05 Running themes
This is similar to the character
psychoses and the location themes but covers recurring
plot themes that are not character or place dependent.
These are metaphorical themes
that run throughout your novel and add another artistic
layer to your text.
They fall into two categories:
Natural themes
These are themes that you notice have occurred in you novel naturally as
you have written it.
In Nix Ex Machina, I looked through
the plot and noticed that the resting places of the dead
being disturbed was a recurring theme:
-
Tarko has to
clear the bodies of several dead cats out of the cats
home.
-
Tarko and Lemon
sort though his Gran's flat where she died.
-
Richard's 'accident'
is rearranged twice involving his body being moved.
-
Tarko discovers
Deniska's body in the deserted lift shaft and punches
him, thinking he is alive.
-
The Oil company
in Alaska was paying out compensation for the possible
disturbance of Eskimo burial sites.
Having noticed this theme, I
then adopt it as a metaphorical theme and use it elsewhere
to reinforce it:
-
When Tarko
is looking through the shoe boxes in the warehouse,
the boxes are compared to coffins.
-
The three Russian
computer servers act like three dead spirits that have
been reawakened from their eternal rest.
-
The empty houses
in Imber are compared to skulls or tombs.
Engineered themes
These are themes that you consciously decide to insert into your novel. Tarko
gets caught between two rival gangs and so is like a pawn on a chess
game. I decided that this was a nice analogy and so wanted to have chess
flow throughout the whole novel as a metaphorical theme:
-
When looking
for a way to make a business decision, Tarko and Rurik
play a game of chess to decide.
-
The trucks at
Allington Point follow a naming convention that follows
Russian chess pieces.
-
When attempting
to fake the CCTV footage, Tarko and Prokofy put the
clocks back on the server and play a game of chess
in front of the camera.
-
When Yakov is
counting out stacks of money and moving them across
the table to Tarko, he moves them like chess pieces.
-
When Yakov is
taunting Tarko over his efforts to rescue Lemon, he
praises Tarko's efforts to 'protect his queen.'
In Pulling Power, there is a
recurring theme or people staring into light. Eve stares
at the sun in the Californian desert, when coming round
in the hospital Matt stares up at the ceiling light,
an FBI agent stares at another ceiling light when sliding
in through an open window on his back.
