Many Christian writers confuse the theme of a story with the moral of a story. They say, “I’m going to show how God takes care of the poor.” Or, “I’ll write a story that shows that even the most sinful prostitute-drug dealer-egotist-alcoholic-wife abuser- can be turned into a good person.” This intention is, of course, well-meaning but this moralizing premise is exactly where creative problems often start.

To create characters primarily to illustrate a Christian truth will not only create a story with flat characters, but it will produce a book that is moralistic and preachy and which will lack a unifying theme. “Ah,” I hear someone saying, “but isn’t a theme and a moral the same thing?” Well, no! Themes and morals are not the same thing.

Themes and morals intersect; they shadow and parallel each other. But a theme is broader than a moral. A moral is decided upon before a story is written; a theme is discovered by the author during the course of writing the novel. A moral is a single truth; a theme is a three-fold knot that is not easily unbraided. A moral is, well, moralistic and pious; a theme is more humanistic and shows how a moral works itself out in “real life.” In short, themes are the life experience of a particular moral.

Characterization and Plot
To understand themes, we must understand characterization and plot. Why? Because the creative world is full of story plots, which are subtly changed depending on the story’s theme. Let’s consider three fairy tales: Goldilocks and the three bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rumplestiltskin. The basic plot of all these stories is this: Character A takes something from Character B. Depending on the culture, philosophy, and personality of the author, character A either has the right to take this particular thing or not. Character A is either a thief, a hero, a usurer, or an innocent. Likewise, Character B might be seen as evil and deserving to be robbed or as a true victim.

In many versions of the beanstalk story, a background story is usually slipped in that justifies Jack’s thieving from the giant. But in most versions the giant has done nothing particularly wrong. He is, like Rumplestiltskin, simply not “like us.” Therefore we are perfectly contented to have the very tall man and the very little dwarf suffer at the hands of the hero.

We can see this premise perfectly well in the story of Rumplestiltskin, where no backstory is needed to justify the maiden not keeping her promise to the dwarf. The girl is a victim of her greedy mother. The bargain the girl makes with Rumplestiltskin passes all ethical and maternal boundaries and is downright usurious. We therefore do not need to hear mitigating backstory about Rumplestiltskin.

In both Rumplestiltskin and Jack and the Beanstalk, the main characters benefit from lies. Both take something that doesn’t belong to them. But both are heroes. These stories don’t share the same moral, although their stories share a common theme. In one, the moral is: “Don’t bargain away your future. You may regret it. — Especially do not take out loans from shyster foreigners with funny names who might want more than a pound of flesh.” In the other, the moral is “You can kill an oppressor and take his goods if you’re poor and noble.”

The theme of both stories deal with the very large landscape of poverty and what happens to poor folk.

Goldilocks and the three bears also deals with not having. But here, the main character’s behavior is downright unheroic. Like Jack, she goes in and takes what is not hers. Like the unnamed heroine of Rumplestiltskin, she enjoys the fruits of her deception for a while.

The stories all explore the same basic theme: poverty, desperation, and other people’s stuff. Yet the stories’ morals are different because of how the main character and the protagonist are depicted.

In reading Jack and the Beanstalk, one never thinks of Jack’s covetousness, only of his bravery and his poverty. The implication is that a poor, brave boy with good sense can take away the wealth of a powerful man. The moral there is that luck will help you in life but you should also be brave, and if you happen to be poor then it’s quite all right to take something from a rich powerful person.

The moral of Goldilocks and the three bears warns that one should not take what belongs to others, even if their door is open, and even if the person has something that is “just right” for you.

As for Rumplestiltskin, the story tells us two things: small lies build on each other until the lie becomes so big the liar gets into a life-and-death fix. And, bartering away an unknown future because of a present selfish need. So much, for large loans.

Although these stories all have morals, none of them has a moralistic protagonist, at least not in the Christian sense. One can add elements to change this, of course. We can make Jack a good Christian, and the giant can be turned into a demonic force bent on stealing our treasures. Children have gleaned truths from these stories –even when they weren’t explicitly told the “moral” of the story.

This is the NATURE of a theme: a theme is something sensed and gleaned by a reader, and it is something examined by a writer.

Morals are authoritative truth, but themes explore. Many Christian stories are preachy precisely because they lack exploration and dive headlong into morality. If the moral of a story comes too trippingly off the tongue, we probably have a flat story which reads like a sermon. There is no discovery, no sense of creative play, no sense that the writer is struggling with her theme. The story will read like a rethread of a Sunday school lesson. Themes are the life experience of a moral, how a moral plays itself out in “real life” — in this case, how it plays out in a story. A theme occurs when a writer’s soul is arguing with her spirit.

Often a plot touches on many small themes while it deals with one major unifying theme. The reason there are all these small themes is because as the writer explores the truth of her black and white moral, she begins to see that perhaps the moral isn’t always right in all situations. This can be very stressing for a writer but this is what makes the story ring true. If everything in a story points to the moral, then preachiness occurs.

The threefold cord/the unifying theme.

If a writer wishes to write a story with a unifying theme, one method to use is to think of a threefold cord that is not easily unbraided. The unifying theme of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance is revenge. Every young male character in the play has been given the task of avenging his father. But only Hamlet fails miserably. Why? Because one of the subthemes of this play of many themes is that there are different personality traits in the world B the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic and the melancholy. And some folks have the wrong personality for certain jobs. In short, Hamlet’s melancholy makes him a lousy prince/revenger. So, one subtheme is “revenge will destroy the person who is not cut out to do it, but the noble choleric non-thinking Fortinbras is successful at that kind of thing.” Even in Shakespeare’s time, character traits were all-important to a story’s theme.

