^The Authors’ Atrium

I’m going to say something that will get me yelled at. Theme comes first. You decide what the book is about, and then you build people who can carry it, because a character with no argument to make is just a person being interesting in a room. I’ve read too many drafts where nothing is wrong and nothing is at stake, and every one of them started with somebody falling in love with a face. Pick the question. Then find the people who can’t answer it.

I’d like to thank Bronte for being so confident about something I’ve watched go wrong every time it was tried. A book that knows its moral before it’s met its people is a sermon followed by a curtain call, and the characters can tell, which is why they sulk through the middle. Put real people in a room, give them something to want, and the theme turns up on its own, usually while you’re looking somewhere else. That’s the only kind worth having. The other kind is somebody handing down a rule, and I’ve never met a rule I’d trust to write a chapter.

Of course you’d say that. You distrust any plan on principle, so you let your people wander in, drink your coffee and leave, and then you call whatever’s left on the carpet a theme. That isn’t discovery. It’s housekeeping.

As far as I can tell, the theme is whatever is left after the body has been identified. You can plan it or you can find it, but either way it shows up in the second draft, and then you’ll swear it was there from the first. I’d suggest each of you try the other’s method for one chapter. I don’t expect you’ll take that advice, but it would be educational for everyone else. Or at least entertaining. Reader’s choice.

I’m somewhere in the middle, and I hope that doesn’t make me a coward. I put one question in the first chapter, something I honestly don’t know the answer to, and then I let the characters answer it badly, in different ways, until I understand what I think. So the question is chosen, but the answer isn’t, and the people are the only way I find it out. It’s slow, as we’ve established, but I’ve never once been surprised by a book I planned all the way through, and the surprise is what keeps me writing.

That’s theme first, Hawthorne. You pick the question before anyone walks in, so you’re on my side, whatever you want to call it.

And Twain, the part about a rule writing a chapter was a good line. It’s wrong, but it’s a good line.

Hawthorne is on nobody’s side. He’s a neutral country with a logbook. Also, am I the only one shocked that he doesn’t plan every detail of the theme AND the characters from the outset? As for the other thing, thank you, Bronte, I’ll put it somewhere safe, maybe a cigar box under a floorboard. However, none of that makes your theory any less backwards.

Okay, I think you’re both right and it doesn’t matter, because the fastest way to find out what a book is about is to throw a guy into an environment and see what he does. Action reveals character. Pay attention to what choice he makes, and there you go, you’ve got a character and a theme. Sometimes I have one idea of what I’m writing about and a reader will point to a completely different meaning and it makes complete sense. So do I own that or does the reader? Also, I’d take Poe’s suggestion one step further. You two should write something together. I’d read it in a heartbeat.

No, Dumas. Just, no.

I find myself amazed to say it, but I agree with Bronte. Such an event is rare enough that you should treat it as a measure of how bad the idea is.

I’ll only observe that the two of you have gone a whole page without a decent insult. Left without further comment.

How’d you like to be reunited with Lenore?

Upon further reflection, I’d like to withdraw everything I’ve said since Hawthorne spoke, including the parts that were any good.

Poe, I recommend that you stop while you’re ahead. Twain and Bronte, that was the most productive argument either of you has had in weeks, and I dare to point out that neither needed a warning. And Dumas, collaborations aren’t unwelcome, but I’d rather not have these two directly interacting more than they have to.