Deepening a Story with Thematic Echoes

While shallow stories can be enjoyable, we often strive to add depth to our storytelling. Deeper stories can “say” more to readers, evoking more emotions and leaving a bigger impression.

We have many options for how we can deepen our stories, from creating layered characters or heartrending emotional journeys to exploring complex dilemmas. But a primary way of adding depth to our story is by using and expanding our story’s themes.

Themes are meant to communicate to readers by provoking them to consider a certain view of the world (such as what to value, believe, hope for, aim for, etc.), so themes inherently provide plenty of opportunities for us to say more to readers. Themes that interact on some level create even more depth, as they take a simplistic belief (“love is powerful”) and turn it into a more purposeful idea (“love is powerful when we learn to trust others”).

Today, let’s look at how we can set up themes that resonate with each other, and thus add up to a deeper story than possible with just a standalone theme.

Themes 101: What Creates a Theme?

First, we need to understand how our story can (and likely will) contain multiple themes. For that, we need to know what creates themes within our story and how the different aspects and elements of our story each contribute to the impression of “what our story is about”:

• Story Themes: What’s the premise of the story? Who’s supposed to win or lose—and why?
• Character Themes: How does the protagonist change over the course of the story? What do they learn?
• Plot Themes: During the plot’s turning points, what do the characters attempt? Do they succeed or fail—and why?
• Choices Themes: What choices are the characters making? Do the results match the Story or Character Themes (choices that agree with the themes should succeed and vice versa)?
• Villain Themes: Are the villain’s beliefs reinforced or disproved by plot events?

How Will Our Story’s Themes Interact?

Obviously, with all those different sources of themes, our story will likely share multiple messages with readers (whether intended or not). Those messages can interact in various ways, as they could:

• conflict with one another,
• each be independent (and essentially ignore each other),
• align despite being unrelated,
• echo similar ideas, or
• resonate with repetition and deeper similarities.

How Can We Make Themes Work Together?

Let’s look at a few options for integrating multiple themes, from techniques that inherently result in the least resonance to those with the most:

Option #1: Multiple Independent Themes with No Connection

As long as the ideas from our story’s various themes don’t undercut each other, there’s nothing “wrong” with unrelated themes.

For example, a story could be about both justice and love. Perhaps the main plot focuses on the protagonist ensuring a killer is brought to justice, while a subplot focuses on the protagonist resolving a relationship issue.

While those themes don’t echo or resonate with each other, they also don’t specifically interfere with each other. They are simply each standalone themes, and for some stories, that approach works fine.

SPECIAL TIP FOR UNCONNECTED THEMES:
Watch Out for Conflicts

Avoid using multiple themes that conflict or interfere with each other, except for cases where an exploration of that conflict is part of the story’s premise.

For example, a theme about “the value of friendship” expressed through the protagonist relying on their friends would struggle to cooperate with a second theme of “the value of rugged independence.” Those themes undermine the messages of each other, so our storytelling would be weaker unless an aspect of the story focused on the protagonist deciding how to prioritize or embody each of those ideals. That exploration of the conflict would create a connection between the themes (pushing it into the Option #2 approach below).

Option #2: Multiple Independent Themes with Some Connection

Sometimes with unrelated themes, we can reference the ideas of one theme in the story elements that explore another theme.

As an example, given that same story idea from Option #1 above with the themes of justice and love, the ideas or lessons learned from one theme could inform the resolution of the story events of the other theme. With our above example, the protagonist’s desire for justice could carry over to be related to the relationship issue, such as if a too-strict adherence to justice prevents the protagonist from being sympathetic with their love interest. Or a lesson learned from the relationship could help the protagonist understand and track the killer, such as through stretching their empathy “muscles.”

While the themes themselves in this Option #2 don’t connect directly, the story elements exploring each theme can overlap. Those overlaps can create echoes adding depth to the story, as the theme’s ideas are revisited in other circumstances, or as they examine the story world from unrelated-but-parallel perspectives.

Note that the examples above illustrate that the only difference between Options #1 and #2 is whether we choose to create overlapping references. In other words, virtually any Option #1 story could become an Option #2 story if we consciously make a few narrative tweaks, such as by having one theme’s ideas mentioned in another theme’s story elements or by having one theme inform the other, and so on.

Option #3: Multiple Somewhat-Related Themes

Some themes can be different-but-similar to other themes, exploring ideas along comparable or related lines.

For example, a story exploring the theme of love could also include themes of related ideas: trust/distrust, friendship, rejection, etc. (all touching on a character’s emotional journey with relationships). To go deeper into that example, a protagonist may experience relationship love in one aspect of the story, but a subplot may explore their pain of a parental rejection, or them learning to accept that rejection, or them learning to appreciate those who do love them despite that rejection.

A few other themes with somewhat-related ideas include:

• survival / learning to trust yourself
• love / learning to trust others
• justice / survival
• justice / oppression

In other words, themes with related (or opposite) ideas can often resonate with each other, as the lessons learned from one theme can often carry over and help in the exploration of the other theme. Or from a reader perspective, what the story says through these somewhat-related themes add together to create a bigger cohesive “message” or perspective, such as “learning to trust yourself can help you survive.”

Option #4: Multiple Explorations of the Same Theme

Some stories allow us to explore a single theme idea from multiple perspectives or circumstances.

For example, a story about trust could explore that theme in various ways, as the plots/subplots and other story elements could all focus on the benefits of learning how to trust. Or a story about the power of love could explore romantic love, friendship love, sibling love, parental love, etc., all in different aspects of the story. Or a story with multiple protagonists could explore the theme of romantic love through each character’s relationship.

Final Thoughts: The Benefits of Connecting Themes

Note that Option #4 is not “better” than Options #2 or #3 for creating connections across the thematic elements of our story, especially as that style won’t work for most stories. The point is to identify our various themes and see what they have to say (if anything) about each other. While echoes and resonances may happen more automatically with Option #4, as long as we ensure that we create or emphasize those resonances with Options #2 or #3, all three of those approaches can work equally well for using thematic echoes to deepen our story.

That said, the unconnected themes of Option #1 can also work for our story just fine, depending on the story we’re trying to tell. However, those unconnected theme ideas are almost like the thematic version of episodic storytelling, as they don’t add together to create a bigger idea. Yet for some stories, that style is a good match for our storytelling goals.

In contrast, themes with some level of connection – whether Option #2, #3, or #4 – help the story feel not only deeper, but more epic, as the echoes and resonances weave on a single, common canvas to give readers the sense of a bigger story with more meaning. With Options #2, #3, and #4, the more we’re able to create those connections between the various themes of our story, the deeper and more layered our story will feel, as our story will “say” more to readers. *smile*

Have you thought about how stories contain multiple themes, and therefore how those themes interact may affect the sense of depth (or “epicness”) of a story? Have you struggled to know how to make themes interact in helpful ways? Does this post give you ideas for working with themes? Do you have any questions about themes or how they can interact?

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PRO TIP: Your characters’ traits, experiences, and personal biases will influence how they approach the story theme, so it’s important for you to know these driving factors in your cast members.

For this reason, we’ve structured the entries of One Stop for Writer’s Theme and Symbolism Thesaurus so you can explore these aspects for your characters and make smart decisions about their thematic statements. View an example here.

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