I think I look for plot for my writing according to the themes I want to express.
WHAT ARE THE THEMES IN YOUR WRITING?
Looking back at old NaNo novels, what themes define your work?
or
Looking ahead to your NaNo '08 novel, what themes do you want to embed?
My Life Themes
1. Tribulations can create growth opportunities.
2. Lean on and be leaned on.
3. Self integrity is measured by God's laws, not man's.
4. The meaning and purpose in life is connected to the gospel of Christ.
5. Stay the course with contentment (and commitment). Smile dammit!
6. Good always wins eventually.
7. Protect the children.
8. Take care of business.
9. Beware of the man who doesn't love his mother, wife, and children.
10. Let go and let God.
Holly Lisle posted her themes on her old website.
Her life themes were:
1. People matter.
2. Love and time are what we offer to each other that matters.
3. Death is a bastard!
4. Life is worth living, even though it's painful and scary.
5. Magic is real.
6. Assholes in administration deserve to be hated!
My friend and songwriter has themes in his songs:
1. walk in love
2. freedom costs
3. rebellion
4. waiting
5. let it rain
6. love takes all
7. two hearts beat as one
8. dreams of "the one"
9. back in time
10. controlling destiny
Maybe if you are searching for your 2008 NaNo plot lines, you can start by searching for some themes that are important to you.
jade
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juill. 22, 2008 - 19 56
One theme I find myself exploring time and again is redemption. My characters always seem to be searching for one form of redemption or another. In fact, of the three novels I have slated to be submitted, two deal with redemption, and the third deals with finding purpose in life and finding contentment in God's will. Perhaps those themes recur the way they do because I'm searching for redemption and purpose in my own life. {Shrugs} Or maybe they're just poignant themes that mean something to everyone, and so they're just commonly explored themes.
----------The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everyone else.
- Umberto Eco
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juill. 22, 2008 - 21 09
Unbeatable obstacles, and tragedy associated therein. Actually my completed (first draft anyway) novel is about a girl who does get her way in the end, but literally all of the WIPs/ideas (fourish?) are about characters coming up against unstoppable/impossible forces and flaming out in their eventually failed attempts to beat them. I like tragedies, what can I say?
On the flip side, my characters who do triumph all do so with the help of just one person, usually a lover, so my other theme is that you only need one ally and can do absolutely anything then. Or that love conquers all, just not in the usual sense of the phrase. Then there's the half-formed idea of one of those pairings going sour and that ending in defeat. So yeah: love conquers all. Unless it's unconquerable, in which case you get a tragic death.
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juill. 22, 2008 - 21 20
Well, I only have one novel completed to date, but I can see that there will probably be running themes in my stories/themes I'd like to implement some day. There are others, but here are the ones I can think of:
1. Sometimes you have to do what's right, no matter what the reactions of the people around you are.
----------2. Magic is real.
3. It's okay to never forget what someone has done, but you must learn to forgive them.
4. Life can be a bitch, but it's how you deal with it that matters.
5. Always listen to your heart.
NaNo 2006 = Cloudburst = 14k
NaNo 2007 = Redeeming Pandora's Curse - WINNER
NaNo 2008 = The Elemental Chronicles: Earth
My Writing Blog: Illuminated Words
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juill. 22, 2008 - 21 43
Some of the themes I seem to revisit again and again;
1) People aren't who they seem, even to themselves.
2) Talent is no match for experience.
3) Super powers used as a metaphor for "becoming an adult".
4) What we want and what we need are rarely the same.
5) People are naturally distrustful.
6) Love is great, but is not a cure-all.
7) Only villains refuse to re-examine their beliefs and actions in light of new evidence.
8) In their own minds, everyone is a hero.
9) Everyone has an ulterior motive. EVERYONE.
10) The line between "hero" and "villain" is not your goal, but what will you NOT do to achieve it.
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juill. 23, 2008 - 07 30
Love
Compassion
Insanity o.0
Being more than you appear
Learning to love yourself
...as *flowers, rainbows and bunnies!!* that sounds, most of my stories carry a very dark tone
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juill. 23, 2008 - 08 04
I suppose, if I were to say what themes my stories and poems have, the list would be:
----------1. No one is alone in this world – and they shouldn’t be
2. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear
3. Emotions are natural and should be expressed
4. Doing what’s right isn’t easy, but it’s worth it
5. Knowledge is power
6. God is everywhere
7. Our pets are members of our families
8. Music is beautiful and special ^_^
___
NaNo 2006: Steel Bars - 59,233 words
Screnzy 2007: The Enchanted Forest - won
NaNo 2007: Turning Beetles into Buttons - 51,949 words
Screnzy 2008: Simple Gifts - 43 pages total & Butterfly - 9 episodes
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juill. 23, 2008 - 08 15
The biggest theme in my stories is life isn't always what you think it is. I'm constantly forcing my characters to change their views.
