How many themes can you fit in a story?

[Feo Takahari]

My current project was originally going to be all about ideology--how it's accepted, how it's rejected, and how it's transformed. But the more I write, the more chances I get to say something about power--what makes someone strong or weak. I'm not nearly as interested in the latter as the former, but I feel like I'll be able to discuss the latter in more detail, and thus raise more questions and invite more thought.

Can one story, most likely a short novel or novella, handle two completely different themes? If not, how do you decide which to cut?

 

[Steerpike]

Sure, put in as many as you can handle effectively. Some may be minor themes, compared to the main one you are driving for, but you can still include them. Plenty of books out there that incorporated numerous thematic elements.

 

[Nameback]

I agree. Especially if these themes are coming up naturally in the events of the book as you write them, it would be foolish to not deal with them. After all, life is poly-thematic. When we try to represent the diversity of human character and motivation in our stories, inevitably we will be exploring many themes. If you try to suppress some themes that naturally arise out of a fear of over-complication, I think your story will actually suffer rather than benefit.

It's one thing to be heavy-handed and make every story thread didactic, but it's another thing entirely to subtly negotiate the many-layered reality of human interaction. It sounds to me like you're doing the latter, so go nuts!

 

[Jamber]

Hi Feo Takahari,

That's a great question. It's not something I've thought about particularly, but deciding on themes and the levels at which they're going to be played out (personal vs macro) seems a terrific way to help get a book's shape planned.

I'd say most novels play with multiple themes. Actually, thinking further, it's probably difficult to say whether something is 'a theme' or a 'strand of a theme'. Usually they're drawn together by some sort of thread, and this can be contrapuntal -- the love theme playing out in an opposite way to the state power theme for instance. (On that note, it seems to me your themes already connect quite strongly -- power + ideology = hegemony.)

Maybe if you had lots of disparate overarching themes that all worked at the same level, it could be pretty hard to make a story work. But I wonder: what themes aren't there in GRR Martin's series? Power, influence, betrayal, romantic love, maternal love, suffering, etc etc.

cheers
Jennie