How Do I Find the Theme For My Script?

How Do I Find the Theme For My Script?

by | Nov 21, 2025 | ScriptMag Articles

It's that time again! My newest "Ask the Coach" article is live on ScriptMag. I've written this month about a subject that has always intrigued me: Theme. I have found thinking about theme in my own work to be both utterly confounding and quite simple, depending on the day, week, month, or state of my draft.

Debates About Theme?

My writing friends and colleagues run the gamut too, from thinking theme is important to completely ridiculous.

Personally, I think of theme as a tool I can use or not use, as I see fit, especially because my clarity about theme varies with each story I write, though I do have common writer-centric themes I tend to explore.

The Question

Long story short, I was happy to see a question come in about theme, so I'd have the chance to explore it further. The article is called "How Do I Find the Theme For My Script?" and in it, I respond to the following reader question:

“How can I find the theme for my story? It feels complicated and confusing to identify. Maybe even above my pay grade. ;) I know the story I’m writing… but the theme isn’t obvious to me.”

Using Theme

In the article, I talk about ways to discover your theme and about ways to use it as a tool. Most importantly, I believe you can use theme to enhance your story, as well as using your story to discover your theme. (It works both ways.)

Here's an excerpt explaining more about what I mean:

"Stories should be about something, obviously. Examining theme — our underlying intention — can take us into the deeper meaning of a story. Once identified, theme can serve as a guidepost and decision-making tool for key story elements like the title, opening, climax, and resolution, the main character’s arc, and more. And while we can clarify and enhance these elements with our theme (once/if we know it), these story elements can also be used to help us identify our theme."

Finding Theme

If you’re wanting to find the theme in a story, take a deeper look at some of the following aspects of your writing. (You can click through to the article to read the details.)

  1. Who are you as a writer?
  2. Why are you writing this story?
  3. What’s the main character’s journey?
  4. What does your title reveal about your theme?
  5. What do your opening, climax, and world building point to?

Check out the full article by clicking here ⇣

How Do I Find the Theme For My Script?

Plus, here are three fun things:

  1. It's nearly my birthday. My formula for a happy birthday is simple: A meal out at a favorite place, a movie in a theater, and a trip to a bookstore. If it's a weekday and my family members are at school and work, I go by myself (and we go out for a separate family birthday dinner later). If my birthday falls on a weekend day, they come with me for the full day of delights. ◡̈ This year, we'll probably see two movies, one on Thanksgiving and one on my birthday, since we're celebrating T-day early. I'm looking forward to seeing the new Knives Out movie (Wake Up Dead Man) and Wicked For Good.
  2. I'm still (still!) reading! I finished reading nearly all of Michael Connelly's Bosch-universe books other than his non-fiction Crime Beat* and his newest Mickey Haller book, The Proving Ground, which I'm waiting for from the library or Libby. Now I'm diving into the Old Man's War series, by John Scalzi. I had intended to read The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey (two writers writing as one, fun!) but I seem to be rejecting physical books (we have the whole series in print) in favor of ebooks — which are easier on my wrists and work better with my current love of reading in the dark with the screen dimmed — and Leviathan Wakes was on hold on Libby 4-ever. I'm now up to 57 books since my June 6 counting streak, which is pretty fun but also weird. It feels like a reunion of sorts.
  3. I had some adventures in binge watching, too. I had a small reading hiccup between October 24 and November 15 or so whilst waiting for Libby to liberate ebooks for me and banging up against the end of the Bosch universe. I instead got swept up into a little binge-watching. In addition to watching the Bosch and Bosch-related TV series with my husband, and the newest season of the Great British Baking Show with our younger kiddo, I watched the newest season of The Diplomat on Netflix... and then for good measure rewatched the whole series, ha. I also watched the newest season of Upload (didn't rewatch the whole series) and The Peripheral on Amazon Prime Video (I haven't canceled Prime, I know, I know...). The Peripheral is pretty darn cool, I have to say. I'll get around to reading that sometime soon, I'm sure.

Thank you for reading, and happy writing!

