Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Theme and the writer -- Inspiration

When I was working toward my degree in English most of my courses were literature courses. Since I had published several books they gave me all the basic writing courses. One of my professors was bit on finding the thrme in the stories I wrote. I did not do well here but at least I did ace the tests. I could tell if a story was a good one or if it wasn't. He gave us several to read that weren't in the book and I was spot on but ask me to find the theme and I blanked. Then I began to worry. Did my stories have themes? The teacher found them but they were not purposely put there by me. What I was doing was showing a character or characters who wanted something and set out to get their desire no matter what the obstacles in their path. Not all of them won their object but because I like happy endings, most of them did.

There's only one story of mine that I was able to discern the theme and this was explored on many levels. But I never realized there was a theme until i started to search for a title. Started as Code Blue but that wasn't really what the story was about though that was the jumping point for the suspense. I finally came up with Obsessions. All of the main characters in the story had some kind of obsession and this obsession effected their lives in different ways.

What I've decided to do is leave the idea of theme and philosophy to those who teach and tell stories about people who want things and try to find a way to win their desires.

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