Themes to inspire your audience

If you have a problem with your current story, please ask me about it. Scott

The highest-level stories not only make us feel but also make us think. They achieve this by dramatizing important ideas, themes. The dramatic power of theme can be seen in films like the 1940 Swiss Family Robinson and the novels of Michael Connelly.

Swiss Family Robinson

The 1940 Swiss Family Robinson was produced by RKO and though now owned by Disney this adaptation is different to the well-known 1960s Disney version. For those unfamiliar with the story, it dramatizes the adventures of an early 19th century British family marooned on a deserted Pacific island.

What makes this adaptation so engaging and inspiring is that it explicitly dramatizes a universal and important theme: molding the characters of our children. The film also includes a related minor but poignant theme about romantic love.

When viewing Swiss Family Robinson, one is riveted by its characters facing meaningful ethical challenges. The creatives behind this film did especially well by having the father (Thomas Mitchell) make an explicit and principled choice to put his family at risk by taking them across the globe to a new colony so they could become better people. In an excellent complication, this choice terribly rebounds on him when they are marooned on a deserted island. Or does it?

The instructive lesson here for creatives is that if you want to emotionally move an audience on a deep level, you must dramatize a universal and important theme. It is thematic ideas with deep value meanings that create emotion. If you want to inspire your audience, it must be a positive and impactful theme and life lesson.

Michael Connolly and Bosch

Michael Connelly is the best mystery-crime writer today. A former Los Angeles Times police reporter, Connelly has created two major heroes, each with their own series of novels set in Los Angeles. One series features LAPD detective Hieronymus Bosch, the other defense attorney Mickey Haller.

What helps make both crime series emotionally evocative is Connelly's addition of a theme that focuses on the psychology of his protagonists. Connelly poignantly dramatizes how this detective and lawyer cope with the ugly world in which they work: LA's dark side of murderers, rapists, serial killers, and psychopaths, as well as the opportunistic and morally vacuous civil servants who lead the City of Angels.

More specifically, what lifts Connelly's gripping mysteries to a higher level of drama is the nature of his heroes’ internal conflict. Let’s focus on Bosch. In multiple Bosch novels, this morally just LAPD detective struggles against being overwhelmed by a bitter, malevolent view of life—falling prey to the belief that the world is an ugly place dominated by human evil. By adding this philosophical-psychological problem for his protagonist to overcome, Connelly adds greatly to the drama of his Bosch stories. The addition of this theme gives depth and meaning to the story's characters and events and significantly enhances the enjoyment of the novels.

When Bosch fights and defeats evil (criminals and bureaucrats), his victories buttress his benevolent view of the world, that justice and the good can succeed. But this work-related success is not enough for Bosch to retain a positive view of life against his daily contact with malice and evil. Bosch also struggles to sustain a benevolent feeling for life by searching for and experiencing goodness and innocence in the world. He achieves this through romantic relationships and most importantly through loving his daughter Maddie.

How Bosch uses these relationships as an antidote against malevolence is especially evident in The Narrows, where he hunts a former FBI profiler who has become a serial killer. After making the harrowing discovery of a dead victim in the serial killer’s lair, Bosch rushes back to Vegas where his toddler daughter lives with his estranged partner. In a revealing scene, the detective visits Maddie and sits beside her while she sleeps. In the darkness, Bosch stares at little Maddie then holds her hand, as if drawing innocence from her, as if refueling his soul to protect it against the devils that can infest the world.

Bosch's struggle between a malevolent and benevolent worldview engenders strong suspense: will Bosch succumb to bitterness or will he hold onto innocence and love? At the end of a Bosch novel, detective Harry Bosch has vanquished evil in the world and often found joy or solace in the arms of a lover or through interactions with his daughter. Connelly is not the first detective story writer to have his hero suffer the acidic effects of too close a rubbing against evil, but he makes the fight against it an essential part of his hero's soul and his motivations and actions in the world.

Michael Connelly's novels are riveting crime stories. They are suspenseful, burst with clever twists, and exhibit brilliant, resourceful and moral heroes, but it is Connelly's focus on the psychology of his heroes that adds a psychologically insightful and emotionally moving dimension to his stories. When one enters the dark world that Connelly creates, this writer-come-moralist grips your hand as he leads you past the evil he depicts. But with his other hand, Connelly places your palm on the cheek of an innocent child. Even in darkness Connelly reminds you of the potential innocence and beauty of your fellow human beings. That is writing to profoundly enjoy and which we all, especially writers, can learn from.

Scott McConnell, the story guy and former producer, is a story and script consultant for writers and producers.

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