A Writer’s Themes: Why and How Do They Keep Returning?

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When I was asked to contribute an essay to CrimeReads, I was given a choice between compiling a Reading List, or to come up with something pertaining to the Themes in my debut novel, Hollywood Hustle. I can tell you, I hate making lists (even for grocery shopping) but since I couldn’t get anything done without them, I make them anyway. And though, as a new author, I have found other author’s suggestion lists to be invaluable to me, being so new to this game I fear a reading list of my favorite books would be a mere echo of so many better curated ones. Kind of like a recipe for spaghetti: Everybody got one, you don’t need mine. But “Theme” is something I can get behind. 

I theorize that we writers return to the same themes again and again, whether we try to or not, or even whether we’re even aware of it or not. To go a bit further, their origin may be a complete mystery to us. An enigma. I know it is for me. But why do we tend to return to the same themes? A theme is more than a subject, concept, thread, or motif. It derives from the same personal, internal, creative source that our stories do. Without a doubt, the main theme in my book is Redemption. That word is generally defined as “the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.” In other words, an act that gives someone, being ourselves or someone our main character loves, a future that one can survive, and even thrive in. But what is the root of that redemptive act? 

For me, it would be “hope”. Hope as a theme (and its first cousin Redemption) is all over my work. Why? Because it is all over my life. How could it not be? I work in Showbiz. Hope is what gets those of us in this business out of bed in the morning, that the embrace of hope will energize us to perform an act that will redeem our lot in life, especially when we are, as we say in Hollywood, “between jobs”. Trust me, a lot of hope is required for those lean times, and we all endure them. If I really unpack it, I can safely say that Hope is a major theme in the screenplays I wrote before coming to novels. Which begs yet another question: What is driving the need to sit down and write in the first place? (I’ll leave that to the shrinks, since I fear figuring it out could diminish my desire to write.) 

But the more I’ve come to know other authors, the more I’ve also come to believe that the inclusion of repeating themes in our work is fairly universal, albeit mysterious. Perhaps for the simple reason that the presence in our consciousness of that personal “theme” is a reflection of what we’ve most experienced in our lives. When it comes to the notion that a given theme cannot help but seep into our work, it’s because it is almost like a living verb that’s taken up residence inside us.

Since my training and background is in the world of drama, Film, TV, Theatre, I’ve had to think about “theme” a lot, but I don’t think I really understood it until I read the late Sidney Lumet’s book, Making Movies. In it, he stresses the importance of clearly identifying the theme of any piece, as that clarity would guide his creative approach. That is to say, he would get clear on the theme, and then he would know how to tell his story. Of course, as a filmmaker, his responsibility was to determine the visual approach to the work after the script had been written. But Lumet was a prolific writer himself who authored many of his own screenplays, either solo or with a collaborator. He also stated that any theme needs to be boiled down to one or two words, again, for clarity’s sake. But Lumet’s handling of Theme is an element he defines before he would shoot his film, which was his real work. As novelists, we tend not to identify it at least after our first draft. A screenplay is a completely different animal, as it is not a finished work. It is more of a big-a** outline for what comes next. (In filmmaking we like to say the script is one thing, then during shooting it becomes something else, and then in editing it becomes something else, yet again.) 

But, I admit, this is only my hypothesis. So I asked a few colleagues, starting with my friend, best-selling author Alex Finlay, to weigh in. When asked if he tends to return to the same themes, he answered: 

“I don’t go into a novel with a theme in mind, but instead, I’m just hoping for characters and a story that will keep me motivated and interested enough to finish the damn thing.  But at some point, I realized that all of my books – from Every Last Fear to my upcoming If Something Happens to Me – deal with the legacy of trauma, or, more accurately, people coming out on the other side.  Not to get too insufferably literary, but a quote from Hemingway captures my recurring theme:  ‘The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.’”

Now, I won’t presume (nor will I ask) why Trauma has been a recurring theme for Alex, but having read all of his books (minus the yet-to-be-released title) I can easily see what he’s talking about. There is definitely something about trauma that threads throughout Alex’s work. But by his own admission, there is an even deeper angle, something at the end of the trauma: Survival. Writing is a journey of its own, and for Alex it also seems to be a journey through trauma to the ultimate destination of survival. Perhaps “survival” is a better word for what he’s exploring when he writes? That I will ask him. (And Alex, you could never be “insufferably literary”, only compellingly so.) 

Says #1 New York Times best-selling author Lisa Gardner, “For theme, I gotta go with Alex. I never plan a theme in advance. Most of my thrillers have been based around some central question from what would you do if you discovered you were married to a serial killer (my first novel The Perfect Husband) to what kind of person would dedicate her life to finding missing people the rest of the world has forgotten (the Frankie Elkin series). Having said that, many of my novels have shared similar themes which have evolved over time. For a bit, I was definitely exploring what does it mean to be a survivor (from surviving to thriving).”

Ms. Gardner had more to say on the subject that I did not include here, but that also reflected her process of not identifying a theme when she writes, but rather a conscious exploration of her main character’s living condition within the context of a engrossing story (and I will point out there’s that survive/thrive thing again.) 

For Blake Crouch (Dark Matter, Recursion) he may be conscious of wrestling with something in his personal life while he’s writing his story but (like Alex and Lisa) he’s not chasing an identified theme as he writes: 

“In terms of the themes in my writing, I tend to gravitate toward issues I’m dealing with at the time. In this way, my writing becomes a kind of self-therapy. I discover and work through my issues with the characters in my book. However, I often don’t realize what theme/issue I’m tackling until the first draft of the book is finished.” 

I’ll make the claim that these three highly accomplished authors support my basic point; that there’s something elliptical within that drives us through the telling of our stories. I don’t sit down and say, “I’m going to write about redemption today,” any more than Alex declares he’s going to write about trauma. It just comes out that way. But I’ve learned what they share in their creative journeys is that they all tend to explore some theme that involves “overcoming.” So now I have to wonder if that is part of what we experience in the simple act of trying to write a complete story in novel form: Will I overcome this process of writing enough to survive … and thrive? 

I suppose my second novel will feature Redemption, as well, as will my (developing) third. But I won’t know for sure until the story dictates itself to me, tells me where it wants to go, dead bodies, and all. I do know that every time an author finishes a novel, they are better at it than they were on the previous one. Could that be the internal engine driving us? That if we complete this book, we have survived it … and thrived? And therefore, we are redeemed? I really don’t know, because I still don’t know where the hell it comes from. 

As Alex reminds us of what Hemingway said, I do know this, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” 

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