I don't write for theme, but if you work closely on some guy fixing a sandwich or a window or a table or trying to visit an old teacher or walking down the street on which he was a boy, a theme, a human hope, will emerge.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Theme is great for people who like to approach stories that way, but it's an organizing principle that helps us write a story that has some weight; it's not something that all readers have to care about.
Maybe a theme that touches all of my work is people reinventing themselves.
If there's one theme in all my work, it's about authenticity and self-expression. It's the idea that some things are, in some real sense, really you - or express what you and others aren't.
Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it.
I don't want to deal with big, grand themes in my stories; art has nothing to do with themes. When you deal with themes, you are not creating; you are lecturing.
Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.
As an improviser, my nature is to take a theme and constantly rework it.
I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc.
Themes only arise after a novel is written, and people begin to try to talk about it.
Imagining themes that are specific to coating lines, shapes, shades, thoughts, the decoration of our homes and the objects of utility or pure pleasure, adapting its purpose in a material-specific way to metal or wood, marble or fabric - it is, without any doubt, an absorbing occupation.