Uploaded June 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
So we’re up to Step 7, which is # 6 on The Foolscap. This is about Theme. Theme can be kind of confusing – we’re often taught that Theme is the subject of what we’re writing, but theme is really what is the story, play, movie, dance, song about. That can be complicated and a lot of creative endeavors fail because we don’t know what it’s about.
We can say that the movie 1917 is about WWI, but that’s really the subject. The theme is something like Heroism. The theme of Jack Carr’s book “The Terminal List” is REVENGE. Jack told me a funny story about this. He’d heard Robert McKee talk about interviewing Paddy Chayefsky (at the time the only person to win 3 Oscars for original screenplay). Chayefsky said that as soon as he figures out the theme he writes it in one sentence and keep it taped to his typewriter the entire time he’s writing. If he writes something and it’s not on theme, it’s out.
Back to Jack. Well Jack thought it was one word, and REVENGE is the word he kept taped to his computer as he wrote “The Terminal List”. If it didn’t have to do with revenge, it didn’t go in the story.
The Theme is absolutely critical. You can see how The Foolscap starts tying your story together. We said the first thing is the Climax. We said that in the climax there is a clash between the hero and the villain. The clash between these two is over the theme.
More next week – we’re just about done. Hope this is helping.
So we’re up to Step 7, which is # 6 on The Foolscap. This is about Theme. Theme can be kind of confusing – we’re often taught that Theme is the subject of what we’re writing, but theme is really what is the story, play, movie, dance, song about. That can be complicated and a lot of creative endeavors fail because we don’t know what it’s about.
We can say that the movie 1917 is about WWI, but that’s really the subject. The theme is something like Heroism. The theme of Jack Carr’s book “The Terminal List” is REVENGE. Jack told me a funny story about this. He’d heard Robert McKee talk about interviewing Paddy Chayefsky (at the time the only person to win 3 Oscars for original screenplay). Chayefsky said that as soon as he figures out the theme he writes it in one sentence and keep it taped to his typewriter the entire time he’s writing. If he writes something and it’s not on theme, it’s out.
Back to Jack. Well Jack thought it was one word, and REVENGE is the word he kept taped to his computer as he wrote “The Terminal List”. If it didn’t have to do with revenge, it didn’t go in the story.
The Theme is absolutely critical. You can see how The Foolscap starts tying your story together. We said the first thing is the Climax. We said that in the climax there is a clash between the hero and the villain. The clash between these two is over the theme.
More next week – we’re just about done. Hope this is helping.
