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The negative underside of theme is being preachy. You are preaching when you insist that your reader endorse your theme, message or point of view.
The theme is the soul of the story. Every story needs a theme. The negative underside of theme, however, is being preachy. You are preaching when you insist that your reader endorse your theme, message or point of view.
1) Here’s a way to distinguish between being preachy and the right use of theme.
Read your text out loud to yourself. If you have been preachy, your grand, all-inclusive phrases will jump out at you. Sometimes people laugh aloud with awareness as they read aloud such phrases as:
“I’d like to see how many kids today would…”
“In those days, we weren’t afraid to…”
“If you’re going to do it right, you have to…”
“The evil we see today is all due to…”
“Teenagers today don’t realize how important little things in life are” is the beginning of a sermon. It is not the start of an insight.
2) Here is an example of an insight, “It was all I had for Christmas and it didn’t matter to me then.
We were all together and for that I was grateful” is not at all being preachy. It states your reaction and the reader is free to accept or reject it.
3) Now let’s alter this last example to show being preachy: “It was all I had for Christmas. Kids today wouldn’t have been satisfied, but it didn’t matter to me then.”
That little phrase, “kids today wouldn’t have been satisfied,” as innocuous or even true as it may seem, is preachy. As a grand, all-inclusive statement, it is likely to cost you your reader’s attention. You lose credibility when you promote your particular experience as a universal truth.
4) Don’t thrust your experiences on the reader as an example of the life-well-lived or of the superiority of a bygone era.
In writing your story, you are sharing your experience and perhaps that of your generation, or ethnic group, or religious/philosophical community. Tell your story. You can write a better memoir. Period.
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