Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Do you think a story can be good if it just has good characters, pacing, setting, atmosphere, dialogue, etc, but no theme?

Now I'm certain someone's going to point out that you practically can't write a story without some kind of theme emerging, otherwise your story wouldn't be a story, but rather a jumbled mess of words thrown about randomly.

I'm talking about the case where the author does not have any intentions of sending a message to the reader, and does not even for a moment consider or intend for his work to have any deeper meaning. Of course there's going to be some kind of theme, but it won't be focused on.

Short answer: Yes.

Medium answer: Yes, but it won't be as good as all a story that has all those elements and also theme.

Longer answer: Yes, but if you have good characters, pacing, dialogue, atmosphere, etc., you probably DO have a theme in there somewhere, as you addressed in your question.

Honestly I think most authors are probably writing the way you describe, they're just focused on telling a good story, and if a theme happens a theme happens. Usually it does. There's nothing inherently better about knowing what your theme is from the start. In fact, doing so can lead you into a trap of preachiness or a thin plot. Theme that emerges organically from the story itself is usually a lot stronger and makes a lot more sense.

Branching stories might be the oddity because they can have a scattered series of events happening that don't necessarily tell a unified story. But I think you'd have a hard time finding anything with a recognizeable and satisfying plot that doesn't also include a theme. It's as core to storytelling as ideas like "the story should include conflict" whether the author is aware of the basic concept of plot structure or not.

 I think this question suffers from a lack of specifics. Like you clarified, The question is not whether a story can be good without a theme, but rather if it can be written without a deeper message IN the theme. 

 As an example, you can write a story around the theme of revenge. That story does not have to portray anything about revenge being bad or justified or anything. That would be the deeper message. I do feel like it is human nature to make a message in our stories, either accidentally or on purpose. That was the original reason for storytelling to begin with. I think there could be stories without an underlying message, but anything could be twisted into someone thinking they found one. Some people thought Tolkien's work was an allegory for WWII until he had to explicitly tell people there was no such message intended in his writing. It is possible that we have found non-existent messages in other books as well.

Akin to the death  of the author thread, I think that even if you try to write something actively avoiding themes, your readers will find their own in the writing if they are looking for one.

I'm actually sorta struggling with the same thing, with a story im writing offsite. It's dystopian and the whole point is leaving Society (like all dystopian novels), but I wouldn't call that a theme for various reasons.

Of course, upon further thought, I realized that readers could come up with their own deep meanings and themes from the story, just like everyone has said. Ossi and Sara's relationship could make a theme of "Family First" (no, I'm not talking about INCEST you dirty-minded scum), and there could be warnings about falling into love too fast and such from my little Romeo-and-Juliet sideplot.

What I'm trying to say here is, YES, you can write a good story without attempting to have a deeper meaning to it, because people who love it will try their darndest to create one for you.

One of the few exception I make to the overall truthful statement that stories can be good without a theme are dystopias. Good dystopias are inherently political and are meant to have some form of message relating to our current society. Without that framework a dystopia will quickly become a shallow YA hunger games rip off with nothing interesting to say.

Just because they live in a world that is corrupt doesn't mean there has to be some theme to do with politics.

If that were the case, all modern realistic fiction would have to follow your rule too. Technically, I'd count that as a dystopia.

Stories can be interesting without being exactly like every other story- just because it's set in a dystopian world doesn't mean it has to follow a distinct set of rules about theme and plot. I could have them follow the rules and not break out at all and there could still be a story.

Dystopian worlds are just a setting, they don't dictate what the story can or cannot contain.

"Good" dystopias are well-written with plot lines/characters/messages that aren't as predictable and overused as what you just stated 

You're free to think that dystopias are better when written in such a way, but making a generalized statement that one written any differently is bad and stupid and pointless is rather close-minded

If you're presenting the setting as bad--and a dystopia is, by definition--then you're already making a political statement.

Maybe, but that doesn't have to be the entire theme of the book. That's my opinion anyway

Dystopian worlds are a setting, but a dystopia is defined genre of fiction. Look, you can have a story that features a crappy world, many stories have that because a crappy world is interesting. 

But having a crappy world doesn't automatically make it part of what we call dystopian fiction. Yes, every good dystopian work HAS TO HAVE some political messaging, otherwise it wouldn't really belong to the genre. 

1984: totalitarianism and the constant twisting of history and language

Brave new world: consumerism 

Handmaid's tale: feminism and religious extremism 

Hunger games: the way reality television is fucked up, and just overall class divide. 

