Comments on Author Erica Orloff's Blog: So Does It Start . . .

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Hi Edie:That makes sense, too . . . you don't want...

2008-06-01T10:57:00.000-04:00

Hi Edie:
That makes sense, too . . . you don't want to be heavy-handed.

E

Interesting discussion. Michael Hauge says storie...

2008-06-01T09:37:00.000-04:00

Interesting discussion. Michael Hauge says stories should have themes, but it's better not to know what they are as you're writing the book because then you're more likely to write it too heavily, hitting readers over the head with it. I usually know my theme before I write the book, but I don't think about it as I'm writing for that reason.

Hi Ladonna:I think I start with arcs . . . and the...

2008-06-01T07:57:00.000-04:00

Hi Ladonna:
I think I start with arcs . . . and the theme emerges.
E

Jude:I agree with your example . . . I mean, in mu...

2008-06-01T07:56:00.000-04:00

Jude:
I agree with your example . . . I mean, in much commercial fiction, the theme is really going to be secondary. Jon and I are working on middle-grades . . . and consequently, there has to be thematic representation, particularly over a trilogy. Also, most commercial fiction isn't "studied" in literature classes at college . . . But even in commercial fiction, like my editor, they want to see themes a lot of times.
E

Love the post and comments as always Erica. I don...

2008-06-01T00:25:00.000-04:00

Love the post and comments as always Erica. I don't start out with a theme. My characters are my first brush with Story. I love character growth, and writing family relationship stories. When Story comes together, hopefully there's magic inside.

Erica:No offense taken. I certainly didn't mean to...

2008-05-31T22:15:00.000-04:00

Erica:

No offense taken. I certainly didn't mean to imply that anyone was stupid, LOL.

I can just imagine some college professor referring to my private eye's Airstream camper, for example, as womblike, as some sort of surrogate for the mother he lost at age five, or some such nonsense. I would find something like that amusing. Of course, after I rolled on the floor laughing for a while, I might get up and think, wait a minute, maybe that is what that means.

Jude:No offense intended, we look at this differen...

2008-05-31T21:55:00.000-04:00

Jude:
No offense intended, we look at this differently--100%. That would mean that JRR Tolkien was too stupid, too unaware, to see his own symbolism. That he rolled around on the floor laughing that people found it. Maybe the joke is in not admitting it, but I cannot imagine that the author of Watership Down, for example, or Handmaid's Tale, or LOTR had absolutely no idea that there was symbolism and theme in their works. They may not have sat down and said "Ah ha . . . this is my plan." NEITHER, however, are scholars INVENTING it. Tolkien FAMOUSLY did not want to debate the deeper meaning. Famously. He was reclusive about it and utterly involved in his world--yet his phone number was published and he fielded calls all the time--sometimes in the middle of the night from potheads wondering what The Hobbit really meant. No one THAT brilliant is unaware. They may not wish to address it, but it's also not them sitting there laughing either. For that would be less than honest of them. Jon's extended quote points out the awareness. How it's arrived at--different paths for different writers. But to me the special works, the works that rise above, have something.

E

JVZ:I bow to you. Yes.E

2008-05-31T21:47:00.000-04:00

JVZ:
I bow to you. Yes.
E

Jon:I think your Tolkien example illustrates what ...

2008-05-31T21:36:00.000-04:00

Jon:

I think your Tolkien example illustrates what I believe happens much of the time--that teachers and scholars and other readers often assign themes and symbols where none were originally intended. The themes and symbols sometimes emerge in a subconscious, archetypal way, and I imagine some authors roll on the floor laughing when they hear what geniuses everyone thinks they are. I think that's what Hemingway was getting at too.

Erica:Absolutely. All I'm saying is that for me it...

2008-05-31T21:03:00.000-04:00

Erica:

Absolutely. All I'm saying is that for me it does not start with theme. That's not to say my work doesn't have themes or that my recognition of them won't grow as I grow as a writer. I just don't think I could ever start out writing in service of a theme, as you asked in the post here.

I would feel too much like, Shhh! Listen everyone. The Writer has something to say now. To me, the play's the thing, the meat and potatoes, and things like theme and symbolism--if present at all--are the gravy.

Interesting so far ... so does a great book begin ...

2008-05-31T20:58:00.000-04:00

Interesting so far ... so does a great book begin with theme, or end with theme? 'Cause it's in there either way.

About OMATS, Hemingway also said this, "No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin bread. Raisin bread is all right, but plain bread is better. I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true."

It's an interesting needle to thread, I think. King was clearly not an allegorical writer -- he was a storyteller, pure and simple. But The Stand is loaded with (somewhat obvious) symbolism and thematic structure.

