Why I write what I write

Those of you who've read pretty much anything of mine will know that it's got a dark streak roughly the width of the Pacific Ocean. You'd have also noticed certain themes appearing fairly often: individuality in contrast and opposition to group dynamics, the fate of the misfit, the lure of the darkness and the cost of resisting it, cheery things like that. Even my lighter pieces - including some of the shameless fluff - have that edge under them.

I don't write about these topics because I feel the need to tell people the right way to go/do/be. If I wanted to do that, I'd start a religion and preach. I'm drawn to these topics because - in a rather less extreme fashion - they shape a lot of my personality. Or because I find them an endlessly fascinating source of inspiration. Twilight (the abomination that is sparkly vampires excluded) is the place where the light fades and the darkness begins to rule. Uncertain boundaries like that tend to be where conflicts arise, and where what works in the light starts to get difficult, if not dangerous. That's good story-fodder.

There's a reason I don't write horror - if I did, I'd be the horror writer who sent people screaming into the darkness, leaving them too scared to sleep. That's something other people have told me, and knowing where my mind goes, I believe them.

Fantasy and Science Fiction are sufficiently open that I can let out the darkness in a "safe" way, show it for what it is, and maybe get the bloody nutcases who inhabit my imagination to stop bitching about me taking too long to write their stories. Hell, my mind permanently inhabits somewhere between SF and Fantasy, where just about anything is possible so long as you've set it up properly. Whether what emerges is SF, Fantasy, or in extreme cases Alternate History, just depends on the characters and the stories.

(This, incidentally, is also the reason my friends and co-workers are familiar with the phrase "Kate-weird")

Those of you who write, why do you write the things you choose to write? Those who don't, why do you read the things you choose?

Use of Theme

Quiet a few years ago, as a critique circle newbie, the group I was with would set deliberate exercises to help us focus on various writing craft elements. It might be point-of-view, writing in various tenses etc.

One month someone proposed themes – i.e. looking at and articulating the theme of our current work in progress.

I can remember thinking at the time ‘Theme? Huh?’

I had never consciously put a theme into what I wrote, and expressed my puzzlement to the group. Someone immediately responded ‘You do though! You always have quite strong themes coming out in your stories.’ After having thought about it a little while longer, I realized they were right. I did actually have themes in my work (it felt kind of like looking at those 3D pictures hidden inside another photo - it leapt out at me when I looked for it), but these were emerging almost unconsciously through the struggles of my characters and the way I had constructed the plot. Yet it was all instinctual.

I do spend time thinking about what is the core essence of a book – essentially ‘what the book is about’ – but really in terms of the characters and their journeys. I don’t use a theme or series of themes as a deliberate cornerstone for my work.

I know that some writers do have themes or issues that they feel strongly about, even to the extent that this may be one of the key reasons they are driven to write in the first place. In this case, the theme, and consideration of how to express this, forms an essential part of their initial creative process and a central anchor to their whole project – something that they may return to again and again to see if they are ‘on course’.

Do you try to bring out a deliberate theme in your work, or is it something you just let happen? Do you think the consideration of a theme is essential to writing fiction?