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A review by regnarenol
Writing Your Story's Theme: The Writer's Guide to Plotting Stories That Matter by K.M. Weiland
4.0
Great book.
I approached this book as a sceptic. I'm sceptical of the idea of story structure itself, in several different ways. I'm sceptical that a single, universal set of very fine-grained plot beats underpins every story ever written. At my most cynical, I see such efforts as little more than seeing human faces in the red sands of Mars: the very human tendency to see patterns in chaos. On the flip side, the idea of story structure has a sort of self-fulfilling power: like Yuval Harari's idea of human myths, if a large group of people believe in the idea of universal story structure, and output according to that formula, then it will be true that stories have universal structure. That makes me sad; the beauty of writing, and all art, lies in not following formula. But myths cannot be discarded off-hand; human constructed myths have enormous power - try telling your bank that your loan should be waived off because money is a made-up construct.
Anyway, why did I approach this book if I was so sceptical? The chief reason I think is just to make this vast, impenetrable enterprise of novel writing *feel* doable. Books on structure, no matter how much they overreach, at least offer some kind of step-by-step framework that lets this software engineer iterate. A sort of planner-helper to bookend my chunks of unfettered creativity. The other, more pragmatic, reason, that I only allowed myself to think in moments of weakness, is that developing a feel for understanding the story structure myths of today would make my book more likely to be successful.
That's how little I expected of this book (or indeed any story structure book I read). But this book forced this sceptic to sit up and pay attention to its core argument. Well, it has several, but the most fundamental one is that every good story has a strong theme, and that strong themes are universal. They're universal in that they resonate with aspects of the human condition. Things like "the human spirit endures". This is an argument that strongly resonates with me. As a reader, I'm always looking for books to say something interesting on the human condition. As a writer, I probably start most things off with theme first, then plot, and then character.
K.M. Weiland would strongly argue against there being any stories that just 'entertain', and have no theme. At best, they are unconsciously tapping into the zeitgeist, and likely not in interesting ways, given that they are unaware that they're doing so. I would agree. With that out of the way, she sets out to the nuts and bolts of applying theme to the work of writing a story. How does theme integrate with plot? How does theme integrate with character? How does this work on a scene level? How do you have theme without coming off too heavy-handed?
As the book progressed, and K.M. Weiland tightened the screw further, pushing theme deeper and deeper into a story, I started to worry. Would this be another hyper-detailed formula to churn out books by specification, just that this specification would now have this cool thing called theme? Not entirely. K.M. Weiland would insist that theme has to come from the soul, or a place deep within your belief system. She would also insist on honesty, and she has a very nuanced take on what honesty is: not that it is your truth as the author, but the truth according to the story you're telling. She would say, and indeed has said something to this tune, that writing a story according to spec would still not be a good story, if it doesn't have a piece of you in it. I found that reaffirming. I don't know if it was enough to cure me of my worry about formula, but there was another thing I realised that brought me closer.
As the list of things that K.M. Weiland demanded of authors grew, I, somewhat paradoxically, grew calmer. They were exceedingly difficult to achieve, and probably impossible for a first time novelist like me. The author would say that's by design; the craft of writing a good story is not meant to come easy. It is a skill, and the ceiling is the sky, a target that can never be reached but only aspired to. And that was a relief, because all things formulaic have a secret, hidden feature: they seek to make the difficult simple. But K.M. Weiland's formulas are hard to simplify; arguably, they complicate, by bringing the hidden structures that animate good stories and the craft it takes to write them, to the light. This probably means I can never apply them to construct a new story by specification. Instead, when I'm in a place where my n-th draft is somewhat done, I can check how it does by the formulas in this book. Then, I would already have poured a giant piece of me into writing what I have, and I could do something similar for all the things I will inevitably find I've missed.
So, how does the book help with my original tasks? It doesn't do very well as a planner-helper. If anything, I'm even more impressed (intimidated) by the amount of work it takes to write a good novel. But maybe that's unfair. It can be a very good reference for revision (I'll get back to you when I get there). Like all good books, this one confounds my expectations, in a good way: it makes a very strong case for theme being a crucial, conscious element of writing.
I still dock a star because this book suffers occasionally from that bane of all non-fiction it seems: repetition. I wonder if authors, knowing that readers are going to blaze through their books exactly once, resort to banging us over the head with the same point said slightly differently, to defeat our speed-reading and stick? But K.M. Weiland has some brilliant turns of phrase, and a subtle sense of humour, that made the repetition as enjoyable as it could be, particularly in the first half of the book.
