What is Your Book About?
Who is Your Audience & What is Your Message?

Your Book’s Theme

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All writing is about the human condition. Characters and events are bound by common universal truths of humanity. A theme is, broadly speaking, a story's central idea: a concept that underpins its narrative. Theme can either be a definitive message like, “greed is the greatest force in human culture,” or abstract ideas like love, loss, or betrayal.

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A book’s theme isn’t the same as its plot. It’s bigger than that. A theme isn’t the work’s literal details like its character or setting. It’s the universal message the story communicates. Think of your book’s characters and plot as its body and of its theme as its soul.  Here is an example:

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The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

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The book is a memoir that explores the theme of grief and the process of mourning. The book is a poignant account of Didion's own experience of losing her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the impact it had on her life.

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Throughout the book, Didion reflects on the time following her husband's sudden death, which occurred as they were sitting down to dinner one evening. She recounts her struggle to come to terms with the loss and the ways in which she tried to cope with her grief. One of the ways that Didion coped with her loss was through what she calls "magical thinking."

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Magical thinking refers to the belief that one's thoughts, wishes, or actions can somehow influence the outcome of events. Didion describes how she would find herself bargaining with fate, hoping that by performing certain actions or avoiding others, she could somehow bring her husband back to life. For example, she talks about how she would avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks, as if doing so could prevent further tragedy.

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Didion also explores the way in which grief can affect memory and perception. She describes how, in the immediate aftermath of her husband's death, she would often experience moments of disorientation and confusion, and how her memories of events would sometimes become jumbled or distorted.

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At the heart of Didion's memoir is the idea that grief is an intensely personal and individual experience. She acknowledges that everyone grieves in their own way, and that there is no right or wrong way to do it. She also emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and accepting the feelings of grief and loss, rather than trying to suppress or deny them.