I'm a plot first, let the theme emerge kind of writer. Partly from time as a journalist, so I tend to look for the angle, the unique thing that will motivate me to write a story. Partly from a horror of didactic, message-of-the-week writing. Establishing the thematic architecture is crucial for adding depth to a narrative, and making sure the different elements contribute to that architecture. But for me, it's plot before theme every time.

I'm very much a "plot first" person. What I do notice is that I often uncover a vague sense of the theme in the early stages, but then it changes (sometimes a lot!) as the story develops. Usually stays in the same rough area, but exactly what I think I'm trying to say can change a lot...

David and Debbie, I think most writers work plot first, theme arising from the ensuing process. In fact, I remember reading an article once about James L. Brooks who did not discover the them of "As Good As It Gets" until he was in the edit process! This was always my problem with Lajos Egri who equated theme with premise, and posited that is where a writer should start. That just never resonated with me. I start with a concept and/or character, one almost always leads to the other. Never theme. But some writers, maybe theme works for them as a starter. No quibbles from me, every writer is different etc. I know this: I completely agree with David that theme-heavy stories -- "message-of-the-week writing" -- can lead to some awful 'entertainment'. I believe it was Samuel Goldwyn who told some writers on his staff at Fox, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union!" Good point. Then again, I don't look at theme as being a story's premise, nor the 'moral of the story'...

I always begin with the premise and work up a 'snapshot' statement, then characters, story world and then plot as a general practice BUT these are always very parallel and iterative processes. I don't think I give much thought to theme at all possibly until much closer to the writing stage because I think it often emerges from the integrated thinking process of story. Theme can be useful, perhaps, and for some I know it is a foundation similar to the way I consider premise and the snapshot statement. Horses for courses on this one.

Actually Scott, my reading of Egri is that he didn't equate theme with premise. He makes a point of arguing that premise is a statement of conflict through character leads to a conclusion, but theme is recurring fictional ideas ... these are quite different concepts. Egri does point out that many writers have different words for the same thing, among which he includes theme, and he's settled on premise because it offers a different outcome. I think his following arguments distinguish his idea of premise quite well.

I'm gonna sort of retract my above comments on process. I was driving along this afternoon reflecting how I got into my last couple of stories, and in hindsight, I think both were more akin to being 'theme' driven. The last one began about a month ago ...

I've been uncomfortable with the way our Government (Australian parliament) has been debating our asylum seeker problem and there were two significant news events. An Indonesian boat captain was jailed as 'people smuggler', and some time earlier an Afghan man, granted asylum and living in Canberra was discovered to have been organising boatloads of asylum seekers. Once outed, he took flight and left the country. Our members of parliament have been given to labelling asylum seekers as 'illegal immigrants.' Among the things that got my dander up were two clear facts: First that a boat captain who radios the Australian navy for help once he's 70 miles off the coast of Indonesia is not making any attempt to land his 'cargo' undetected, therefore he is not, by definition, a smuggler. Second, the persistence by politicians (in particular the leader of the opposition) to continue to call asylum seekers 'illegal immigrants' even after they have been corrected by scholars and media made me ask the question, Who benefits by the boats continuing to come?' The answer is, of course, the opposition. If the boats keep coming, then the government has failed to stop them, which means the opposition has a perceived political advantage that they can press home to a large, uneducated and racist electorate. They don't need policies, they only need to demonstrate the Government has opened the floodgates. I started to smell political thriller. And my initial statement was: People smuggling is an insidious business in which criminals profit from human misery. "Keep the boats coming." This is indeed a very thematic start. So I continued its exploration: What is the human misery? What are the criminal acts? How do they profit? My initial character groups were: a bent official, a community of Afghan people in Australia and a crime organisation. But then a premise statement began to take shape, 'What if a people smuggling operation was uncovered and found to contain links to people in very high places?' I had formed a pretty clear picture of the nature of the story I wanted to tell. What I didn't have was a hero, and he didn't arrive until quite some time later.