----------"One does not simply walk into Mordor."
"In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!"- LotR
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juill. 23, 2008 - 08 23
One theme shows up in just about every novel I've written:
Family is important.
I find this theme is often lacking, especially in the fantasy genre. I remember this theme is touched on in the Shannara books, with devoted siblings, but that's about it. You might have a character with two or three family members who play a part in the story, but many characters are estranged from their family, don't have a family, or don't know who their family is.
Even where I have a character with no family, the lack of family and the longing to have one really shape him.
----------"Be nice to the imaginary people. Don't kill too many." -- e-mail from my youngest sister, June 23, 2008
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juill. 23, 2008 - 09 38
1. Some things are worth fighting for, no matter what.
2. Knowing who you are depends on not forgetting where you've been.
3. Connect with other people.
4. Sometimes people really are just BAD.
5. Being who you were meant to be isn't just going to happen.*
6. Loyalty to friends and values trumps everything.
* This one creates many interesting philosophical debates, as the next question is usually "Well, then is that *really* who we are meant to be?" Well I don't know the answer to that... but when you come down from the great questions of -fate- vs. -destiny lying in a man's own hands-, you realize that whatever the answer really is, being who you are supposedly "meant to be" is hard, particularly for the majority of us, who include accomplishments and/or morals in our idea of who we are. So in our day-to-day lives, the really answer doesn't really matter - it feels to us, at least, like we have to put effort into being our true selves, so we ought do so daily (whether or not, in reality, fate has a hand in it), because if it *feels* like we're working at it, something must be right...
And the philosophical debate proceeds in circles as I find that for the plot to go anywhere, my characters must get off their lazy butts and do something about theirs situation if things are going to turn out ok...
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juill. 23, 2008 - 10 52
Upon reading this, I've realized I've only been working on fleshing out one theme then I have the other ones. I'm sure they'll be imbedded in there -- i just need to figure out what they are. xD Sometimes writing and plotting at the same time can give a girl a headache. But anyways, here's my main theme:
The line between good and evil is not as easily classified as black and white.
So time for me to get out my magic eraser and blur that line until I've stretched it all the way to China. ^^
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juill. 23, 2008 - 11 21
The first one is my favorite line from a song ever, and basically the saying that runs my entire life.
1. There's no love in fear.
2. Women are evil (this probably needs further explaining)*
3. Love exists.
4. Love will not always save you.
*I have found that it is generally the female characters who end the relationships or ruin peoples' lives throughout the course of my writing. Perhaps a little too much personal experience with bad women?
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"For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live. And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about." -Maynard James Keenan
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juill. 23, 2008 - 13 44
ooo, that song wouldn't happen to be "I will follow you into the dark," would it?
I love that song :) a couple of my best friends sang it in our school's variety show and i fell in love with it. It's truly spectacular.
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juill. 23, 2008 - 13 52
don't sweat it ;), having only one theme is not only ok, but also really good in some cases. If you can focus on one moral and make it really strong and clear, that's probably better than having a lot of really subdued messages. No need the flesh out the smaller ones - they'll come out by themselves as you write ;).
Personally, I didn't flesh out any clear themes, but as i reviewed my story line and tone, i realized which of my values and beliefs i was trying to communicate.
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juill. 23, 2008 - 14 14
Wow, I actually have no idea what my themes are. It's a parody of typical fantasy, and the entire point of the story is pretty much that they don't actually accomplish anything on their quest. The characters do change a bit, but there's not really any big important lessons they learn. There's probably a theme hiding in there somewhere, but I don't know where.
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juill. 23, 2008 - 14 50
Themes that come to mind when looking at the overall idea...
1. Stories are everywhere.
2. There are lies, damn lies and true-story-swear-to-God lies.
3. Heroic people are often a little psychotic, which can be good or bad.
4. There are more important things than following your dreams.
5. Life is cheap, and death can come even to main characters.
6. People in power doing extreme or immoral things for the greater good/to survive as a power. (Not a moral or a statement about powerful people, just something that keeps coming up for some reason.)
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juill. 23, 2008 - 22 17
1. Imperfect characters are way better than perfect characters... or people, for that matter.
2. If you want to save some characters, you've got to kill others (must be because my book has demons...)
3. You may not end up with what you want, but rather what you need.
4. Love isn't always enough
5. There is no magic. (Just in my book, lol. Though I use science to establish magickal things)
6. Different viewpoints - Some characters forgive and forget, some forgive, and some can't do either.
7. No one is completely good or evil.
8. I have a different definition of "happy ending" than my characters do (because in romance, if they're together, I say they're happy, regardless of all the relationship issues they have).
