How Do You Find the Theme of Your Book?

In Part 1, we looked at why your book needs a theme. It gives your story a centre, helps you decide what belongs, and allows the reader to see what the story is exploring beneath the events.

But is there a method to finding that theme? Can you find it even after you have written the whole thing?

Especially when your head is full of ideas and your manuscript seems to contain enough material for three different books?

Short answer: Yes, yes and yes.

The first thing to understand is that you don’t necessarily need to invent your theme. You need to look for it.

If you have a theme identified before you start writing, that works. But if you don’t, that is okay too. 

Your theme often emerges from what you are interested in exploring, whether you are aware of it or not.

If you’ve already written a substantial part of your manuscript, you have an even better chance of finding it. Your writing has probably been leaving clues all along.

Start by stepping back from the individual chapters and looking for patterns. What keeps coming up? What conflicts repeat? What questions seem to follow your protagonist from one situation to another? What do your characters keep struggling with, even when the circumstances change?

Perhaps your protagonist repeatedly chooses security over freedom. Perhaps every important relationship in the story involves trust. Perhaps you keep returning to the tension between ambition and contentment. When the same idea appears in different forms, pay attention. Your manuscript may be trying to tell you something.

It also helps to distinguish between what happens and what the story is exploring through what happens.

A woman leaves home. That’s what happens. But why does her departure matter? Perhaps she has spent her life being the person everyone else needs her to be, and the story is really exploring what it means to become her own person.

The events are the vehicle. The theme is what the journey allows you to explore.

One useful way to uncover it is to ask yourself: Which question won’t leave me alone?

Perhaps it is, Can you love someone without losing yourself? Or, What happens when the life you’ve worked so hard to build is no longer the life you want? Or, How much should we forgive?

You don’t have to put that question into the book. It is for you. It becomes a compass.

But what if you have several possible themes?

Good. That’s normal.

Write them all down. Don’t worry about making them sound clever. You might end up with identity, belonging, motherhood, ambition, grief, independence, family expectations and starting over.

Then ask a more useful question: Which idea connects the greatest number of things in my book?

Which one explains the largest number of your characters’ choices? Which one appears in different situations? Which one helps you understand why particular scenes matter? Which one makes several apparently unrelated pieces of the manuscript suddenly make sense?

The idea with the greatest explanatory power is often the one you’re looking for.

Then test it against your manuscript.

If this really is my theme, does it help me see which scenes need developing? Does it reveal why one subplot matters more than another? Does it show me where I’ve wandered? Does it help me decide what can be cut?

A useful theme should change the way you see your manuscript. It isn’t merely a profound-sounding sentence you can put in your notebook.

And don’t expect to get the wording right immediately. You might begin with “This is a story about finding yourself.” That’s broad. Dig deeper. Perhaps it’s “This is about a person learning to consider their own wishes too when making choices.” Deeper still, you might discover that it’s about what happens when someone who has spent their life being responsible for everyone else finally learns that their wishes and desires deserve equal consideration.

That’s the work.

You’re not searching for a clever statement. You’re searching for the idea that makes the rest of the book fall into place.

Once you can see that idea clearly, you can make much better decisions about what stays, what goes, what needs developing and where the story needs to go next.

Theme doesn’t give you a rulebook.

It gives you a compass.

If you’re wondering why theme matters in the first place, read Part 1: Why Your Book Needs a Theme.

Mother of three adult, opinionated humans and two boisterous dogs. An idealistic, outspoken woman of scrupulous integrity. Author coach and developmental editor. And a passionate bibliophile, of course.