I think here's where I come at this from ... when you sit down to write something, you've got to ask yourself, "Why am I telling this story, in this way?" If it's purely organic, and you're tapping into some inner register that just happens to be symbolic and thematic, then congratulations. You're a genius. Tolkien once famously observed that he hated allegory in all its forms and protested that anyone could find deeper meaning in LOTR. But, I mean, c'mon, J.R.R., that book could only have been written by someone who had witnessed mechanized world wars, who was lamenting the loss of pastoral life in England, and who was fiercely religious. Did he mean the symbols? Apparently not. But it's there.

So maybe some people come at it beforehand, and other people come at if afterward, and the true maniacs among us are so good, such pure talent, they are unaware they're even tapping into the deeper human condition. But I think that nobody with any background in literature would argue that great books aren't thematic, and that great stories are emblematic of the human condition. I think it's true that most books will never rise to this level, and certainly genre fiction rarely tries, but I also think that Erica has a good point in that the longer we write, the more experienced we are, the deeper our journey is into the meaning of the stories we tell.

JVZ

Hi Jude:As I've said a million times, whatever wor...

2008-05-31T20:32:00.000-04:00

Hi Jude:
As I've said a million times, whatever works.

All I was pointing out . . . was DOES it start with theme? Which is what one editor posits. And ULTIMATELY, if you are LUCKY and GIFTED and TALENTED . . . and LUCKY (!!!) enough to get an editor and get a book contract, it will not be like a Seinfeld episode. You will not, likely, be able to say you're book is about "nothing." Whether you arrive at what your something is DURING, before, or after is immaterial. That's why I phrased it in the form of a question. I do think the longer people write, perhaps (maybe) they start to see some themes emerge,

E

Suzanne:Hmmmm . . . I really hadn't thought about ...

2008-05-31T20:29:00.000-04:00

Suzanne:
Hmmmm . . . I really hadn't thought about it, but sometimes I do have an issue. A lot of times, it's gay rights. Sometimes it's conspiracy and way (Invisible Girl). But you're very right that you have to beware the preaching/pulpit syndrome.
E

Hi Erica:Here's the actual Hemingway quote I was t...

2008-05-31T20:02:00.000-04:00

Hi Erica:

Here's the actual Hemingway quote I was thinking about yesterday:

There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

In On Writing Stephen King talks at length about theme, concluding with this:

I should close this little sermonette with a word of warning—starting with questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story. The only possible exceptions to this rule I can think of are allegories like George Orwell’s Animal Farm (and I have a sneaking suspicion that with Animal Farm the story idea may indeed have come first; if I see Orwell in the afterlife, I mean to ask him).

But once your basic story is on paper, you need to think about what it means and enrich your following drafts with your conclusions. To do less is to rob your work (and eventually your readers) of the vision that makes each tale you write uniquely your own.

Of course, what Stephen King or Papa Hemingway or an unnamed heavyweight editor or anyone else says about writing is not gospel. It's all opinion, when you get down to it.

To me, the quickest way to sabotage MY stories is to start out writing in service of some theme or another, or to consciously add symbols in the first draft before Story has really gelled. That's not to say another writer might approach the process much differently and perhaps with more success. It's just the only way I know how to work, and I don't think my notions about it are going to change five or thirty books down the line.

Great discussion. I'm wondering about the differen...

2008-05-31T19:26:00.000-04:00

Great discussion. I'm wondering about the difference between themes and issues. Themes are organic and evolve by themselves because we are who we are - a combination of experiences and beliefs that automatically translate to the page. But addressing issues through fiction is trickier. The line between entertainment while teaching and simply preaching is a fine one. Most of my books have both themes and issues. My first one coming out soon is about the waste of war while the second one is about poaching in Zambia. Big issues but told through action so the reader (I hope) doesn't feel preached to but is left with something to think about at the end of the book. Mind you, only the reader will be able to tell me if I have been successful but at least the editors thought so.
The books I have written without an issue feel thin and flakey and we all read lots of those, which we forget as soon as we finish them. I often feel I have just wasted my time when I read one. These days I tend not to finish them but move on. Life's too short.

Marcia:My guess is it's there, somewhere . . . som...

2008-05-31T18:25:00.000-04:00

Marcia:
My guess is it's there, somewhere . . . something that speaks to you. And as you write another five, ten, fifteen years--as we all keep writing--we'll find our themes changing as we change--or becoming even more pronounced.

Funny . . . THE ROOFER is my grittiest book. But here I am writing a middle-grade fantasy series . . . and the themes are the SAME. Clan, family, relationships, secrets, grief . . . what is our purpose. Why are we here?

E

One of my crit partners asked, "What's the theme o...

2008-05-31T18:17:00.000-04:00

One of my crit partners asked, "What's the theme of this book?" I had no clue what she meant because it never occured to me to have one. My other two crit partners raised their hands and replied with similar answers. Doggone it, they knew my book better than me. ;-) The one who asked the question wanted to know because she spotted at least two themes running through my story and wanted to know which was the dominant one.

To this day, I don't know if I write with a theme or what it might be. All I know is when I start writing, I start with an idea in mind and hopefully a lessoned learned by the time I get to The End.