9. Family is important, but it isn't always the family you're born into, rather the family you make for yourself (which is weird as hell, because I have an excellent family life, but considering my adopted main character's biological parents are a conniving businesswoman and a power-hungry child abuser, and half of my characters have crappy family lives, it fits my stories).
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juill. 23, 2008 - 22 25
Stop to smell the roses?
Adventure is good for the body, mind, and soul?
LIVE every day!?
Peace out?
Aimless ambling gets you no where?
Just breathe?
Can't get ahead from looking behind?
Any of these work for you?
jade
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juill. 23, 2008 - 22 46
Duality, good vs. evil (none of my characters are ever evil, only murky shades of grey), and finding love always seem to come up in anything I write. And for a while I had to forcibly keep thoughts on faking part of your personality/self out of my writing, because I wrote a story focused around the idea.
----------Senioritis -- Four men in a coffeeshop. They write a novel.
Echo Flux -- Peasant girl saves the world with SCIENCE!
(That was NaNo 07. Screnzy?)
Ballroom Blitz -- The kind of highly-meta play that gets written by a student in Tech Theatre.
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juill. 24, 2008 - 06 19
I love that song :) a couple of my best friends sang it in our school's variety show and i fell in love with it. It's truly spectacular.
No, it's actually Tool's "Pushit". But the one you mentioned is one of our "songs" for my girlfriend and I.
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"For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live. And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about." -Maynard James Keenan
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"For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live. And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about." -Maynard James Keenan
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juill. 24, 2008 - 06 20
Just look at Michael Crichton--almost all of his books revolve around advancing technology going terribly wrong.
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"For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live. And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about." -Maynard James Keenan
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"For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live. And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about." -Maynard James Keenan
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juill. 24, 2008 - 10 50
My first NaNo was a science-fiction story about a human test subject who escaped from a lab, kind of like Frankenstein in the future. My second was a sprawling fantasy epic about a revolution. My third was an intimate, first-person rumination narrated by a nun. Yet all three share common themes:
1. *You* can't fight city hall, but *we* can.
2. One violent man is a terrorist, but ten thousand violent men are an army.
3. Being determines consciousness. A prisoner can free his mind all he wants, but he is still behind bars.
4. People--and entire societies--generally don't give up harmful habits unless they absolutely have to.
5. Religious belief can be an instrument of liberation or a weapon of oppression, depending on who wields it.
6. You can work hard your whole life and end up with nothing to show for it except debt and poor health.
7. It's not power that corrupts, but institutions of power that attract and reward corrupt behavior.
...but my novels are actually have a lot of humor...well, attempts at humor. Really.
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"A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices." --Pablo Neruda
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juill. 24, 2008 - 13 11
1. Adventure springs from curiosity and choice: reluctant heroes have no place in my world.
2. Travel comes with loss: and yet some still do it.
3. Love is borne by "true attachment and constancy" (Persuasion by Jane Austen describes it perfectly): and is not based on circumstances, intimacy, time spent together or being a couple. A strong belief of mine among friends and lovers.
4. Running against time: do you fight it, or treasure it?
5. First impressions frequently invite the unexpected
6. The best things in life are unexpected
7. Life is unpredictable: and I tend to focus on the positive side of things.
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juill. 24, 2008 - 18 33
What a great question!
I don't have to look very hard to see a recurring theme in my work: Family rocks!
Whether it's loving siblings that go on an adventure together, or a broken family that finds a way to mend, family is what it's all about.
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juill. 24, 2008 - 22 02
Family is important.
I find this theme is often lacking, especially in the fantasy genre. I remember this theme is touched on in the Shannara books, with devoted siblings, but that's about it. You might have a character with two or three family members who play a part in the story, but many characters are estranged from their family, don't have a family, or don't know who their family is.
Even where I have a character with no family, the lack of family and the longing to have one really shape him.
Me too--this lack is the driving force for one of my chars. Defines interactions, defines vocation, can sometimes influence how quickly a decision is made--it means a lot. (I am deliberately using no pronouns here I do not want to give anything away to those who read some of my plot before I took it down from the forums and will be reading more later.)
----------"When she said she was dying to find out what happened next, she wasn't kidding...The gotta. ..You didn't know exactly where to find the gotta, but you always knew when you did." Stephen King, Misery
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juill. 24, 2008 - 22 06
1. *You* can't fight city hall, but *we* can.
