What's Your Theme Song?

More and more, I've gotten the urge to write about theme. 

As in, what's yours?

Notice I don't ask what the theme of your work is. I ask what your own theme is.

There's a difference.

Written works can have all kinds of thematic material in them, of course. They can be metaphorical, symbolic, transcendent, spiritual...inspiring...enlightening...

You get the idea. And we all had those assignments in school where we read a piece of literature and were directed to discuss "themes," compare and contrast, illustrate with examples, and such.

But I'm talking about something way more basic than that.

Way beneath it, matter of fact.

As in peeling the layers of the onion...to find a crux that goes beyond the surface, and even beyond any deliberate "themes" you're trying to write about...and reveals the central lens through which you write most of your work.

 

I discovered mine very early in my fiction writing career, and it can be summed up in one sentence:

Things are not always what they appear to be.

Now, that sounds almost simplistic, doesn't it?

Almost too "obvious" to be a theme of any kind, for anything, except a very basic short story. Or, perhaps, an essay.

But that simple sentence has been the very backbone of what I write.

All the way from my very first short story, Number Twenty-Seven, in which a mysterious (haunted?) island beckoned to a surfer...and changed everything. 

Including what became of him.

That work was a high-school short story that may have inadvertently been the very first "write your own ending" approach; I left the story so vague at the end that, when I finished reading it in front of the class, everyone asked, "What happened?"

To which I answered, "What do you think?"

And my English teacher got a very pleased expression on her face.  

Creative, it was. Conclusive, it wasn't.

I entered that story in a contest. It didn't win. (!)

So, in the ensuing years, I have endeavored to know the ends of my stories, and make them very clear. And that approach tends to work much better in the real world of publishing. 

But the stories are still based on the same sentence.

Things are not always what they appear to be.

From this sentence has come most of the body of work I have now...

...and has also developed into a subtheme that, it must be said, encompasses my favorite stories and has engendered more than a few surprises.

I'll talk more about how that happens next time!

So...don't be shy. Tell me about your theme song in the comments!

Janny