Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime
What does "theme" mean to you?
When someone asks me what the theme of my novel is I say, chicklit invovling mistaken identity. Then they ask for the plot line and I repeat the theme!
What's the different between plot line and theme? Is there one?
Comments
But of course it's not as simple as that ... your theme could be love, or good over evil, or self development or something else entirely and the plot could still involve a mistaken identity.
Genre is which section of the bookshop your book would be found in. Theme is the issues dealt with. Plot is what happens.
The plot may me about a girl who goes missing but the theme may be about regret. Regret from the parents who didn't show her enough love, regret form the girl who didn't do enough with her life, regret from her boyfriend for taking her for granted etc. So the theme wouldn't just be about the protagonist, antagonist or plot, but the whole story itself. When we find the girl she may appreciate life more, her parents may show her and themselves more love and her boyfriend may learn to appreciate her or realise she'd be better without him.
So theme has more to do with the character development arc than the actual story arc. This is may take of it anyway.
*runs*
You thinking of Corrie? :) lol
Thanks all. I guess to some people it can mean different things.
Succinctly explained - thanks PM.
In simple terms:
Plot: mistaken identity
Theme: love
Genre: romance
What's it about: all the above.
Plot/what it's about boy whose baby sister is in an incubator fighting for life finds an ethereal being in the garage of his new house who helps him through this hard period.
Genre = magical realism
Theme = love/friendship
The theme is NOT the plot or what it's about.