WRITING with PURPOSE
So… what’s your story about?
Someone I’d just met at a writers’ meeting once asked me this question, and without much thought I enthusiastically started a detailed explanation of the plot with all its twists & turns. After a few minutes my listener excused herself, she really, really had to go somewhere but would catch with me later. She never came back to hear the end of it.
And why should she?
The world is full of stories. Nobody has time for yet another one. Unless you show its purpose, its raison d’être.
I learnt a valuable lesson that day. Next time someone asked me what my story was about, I told them instead about the theme, the essence of it: it’s about personal freedom vs commitment, I said. This usually produces further interest & questions, and the opportunity to explain the purpose of my novel, and why I want to write it.
In turn, knowing why I want to write it, keeps me on course, like the road signs on a journey. And if you know where you want to go, you will get there.
What’s the theme of your novel?
Has it got a raison d’être?
Do you write with purpose?
Thanks for this! Great idea. I’ve been in the situation you described many times. I’ll post something later. It’s a long story!!!
My novel is about should people that are thought to be a burden or a threat to the society be killed?
Ah… makes me think of Covid and how many elderly folks did not get the chance to be treated because their lives mattered less than the young. Very, very sad… but even before Covid this “selection” has been going on in other situations: cancer patients over 70 (in the UK) are routinely not offered treatment that could extend their lives, as such treatment is usually expensive.
Great theme! Go for it! Are you writing about it as fiction or non-fiction?
Fantasy! 😀
Margaret Atwood said that when she wrote The Handmaids Tale, she was careful not to write anything that had not happened already in our real world. If you keep to the theme and write parallels with what happens in our profit-oriented society, your novel will resonate with a wider audience and will not be forgotten after readers finish reading it.
Whishing you lots of success! 🙂
Thank you! 🙂
My novel’s theme, story and main protagonist are all influenced by the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi – the finding of beauty and value in the impermanent, flawed or imperfect – and kintsugi – the art of mending breakage in a way which leaves a visible repair as an addition to the history and significance of something precious. Both these concepts appear as metaphors and symbols throughout the story.
The protagonist’s inner conflict, the external conflict that drives the story, and the final resolution are, I hope, all centred around conflicting definitions of perfection and ‘wholeness’, and whether such should be sought after as aspirational goals or seen as unattainable and ultimately deceptive chimeras.
A fascinating theme. I’ve had connections with Japan in the past. My wife visits twice a year and spends most of her weekends practising Kyudo – the Way of the Bow – a path of self-discovery.
It’s a great & profound theme and you’ll do it justice, I’ve no doubts.
Thank you, Donna. I hope I have it in me to do it justice.
And this is, of course, the big question.
If I throw – we’re talking three decades, it takes a lot of effort – my mind back to my early writing, I certainly didn’t have any concept of theme. Whether one even materialised of its own accord I very much doubt. (And, no, I am not going to subject myself to the reading of that mostrosity to confirm this.) It’s sequel might have been said to have a theme of where one belongs. Subsequent works lacked even that.
But it isn’t until recently (a couple of years, but relativity…) that I have even thought about this subject directly. Something I read suggested that, reduced to its absolue essential, the theme of every story is one of identity: who am I? And, indeed, this seems to be true. So we probably need to stop one step before hitting that question, otherwise we lose the distinction.
My main current work asks: how do I measure who I believe I am?
Its sequel will ask: how far will I bend who I am for what I beleive in?
My current thinking on this subject is that a strong theme is the key to avoiding a saggy middle.
My story has evolved over time. Influenced by observations, many changes but has had a constant raison d’etre.
The origins go back a long way, to the years of Perestroika. The breaching of the Berlin Wall was viewed by many as a victory for the capitalist model. Some months later, I visited Moscow. During my time there, I was invited to a social evening. The majority of participants were either KGB, Party members or both. The future of the Soviet Union was discussed and that of the Motherland and the impending humiliation. The West could not be trusted. I dreamt up the idea for my trilogy. The idea being that it was not the West that had forced the collapse of the Soviet Union, it had been part of a long-term strategy devised by the KGB.
My impressions from Russia (8 years), elsewhere and South Africa have fed into my trilogy. Then came the financial crisis and now COVID. How can these events be traced back to the breaching of the Berlin Wall? And how did that day impact on what we are experiencing today?
My Chinese doctor, told me If you want to get a message across, try to be amusing and above all. Illustrate humanity.
This was the concluding paragraph of a synopsis I wrote about eight years ago:
The Triple Edge Trilogy, modern-day yarn, projects some of the worst sides of humanity. Greed for power at any cost, combined with moments of passion, love, respect, healing of past wounds. And of latter-day idealists who have an alternative vision of the world.
Of course the name (as we heard the other day it may be changed by somebody else)
Triple Edge is the KGB Strategy
The three components of the Triple Edge Strategy :
1. A short-sharp shock to the Russian-Soviet Economy and subsequent birth of the Russian Oligarchs able to invest in strategic Western businesses and influence politics
2. The containment of the Russian Mafy and relations with other mafias; and
3. Ultimately, using their superior hacking abilities, repatriate foreign assets acquired by Oligarchs and those of their intermediaries and associates, to the Russian State. Create chaos in Britain. NB In 1993 I had included the idea of Russia wanting Britain out of Europe, I then removed this idea; and naturally, it is back in again.
Locations
Part One : Predominantly Moscow, Geneva, London, Paris
Part Two : Predominantly Rome, Geneva, London Cambridge
Part Three : Predominantly London Cambridge Moscow Tuscany
Many of the elements I included in the synopsis paragraph I quoted cut across all of the three components of the Triple Edge Strategy. Naturally, they become intertwined as different parties attempt to either accelerate or de-rail the plan.
I’d buy it.
I’ll let you know when I’m close!! First part almost there.
I want to read it. 🙂
I also have three “pipeline” short stories (I’ve written about 15-25K words for each and use them as a diversion from when I stuck with editing.
One is the story of Sybella, a Cape Coloured woman and her battles with moving from tied farming, an alcoholic unemployed violent husband and the male-dominated society as she tries to improve her own wellbeing and that of women in a similar situation. Fiction but drawing heavily on my experiences of working with women of that kind of background.
Tanja, the Oligarch’s daughter and the Mysterious Chinese Pharmacist. Following a battle between two Mafia groups in Moscow, Tanja is kidnapped by one of her father’s rival gangs. Along with a group of other young women she is taken to Turkey to be sold into prostitution. She is saved when her captor throws her out of a hotel window in Istanbul as a lesson to other girls to obey the rules. The Chinese pharmacist happens to be passing by with a cart and she falls into it. What follows is a fantasy journey through Europe in an attempt to find her father, whom Tanja believes has escaped to London.
A story of a respectable businesswoman with a dubious past who has two different identities on social media, one with LinkedIn, the other with Facebook. She harasses former acquaintances on Facebook and befriends a person whom she believes to be a wealthy businessman on LinkedIn. He is, in fact, a police inspector investigating cybercrime.