From the course: Write a Bestselling Novel in 15 Steps

Theme stated: Examples

From the course: Write a Bestselling Novel in 15 Steps

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Theme stated: Examples

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- [Instructor] Here are a few examples of the Theme Stated beat in action. First up, Midnight in Paris. I chose this movie because it has such a fantastic Theme Stated beat. In the first act, before Gil, played by Owen Wilson, has his epic first trip into the past, he's touring Versailles with his fiancee, played by Rachel McAdams, and their tour guide is his fiancee's ex-boyfriend. Ouch, awkward. But also, a perfect character to state the theme because does Gil seriously want to listen to or believe anything this guy has to say? No way. So there they are, touring Versailles, and the tour guide asks Gil, who's a writer, 'What are you working on?' To which Gil replies, 'I'm working on a novel about a guy who works in a nostalgia shop.' And then tour guide/ex-boyfriend says, 'Nostalgia is denial, denial of the painful present.' Gil promptly dismisses this remark as being snobby and ridiculous. What does he know? But what do you know, that's the exact same lesson Gil will learn by the end of the movie. Gil is a hero whose flaw is that he can't live in the present. He literally escapes to the past when he time travels back to the 1920s. He's nostalgic for the past and he's in denial of the painful present, where his life is, surprise, full of problems. And all of this is stated upfront in this Theme Stated beat. But of course, Gil won't realize any of that until the end. In the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, the hero's big flaw is stated right in the title. Lizzie is prejudiced. She judges people too quickly, which is exactly what she does when she meets the prideful Mr Darcy. She has to learn how to see past Mr Darcy's pride and get over her prejudice, which, what do you know, is exactly what Lizzie's younger sister Mary says to her earlier in the novel on page 16, when she says, 'Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.' Mary is basically telling Lizzie to get over it. Everyone has pride. You have to learn to see beyond that. But does she listen? No, actually, no one does. Everyone at the dinner table promptly ignores Mary, just like they usually do, which makes Mary a perfect person to state the theme. She's easily ignorable and the more ignorable the theme, the more believable it is that the hero will require two more acts of the novel to figure it out for themselves. The classic great American novel The Grapes of Wrath also has a wonderful Theme Stated beat. The hero Tom Joad starts out selfish and highly independent. Early in the story, during the Setup beat, on page 24, Preacher Casy says to Tom, 'Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of.' This is a nod to Tom's ultimate transformation, to go from selfish to selfless, to change from someone who looks out only for themselves to someone who ultimately helps organize migrant workers and fight back against the landowners who are driving down the labor prices. And again, that very transformation was hinted at in the Theme Stated beat. And finally, let's get back to Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. When Louisa Clark is interviewing for the job as Will Traynor's caretaker, Will's mother Camilla asks Louisa, on page 20, 'What exactly do you want to do with your life?' Louisa can't answer the question and that's because Louisa's flaw is that she lives her life for everyone else, for her parents, for her sister, for her boring boyfriend, and soon, even for Will Traynor. By the end of the novel, Louisa will have to answer that question, 'What exactly do you want to do with your life?' and start living her life for her, not for anyone else. But for now, she can't do it because the point of that question was not for her to answer it. The point was to subtly state the theme, giving the reader a hint as to what this novel is ultimately about. And author Jojo Moyes does that perfectly. So is the Theme Stated starting to make a little more sense now? It's a subtle nod to the bigger picture of the story, the hero's ultimate life lesson and transformation. It's a seed planted subconsciously in the reader's mind, so that when we pull off that epic transformation by the end, the reader has no choice but to think, wow.

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