Oh yeah, one thing they all have in common is that they're very preachy and that's the point. Some of them feel like they're written as a manifesto first and foremost before the writer decided that it would be more marketable to write a story around it.

So sure, if you want to write a story where everyone is miserable then it's completely fine, and yes it can be very good too, so don't hold yourself back on that little detail, but it wouldn't be dystopian fiction.

Ah, alright. I see where I miscommunicated what I was trying to say, and I am sorry. I didn't even fully realize that "dystopian" counts as a genre. Apologies for my paragraphs of ranting, you are correct

Theme Definition

What is theme? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

A theme is a universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature. One key characteristic of literary themes is their universality, which is to say that themes are ideas that not only apply to the specific characters and events of a book or play, but also express broader truths about human experience that readers can apply to their own lives. For instance, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (about a family of tenant farmers who are displaced from their land in Oklahoma) is a book whose themes might be said to include the inhumanity of capitalism, as well as the vitality and necessity of family and friendship.

Some additional key details about theme:

All works of literature have themes. The same work can have multiple themes, and many different works explore the same or similar themes.

Themes are sometimes divided into thematic concepts and thematic statements. A work's thematic concept is the broader topic it touches upon (love, forgiveness, pain, etc.) while its thematic statement is what the work says about that topic. For example, the thematic concept of a romance novel might be love, and, depending on what happens in the story, its thematic statement might be that "Love is blind," or that "You can't buy love."

Themes are almost never stated explicitly. Oftentimes you can identify a work's themes by looking for a repeating symbol, motif, or phrase that appears again and again throughout a story, since it often signals a recurring concept or idea.

From litchart.com, just posting the actual definition. Since the last time this came up SOMEBODY argued that themes sucked for hours, before it became clear they didn't know what the word meant in the literary sense in English. So now you all know and can't be like, 'why mean to sad foreign man for not understand words good'....? :*(

I think that it is definitely possible to write a story for just the sake of telling a  good story without trying to send a message to the reader.  In my opinion, this usually allows for better stories and characters as themes become evident organically (as several people have already mentioned).

However, I don't think it is truly possible to have a story devoid of theme, especially in light of the definition that Mizal posted.  I think any story will have some sort of thematic concept, but I dont think that the author necessarily has to keep these in mind and develop them intentionally.  Instead I beleive there are instances where the development of the characters and conflict would cause themes to evolve.  If I chose to write a story about two guys going fishing, even without any initial intentions about what direction I wanted it to go, the story would take on certain themes during it's course (friendship - or not, adventure, survival, trauma, etc.) and each character would contribute to the theme, even if all I am doing is trying to tell a fun story. Having well developed characters generally involves them having a point of view regarding the events taking place in a story, which would naturally develop into thematic statements. I think that any story that has " good characters, pacing, setting, atmosphere, dialogue, etc," will also have theme.

So, to sum up, as mentioned in the OP, some sort of theme will have to develop in during the story for it to be an actual story.  However, I do not think that the author necessarily has to be trying to make a point or send a message to the reader through the theme of the story.  Sometimes themes just emerge when an author is telling a good story.

 

Sure, I do it all the time.

Gryphon wrote a lot about the themes in Eternal.

burn...

Not sure how that's even remotely a burn since there's no real insult there, though Eternal wouldn't have been one of the stories that was "themeless" anyway since there's a clear story there with everything that entails.

I was more talking about the Tales From the Basement stories that fit a bit more with the "themeless" thing, I'd even say something like TRASH or Repression is themeless. Though for what Cel's talking about I feel like message/point is probably more accurate since I'd say everything has a "theme."

Now whether or not I intended Eternal to have a message/point in it is debatable. Personally I don't really have a goal other than writing a story in general, but if you're someone like Gryphon that found one, well that's fine too.

You might remember a looong time ago when Gower was still bothering to try and infiltrate us for his CoGite masters, he read and discussed some of your games. Repression was one he found a lot of unexpected depth in it, which changed the way I looked at it too on a reread.

Burn...

lol

This topic ties in pretty well with the death of the author thread. Because an author's intended theme (or lack of an intended theme) isn't going to always be the thing that clearly presents itself to readers.

The theme of Among the Trees according to Steve was that the religious were stupid and evil. But he wrote a story where Satan is real, witches are real, holy water burns the spawn of devils, and the protagonist's family is slaughtered because he didn't heed the warnings of his strict religious father. So I definitely was interpreting the point of this one a lot differently than the author, who probably was on drugs and getting blackout drunk at a degenerate Irish orgy when he wrote half of it anyway.