an entire moral sequence into the line. Huck's trip down the Mississippi is also a trip into greater slavery. Marlow's trip up the river into the jungle is also a trip deeper into moral confusion and darkness. The journey from Manhattan Island to Skull Island in
King Kong
suggests the move from moral civilization to the most immoral state of nature. But the return to Manhattan shows the real theme line, that both islands are governed by the most cutthroat competition, with the island of humans being the more brutal.

Single Grand Symbol

A single grand symbol can also suggest a theme line or central moral element. A classic example of the single moral symbol is presented in
The
Scarlet
Letter.
The letter A that Hester Prynne must wear stands of course for her immoral act of adultery from which the story begins. But it also stands for the deeper immorality to which the story leads, that of the townspeople who hide their own sins and who attack true love with their laws of public conformity.

In
Tor Whom the Bell Tolls,
the single image of the tolling bell signifies death. But the phrase "for whom the bell tolls" refers to another line that is the real key to the designing principle of the story and the theme that comes out of it. That line, from John Donne's
Devotions upon Emergent Oc-casions,
is "No man is an island, entire of itself. ... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." The symbol of man, not as an island but as an individual in a community, organizes this story under one image, and it implies the probable theme line: in the face of death, the only thing that gives life meaning is sacrificing for the individuals you love.

Connecting Two Grand Symbols in a One-Line Process

Connecting two symbols gives you the same benefit as the journey: the symbols represent two poles in a moral sequence. When this technique is used, it usually signals a declining morality. But it could be rising.
Heart of Darkness
uses the technique of the two symbols but also adds the traveling metaphor to express its theme line. Implied in the two-symbol title are the dark heart and the center of the moral darkness, both of which suggest an investigation into what constitutes human depravity.

Other designing principles—units of time, use of a storyteller, a special way the story unfolds—can also help you clarify your theme line. Let's re-turn to the designing principles of the stories we discussed in Chapter 2 to see the possible theme lines they produce.

Moses, in the Book of Exodus
■
Designing
Principle
A man who does not know who he
is
struggles to lead his people to freedom and receives the new moral laws that will define him and his people.

■ Theme Line
A man who takes responsibility for his people is rewarded by a vision of how to live by the word of God.

Ulysses

■ Designing Principle
In a modern odyssey through the city, over the course of a single day, one man finds a father and the other man finds a son.

■ Theme Line
The true hero is the man who endures the slings

and arrows of everyday life and shows compassion to another person in need.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

■ Designing Principle
A group of friends experiences four
Utopias
(weddings) and a moment in hell (funeral) as they all look for their right partner in marriage.

■ Theme Line
When you find your one true love, you must commit to that person with your whole heart.

Harry Potter Books
■ Designing Principle
A magician prince learns to be a man and a king by attending a boarding school for sorcerers over the course of seven school years.

■ Theme Line
When you are blessed with great talent and power, you must become a leader and sacrifice for the good of others.

T
he
S
ting

■ Designing Principle
Tell the story of a sting in the form of a sting, and con both the opponent and the audience.

■ Theme Line
A little lying and cheating are OK if you bring down an evil man.

Long Day's Journey into Night

■ D
esigning Principle
As a family moves from day into night, its members are confronted with the sins and ghosts of their past.

■
Theme Line
You must face the truth about yourself and others and forgive.

Meet Me in St. Louis

■ 
Designing Principle
The growth of a family over the course of a year is shown by events in each of the four seasons.

■ 
Theme Line
Sacrificing for the family is more important than striving for personal glory.

Copenhagen

■ 
Designing Principle
Use the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to explore the ambiguous morality of the man who discovered it.

■ 
Theme Line
Understanding why we act, and whether it is right, is always uncertain.

A Christmas Carol

■ 
Designing Principle
Trace the rebirth of a man by forcing him to view his past, his present, and his future over the course of one Christmas Eve.

■
Theme Line
A person lives a much happier life when he gives to others.

It's a Wonderful Life
■
Designing Principle
Express the power of the individual by showing what a town, and a nation, would be like if one man had never lived.
■
Theme Line
A man's riches come not from the money he makes but from the friends and family he serves.

Citizen Kane

■
Designing Principle
Use a number of storytellers to show that a man's life can never be known.

■ 
Theme Line
A man who tries to force everyone to love him ends up alone.

SPLITTING THE THEME INTO OPPOSITIONS

The theme line is your moral argument focused into one sentence. Now you must express the theme line
dramatically.
That requires that you split it into a set of oppositions. You then attach these thematic oppositions to the hero and his opponents as they fight.

There are three main techniques you can use to break your theme line into dramatic oppositions: giving the hero a moral decision, making each character a variation on the theme, and placing the characters' values in conflict.