So, when I really think about the process, I like to first of all know I'm dealing with a problem that is causing some hurt somewhere, the problem is caused not by people wanting to inflict hurt, but by people wanting to manipulate the situation for their own political, influential or financial benefit. That seems to be identifying a theme as such right at the outset; something not as concrete as a premise, but something to help guide the discovery of facts that will prove whatever premise does emerge. I'm not sure there's too much plot being invoked at this stage, although I have made a decision on genre, so that's the first structural hurdle. I do tend to think of what might be the opening scene (in this case it's the discovery of a murdered member of the Afghan community), but in terms of structural plot elements I don't think I get into that until I know who my principal characters are (a businessman who exploits asylum seekers, a leader in the Afghan community, a bent official, and my hero who turns out to be a reluctant participant and a poet.) I have some idea of my story world, which includes the suburb where the Afghan community live, the business environment of the deal maker and his holiday home in Bali, Jakarta, Christmas Island ... I have thought a little about how the hero becomes embroiled in this and the exercise of his poetic license that gives him access to influential people. So it's curious. I think the important thing (at least for me) is to be engaged in a subject that matters, find the characters who can exploit it and provide the moral argument that I would like to alert people to. Once I've found a way to do that, then I begin to formalise the process. But in the early stages, it's very organic, moving between different story elements to build up a picture.

I just wanted to add to the above that I think some of the best discussion on premise can be found in James N Frey's first two craft books: How to Write Damn Good Novel I and II (St Martins Press, 1987, 1994).

Kevin, here is an excerpt from Lecture 1 of my Core: Theme class: A starting point for discussion is Lajos Egri’s seminal work “The Art of Dramatic Writing.” The book, originally published in 1946, is essential reading for any screenwriter, TV writer or playwright. In it, Egri begins his entire argument by positing the idea that writers should look at theme as premise [P 1-2]:

Everything has a purpose, or premise. Every second of our life has its own premise, whether or not we are conscious of it at the time… Others, especially men of the theater, have had different words for the same thing: theme, thesis, root idea, central idea, goal, aim, driving force, subject, purpose, plan, plot… For our own use we choose the word ‘premise’ because it contains all the elements the other words try to express and because it is less subject to misinterpretation… Professor Brander Matthews: ‘A play needs to have a theme.’ He means premise.

And what does Egri mean by premise?

“Premise: a proposition antecedently supposed or proved; a basis of argument. A proposition stated or assumed as leading to a conclusion.”

He goes on to list several examples from Shakespeare. Whatever he meant, that's not how I think of theme. To me, Theme = Meaning, and specifically emotional meaning, arising from the psychological life of the characters. Whether that works for all stories or writers, it does speak to something that is critically important in Hollywood: The people who read, acquire, develop and produce scripts want to feel something when they read a story. That may not be THE determining factor in the success of a spec script, but it is certainly an IMPORTANT one.

Kevin, I'm in sync with your process. When you say "I like to first of all know I'm dealing with a problem that is causing some hurt somewhere," that immediately takes me to concept and characters: the nature of the problem [concept], the impact of the problem [characters]. How that gets developed can go a zillion different ways which speaks to this theme or that. For example a comet is headed toward Earth. Concept: Comet / collision. Characters: People on Earth, presumably a specific subset we will follow as they try to deal with the problem. We can take that premise in a whole host of directions: Action-Thriller, Comedy, Drama, Horror, each one with its own distinctive themes, even a myriad of themes within each genre. Interesting, I interviewed writer-director Elgin James yesterday who talked about the inspiration for his movie Little Birds. He and his wife were driving through Salton Sea when he saw a teenager riding a bike with a pack of cigarettes under her rolled up T-shirt sleeve. And boom! He saw the movie. Concept: Being trapped [metaphorically] in a desolate, remote environment. Character: This girl [and another one he immediately conjured up as a friend]. I'll have that interview on the blog next week. As I say, there's no right way to write. Every story is different. Every writer is different. And all these terms we use are our flailing attempts to wrangle the magic necessary to write stories. They can be helpful and ultimately each of us cobbles together our own language system. As long as they are helpful, great. If not, chuck them. And I include anything and everything I say on the subject.

David, I've been noticing a pattern lately where so many of the (screen- and fiction) writers I admire have journalism backgrounds. I have some ideas as to why that might be, but I'm curious what connections you see from your perspective inside both worlds. (I'm also noticing a lot of the contemporary poets I really like are also translators, which absolutely fascinates me.)