I approached this book as a sceptic. I'm sceptical of the idea of story structure itself, in several different ways. I'm sceptical that a single, universal set of very fine-grained plot beats underpins every story ever written. At my most cynical, I see such efforts as little more than seeing human faces in the red sands of Mars: the very human tendency to see patterns in chaos. On the flip side, the idea of story structure has a sort of self-fulfilling power: like Yuval Harari's idea of human myths, if a large group of people believe in the idea of universal story structure, and output according to that formula, then it will be true that stories have universal structure. That makes me sad; the beauty of writing, and all art, lies in not following formula. But myths cannot be discarded off-hand; human constructed myths have enormous power - try telling your bank that your loan should be waived off because money is a made-up construct.
Anyway, why did I approach this book if I was so sceptical? The chief reason I think is just to make this vast, impenetrable enterprise of novel writing *feel* doable. Books on structure, no matter how much they overreach, at least offer some kind of step-by-step framework that lets this software engineer iterate. A sort of planner-helper to bookend my chunks of unfettered creativity. The other, more pragmatic, reason, that I only allowed myself to think in moments of weakness, is that developing a feel for understanding the story structure myths of today would make my book more likely to be successful.
That's how little I expected of this book (or indeed any story structure book I read). But this book forced this sceptic to sit up and pay attention to its core argument. Well, it has several, but the most fundamental one is that every good story has a strong theme, and that strong themes are universal. They're universal in that they resonate with aspects of the human condition. Things like "the human spirit endures". This is an argument that strongly resonates with me. As a reader, I'm always looking for books to say something interesting on the human condition. As a writer, I probably start most things off with theme first, then plot, and then character.
K.M. Weiland would strongly argue against there being any stories that just 'entertain', and have no theme. At best, they are unconsciously tapping into the zeitgeist, and likely not in interesting ways, given that they are unaware that they're doing so. I would agree. With that out of the way, she sets out to the nuts and bolts of applying theme to the work of writing a story. How does theme integrate with plot? How does theme integrate with character? How does this work on a scene level? How do you have theme without coming off too heavy-handed?
As the book progressed, and K.M. Weiland tightened the screw further, pushing theme deeper and deeper into a story, I started to worry. Would this be another hyper-detailed formula to churn out books by specification, just that this specification would now have this cool thing called theme? Not entirely. K.M. Weiland would insist that theme has to come from the soul, or a place deep within your belief system. She would also insist on honesty, and she has a very nuanced take on what honesty is: not that it is your truth as the author, but the truth according to the story you're telling. She would say, and indeed has said something to this tune, that writing a story according to spec would still not be a good story, if it doesn't have a piece of you in it. I found that reaffirming. I don't know if it was enough to cure me of my worry about formula, but there was another thing I realised that brought me closer.
As the list of things that K.M. Weiland demanded of authors grew, I, somewhat paradoxically, grew calmer. They were exceedingly difficult to achieve, and probably impossible for a first time novelist like me. The author would say that's by design; the craft of writing a good story is not meant to come easy. It is a skill, and the ceiling is the sky, a target that can never be reached but only aspired to. And that was a relief, because all things formulaic have a secret, hidden feature: they seek to make the difficult simple. But K.M. Weiland's formulas are hard to simplify; arguably, they complicate, by bringing the hidden structures that animate good stories and the craft it takes to write them, to the light. This probably means I can never apply them to construct a new story by specification. Instead, when I'm in a place where my n-th draft is somewhat done, I can check how it does by the formulas in this book. Then, I would already have poured a giant piece of me into writing what I have, and I could do something similar for all the things I will inevitably find I've missed.
So, how does the book help with my original tasks? It doesn't do very well as a planner-helper. If anything, I'm even more impressed (intimidated) by the amount of work it takes to write a good novel. But maybe that's unfair. It can be a very good reference for revision (I'll get back to you when I get there). Like all good books, this one confounds my expectations, in a good way: it makes a very strong case for theme being a crucial, conscious element of writing.
I still dock a star because this book suffers occasionally from that bane of all non-fiction it seems: repetition. I wonder if authors, knowing that readers are going to blaze through their books exactly once, resort to banging us over the head with the same point said slightly differently, to defeat our speed-reading and stick? But K.M. Weiland has some brilliant turns of phrase, and a subtle sense of humour, that made the repetition as enjoyable as it could be, particularly in the first half of the book.