In other news:

If you're looking for support making writing happen day in and day out — including regular writing sprints — check out my Called to Write Community, now available at a new lower rate: https://calledtowrite.mn.co

If you're looking for developmental editing support, I'm booked through mid-March, approximately. If you'd like to get onto my editorial calendar, let me know. https://jennaavery.com/for-writers

* All book links herein are affiliate links for Bookshop, which means I earn a small referral fee 
if you purchase from them, and which helps me keep my writing ship afloat. Thank you!

My “Must Have” List Before Writing Pages

My “Must Have” List Before Writing Pages

by | Oct 12, 2016 | Writing Articles

In a recent post I wrote about what "counts" as writing. I promised to share some of the story development steps I take before I'm willing to begin writing actual new pages; hence this post. This is a work in progress for me; I'm constantly working to hone and improve my writing skills, so I'm sure it will continue to evolve as I evolve as a writer.

Here's what I currently like to have before starting to write, in approximate order:

  • Goals, Motivation, and Conflict (GMC) for Main Characters: The goals, motivation, and conflict for each of my primary characters so I stay in touch with what they're doing, why they're doing it, and what gets in their way over the course of the story. (This link will take you a more detailed article about GMC.)
  • Character Profiles: I write character profiles for my primary and secondary characters detailing their personality traits, flaws, character arcs, and more. (This link takes you to the same place as the one above, where you can also download a free character profile template that includes GMC.)
  • Logline: A twenty-five word summary of the story, including its best hook.
  • Premise Line: A longer summary of the story, using Jeff Lyons's method for mapping the core structural story elements to a premise line template.
  • Theme and Message: What's this story about? This is one of those things I'm usually guessing at when I first start —it often doesn't become clear until I've written one or more drafts, but I like to take a stab at it before I begin. More on this in the future.
  • Internal and External Content Genres: I like to use Shawn Coyne's The Story Grid* to get clear on the external and internal content genres of the story to help me make sure I'm staying in touch with the theme and intent of the story I'm aiming to tell.
  • Key Story Values: I also like Shawn's approach to identifying the key values at play in the story (as indicated by the content genres) and make sure (to the extent of my current abilities!) that I also understand their gradations along the spectrum from positive to opposite/contrary to negative/contradictory to the negation of the negation that I'll be exploring over the course of the story.
  • Primary Plot Points: I detail my primary plot points, using a cobbled-together version of the many variations I've learned over the years. These tie in well with the mini-movie method I use (developed by Chris Soth) and help break a story down into smaller chunks.
    • Opening
    • Inciting Incident
    • End of Act I, Lock In, Plot Point #1
    • First Pinch Point
    • Midpoint
    • Second Pinch Point
    • End of Act II, Cave Moment/All Is Lost, Plot Point #2
    • Crisis
    • Climax
    • Resolution
  • Plot Backstory: I like to write out a summary in prose of what's happened leading up to the story. Who was doing what before we enter this story world's timeline? 
  • Scene by Scene Outline: I also like to have a scene by scene outline before I start writing scenes. I identify their location (with a slugline, since I'm writing scripts), the essence of what happens in the scene, and several other elements. I use a scene template that I'll share with you at some point.
  • Treatment/Synopsis (Optional): I may also write a treatment or synopsis for the story, knowing it will likely change as I write the actual story, just to give myself a little more guidance about what happens. Usually I'll do this before a scene outline.
  • Query Letter (Optional): Sometimes I'll even take a stab at writing a query letter for the project to help me identify the hooks for the story and what to focus on building strongly.
  • Timeline or other organizing structural tools (Optional, if the story demands it): If needed, I'll create a timeline for the project (particularly valuable for time travel stories!) or create other project specific organizational systems if the story requires it. This is one of those gut-level things for me.

Once I have all these pieces of the puzzle assembled, that's when I'll feel more confident about starting pages. Sure, some may change, but it gives me a road map and greatly streamlines the writing process for me. I'm also finding that I'm asking myself to stay longer and go deeper with each element, in order to feel more solid about it before diving in. 

What do you like to have before you start writing pages, if anything? Or are you more of a pantser when it comes to writing pages? I'd love to hear about your approach in the comments.

* Affiliate link

 

Jenna Avery
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