First the admission: I don’t think that I could identify a philosophical conflict if it bit me in the you know what.
Because of that I have been looking up what that means and have asked many people. The result is that I think I know what I have to do for this book, didn’t want to, but it makes the story meaningful. My problem is that the recommendation is to choose this first, yet I stumbled upon this one too.
I was thinking about a future story, and I am not sure that I could pick a conflict of this type first and say I want to write a story about it.
Any help with figuring these out would be wonderful.
Hey, so for me I don’t tend to pick a theme first. I come up with an idea for a plot and then it grows over time and as I move through my storyline, I begin to think about the theme.
I’ll give you an example. So my current WIP is about a 16-18 year old who goes through life abused and meanwhile my villain has this huge mind control plot he’s planning to get some control in his life. As the story progresses, my MC ends up stopping him but he’s so overcome with anger that *spoiler alert* he ends up almost killing his uncle who’s actually the villain. His love interest stops him with the reminder that he needs to forgive.
Now when I first started this story, my MC was going to try and stop his uncle who had the mind control scheme. But since I added more obstacles to the MC’s life such as abuse (and some other obstacles that I’ll spoil if I say), he now has to deal with anger and trust issues. And finally forgiveness because his uncle is the cause of many of his issues.
All that to say, obstacles end up helping me figure out my theme unlike how some people work with their stories. Everyone’s different. I personally don’t agree that you have to figure out your theme first. Tell the story you want to tell and it’ll figure itself out.
Just fyi I am a firm Christian believer and while I believe theme is super important, I don’t know what I want to instill in my readers at first. I play around a lot and figure out plot points first.
I hope this helps and if anyone knows a better way to do this please let me know. I’m certainly not an expert but I have been writing for 5+ years now so I’ve kinda figured out my process and what works. I’ve gone through about 4-5 different storylines that didn’t work and tried different strategies. This is just the easiest/most helpful for me personally.
Thanks Sara,
Lots of good things you shared. Appreciate it.
You’re very welcome! 🙂
Also, I write the stories I want to read. That’s my main reason for writing. I’d love to make a difference in someone’s life too but my main reason for my author aspirations probably change the way I approach the process so definitely think through why you personally want to write and it’ll help your own writing process.
One last thing, sharing your storyline with other people might help you figure out themes and such. Ask them questions and ask them to ask you questions. This helps so much with everything in writing. That’s how my villain got his control issues. Character interviews (which is asking your characters questions and trying to answer them or asking other people to ask you questions and answer them as if you’re the character) helps me tremendously.
One quick thing to share, check out Story Embers and Kingdom Pen. If you’re looking for a free forum where people can interview your characters or role play with them or even sharing your story for feedback, these are amazing and I’ve used both. For kingdom pen however, you have to be 25 or under to join and Story Embers isn’t very active but they’re both free.
And if you’re looking to build a career and you’re willing to spend some money to have some major life-changing author training, check out the Young Writer’s Workshop. I know I’m not advertising Brad Paquette’s stuff but I haven’t done any of his classes or other things. The folks at YWW, KP and SE (the sites I referenced) actually recommended The Company so I thought it only fair to point you to those sites. 😜 Take everything you learn with a grain of salt, everyone writes differently and you’ll come across opposing opinions on everything in writing. Even Christian sites. You have to do things the way you do them. It can be very confusing so ask lots of questions. I can’t stress this enough. lol I see you’re already doing this and that’s really good.
Anyway, rant over. lol If you have any further questions for me about anything I mentioned, please ask. I can try and answer or at least point you somewhere or to someone who can answer. 🙃