2. One violent man is a terrorist, but ten thousand violent men are an army.
3. Being determines consciousness. A prisoner can free his mind all he wants, but he is still behind bars.
4. People--and entire societies--generally don't give up harmful habits unless they absolutely have to.
5. Religious belief can be an instrument of liberation or a weapon of oppression, depending on who wields it.
6. You can work hard your whole life and end up with nothing to show for it except debt and poor health.
7. It's not power that corrupts, but institutions of power that attract and reward corrupt behavior.
...but my novels are actually have a lot of humor...well, attempts at humor. Really.
Your comment on religion really resonates with me dronology--I never thought of it that way but I do very much believe that and it influences my current novel a lot. Not in termsof societies as you are looking at it but individual people--religion to some people means a lot of "shoulds" and "shouldnt's" and can be oppressive. And it is a great comfort to some, in my experience those who don't let their canon absolutely define what they believe, but give it some personal thought. It is my experience that some of the most outwardly religious people are also some of the most close-minded ones, and the same principle works in reverse.
----------"When she said she was dying to find out what happened next, she wasn't kidding...The gotta. ..You didn't know exactly where to find the gotta, but you always knew when you did." Stephen King, Misery
"When she said she was dying to find out what happened next, she wasn't kidding...The gotta. ..You didn't know exactly where to find the gotta, but you always knew when you did." Stephen King, Misery
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juill. 24, 2008 - 22 16
And all right, since I have gotten so much into this thread I must talk briefly about my own novels themes and some of the beliefs that influence me as I write. As I have said before, I believe that heartfelt religion and Religion are two different things. In other words, your relationship with whatever god you choose is personal and not institutional, and you have to figure it out for yourself. I also believe that animals and children tap into a sort of magic that adults, in the sheer process of becoming adults, lose if they don't consciously choose to hang on to it. And animals are some of the best friends we humans can have. Go out there and adopt a pet!
1) Someone else said it very well for me, "Courage is not the abscence of fear."
----------2) Love fixes a Hell of a lot, though it does not save everything.
3) Be honest. Always be honest. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
4) A true friend is priceless.
5) (And these last two are the biggies): Live every single day as if it were your last, because it might be. Take that trip, wear that dress, tell that person you love him or her. Absolutely no regrets.
6) Appearances can be very deceiving. (Cliched I know, but so true so true I had to use it.)
"When she said she was dying to find out what happened next, she wasn't kidding...The gotta. ..You didn't know exactly where to find the gotta, but you always knew when you did." Stephen King, Misery
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juill. 25, 2008 - 11 02
Good people sometimes do bad things.
Appearances are deceptive.
Love will find a way.
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juill. 25, 2008 - 12 54
1) People aren't who they seem, even to themselves.
2) Talent is no match for experience.
3) Super powers used as a metaphor for "becoming an adult".
4) What we want and what we need are rarely the same.
5) People are naturally distrustful.
6) Love is great, but is not a cure-all.
7) Only villains refuse to re-examine their beliefs and actions in light of new evidence.
8) In their own minds, everyone is a hero.
9) Everyone has an ulterior motive. EVERYONE.
10) The line between "hero" and "villain" is not your goal, but what will you NOT do to achieve it.
i like!
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juill. 25, 2008 - 15 11
1) It's better to be evil than stupid, but if both sides are stupid, team up with the good guys. (I'm worried as this is a common theme of mine that I don't necessarily agree with-- it's just fun exploring. Esp when combined with #2).
2) Good and evil are rarely as black and white as they seem.
3) There are things worse than death.
4) Pissing off someone for far too long is a really bad idea. (see #3)
5) Household items make very effective weapons in a pinch. In fact, if you use a household item instead of something usually considered as a weapon you have a better chance of survival. (sub-theme: Intelligence and innovation trumps tradition)
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juill. 27, 2008 - 02 26
I haven't written many novels in my day (this is only my third time at NaNo this year, and last year was a total flop), but I have written many other short stories and gotten ideas of stories which share themes. Let's see...
One of the biggest themes in practically any piece of good length will center on differing perspectives on the world, like seeing the world differently today than what you saw yesterday. This is especially easy in stories that involve fantastical or unexpected circumstances that make my characters stop and think about what's really going on in their lives. This is one of my favorite themes and I was inspired after taking notice of one of my favorite authors doing something similar to a lesser degree.
A related theme to the above is being able to see something you've owned or someone who've known for a long time in a different way, especially ways that you never expected. My characters tend to rely on each other for support, though I'm not sure if that'd be considered a theme, though I guess a theme out of that would be that my characters tend to not have a choice in this matter and whether they like it or not will have to get help from others.