Theme is a huge part of story theory. A story’s Theme is what ties everything together—all of the internal and external conflict, all of the symbolism, all of the relationships. But how do you keep a Theme consistent across characters, plot lines, and events?

First, if you’re not sure what a Theme is, make sure to check out my posts on the Positive Change Arc Theme and the Flat Arc Theme.

Whether you have a huge cast of supporting characters, or multiple main characters, each person is going to have their own specific Theme. Yet we know that a story has an overall Theme that speaks a distinct message. So how can you have both?

Well, this is where choosing your story’s Theme becomes very important. Every story should have one main idea or Theme that it focuses on. That could be something like redemption, true love, or finding one’s identity. You want to pick something specific, but not too specific. Your Theme should be a topic that you can break down into mini-Themes for each character.

Every character’s individual Theme should fall under your main Theme. When you do this, not only are you providing diversity to your characters and their stories, you’re also giving yourself an opportunity to address multiple facets of the same Theme.

Take the Theme of redemption, for example. In and of itself, it’s a pretty broad topic to cover. So try to give each of your characters a slightly different angle on the Theme. Maybe one character wonders if they’re worthy of redemption. Maybe another character doesn’t even believe in redemption.

Using these different angles, not only do you tie each character’s Theme into the main Theme, it also gives you an opportunity to fully explore that main Theme.

If you have more a tightly-woven story, you can just give each character their own opinion on the Theme. You don’t have to cover every single take on that topic—just enough so that it’s well-rounded and somewhat diverse.

I like to explore multiple false beliefs of a particular Theme to further emphasize the Truth about that Theme. Remember, there is always one Truth, and that is God’s Truth. However, there are so many different Lies to combat because of how the Devil works. He doesn’t care what Lie he uses to sway us, as long as we don’t believe the Truth.

There’s a lot of diversity in how you can vary the specific Themes you give each character—it all just depends on what you choose to focus on. So take a look at your story’s overall Theme and the main cast of characters, and figure out what Truth—or portrayals of Lies—you want to show.

There’s a whole science behind the Theme called the Thematic Square, but I won’t get into that. Make sure to check out my other posts on the Theme that I linked above to get a more comprehensive view!

Comment below your favorite Theme in fiction!