I have often told new writers that if they want to tell a story with a theme, they should begin with characterization, and the best pattern to use is the Goldilocks story. Too hot, too cold, just right. Too soft, too hard, just right.

To illustrate: if a Christian writer wishes to explore the theme of greed, she should remember that morals are specific, but themes broad. Morals point to a single street the writer knows well. Themes explore a landscape the writer is also discovering. The characters a writer creates must show all aspects of the landscape.

So if one wants to explore the theme of greed, what does one do?

A pimping drug dealer ambitious for money might be one good character. But we need to throw other characters into the mix — to broaden the thematic terrain. We might also create a minor character who has no desire for money at all. But even here one must be careful. We don’t want to end up with a “goody-two-shoe sacred cow character” (Too hot.) At the same time we don’t want a “too cold” evil unsaved baddie character. We don’t want lost moralistic, simple stereotypes.

Exploration, discovery, playfulness, balance, and allowing one’s self to be surprised must step into the creative process. The legalistic part of the writer “knows” what the moral of her story should be. But at the same time, her human heart understands the complications of life. The writer thinks she knows where the story “should” go. But as she writes, Fear rears its head. The moral often seems to be slipping away. Confusion begins to set in, especially when a writer begins to actually understand and care for her bad guy.

But this is where we allow the Holy Spirit to truly become our co-creator. The Lord wants honesty in our own journey, and a true testimony that delivers souls. Hypocrisy and moralistic piety can be sniffed out a mile away. Pious readers may like pious writing, but non-religious people and those who have been harmed by religious people will be thrown off by what they perceive as the cold dead perfume of legalism. People don’t like pious judgemental know-it-alls telling them how to live better, especially when it becomes obvious that the writer hasn’t thought about the situation in any deep manner. Therefore the religious writer must let go.

This letting go often comes in the form of minor characters whose traits reflect some aspect of the theme, whether spiritually, emotionally, geographically, culturally, sexually or otherwise. In the case of greed, the writer might add (to the drug-dealer greedy for money) a few characters:

1) A minor character who is greedy for spiritual power.
2) A self-satisfied smug man who is satisfied with what he has.
3) A gentle soul who is satisfied with what he has.
4) A jealous woman who is emotionally greedy for love.
5) A wounded or unambitious man who has never learned to dream.
6) A person who dreams of wealth or spiritual power but who is too lazy to work for it.

The funny thing is that these characters would probably appear in the writer’s story without the writer being too aware of it. Your subconscious knows that minor characters matter to the theme as well as to the plot.

Every story has read the parable of the Good Samaritan. The easy moral is this: One must love one’s neighbor. But so much happens in the story and the main and minor characters are so memorable.

But the thematic terrain of the story — the stuff the reader senses in the story– are more varied than its moral.

For instance,
1) Anyone can be my neighbor because I have the power to choose to help any sufferer I encounter.
2) We are all robbed and wounded and often it is not the good person who saves us.
3) My neighbor is the one who takes care of me when I am in need.
4) One should never judge people by their race or status.
5) One should not assume that those who are externally holy are internally holy.
6) The holiness of your enemy might surprise you.

So while we don’t know the moral of the Good Samaritan parable, we know the terrain of the story. The theme is love.

Let’s say two characters present themselves to you and ask you to write a story about them. The characters are unmarried and live together. At this point, moralism kicks in and you have already begun to judge the character. But, then –as you write– you discover that these characters are dirt poor. The moralistic writer within will still find their cohabitation inexcusable. She might stop exploring at this point. She will have them move out, gain self-confidence, then find good jobs. But that is too easy. And the subconscious will not allow this easy. Suddenly one might realize the woman is physically ill and has lost her job and been rejected by society? The guy is the only one who loves her and has healed her of her isolation. What to do?

Let’s add a few minor characterizations. Remember Goldilocks: Too hot. Too cold. Just right.

1) What if the female character has an abusive dad and this is the only guy who has ever treated her right?
2) What if the male character has escaped a house with an abusive dad?
3) What if the main characters have next door church-going neighbors who are involved in a bad marriage?
4) What about adding a celibate lonely woman who regrets never finding a man because she was so pious?
5) What if there is a lovely married couple?
6) What if the couple attend a church pastored by a kindly married minister? an unkindly married minister? a judgemental married minister?
7) What about a rich man — married or single– who never helps anyone with his money?

Now you realize you’re in the marriage terrain; You’ve discovered that marriage is your theme. Or maybe your theme is generosity or kindheartedness. The thing is, now you’ve discovered what your heart wanted to explore. All this time you thought you were writing about the evils of living in sin, when your heart wanted to write about something else.

I can hear a few people saying, “Why are you trying to make the plot so difficult? You’re loading the deck.”

My answer: But this is life and life loads the deck. Life is difficult. But I’ll also say that the person who writes a story she actually set out to write has probably written a flat book. The heart rarely wants to write about what we think we want to write about. I can always tell when a person hasn’t allowed her book to breathe: such a book rarely has a heart. It is often unsurprising to the reader…and the writer has not discovered anything about herself by writing it.

Moralizing writers may return to their original moralizing, and rein the story in for fear they might lose their faith if they broaden their hearts even a little bit. But if they manage to make it to the journey’s end, they will discover the truth of Christ has pervaded their story: what was once a dead moral is now vividly alive and wonderfully proven. But with this difference: the story now has a heart. The underlying theme has created a novel which depicts the love and thought behind the moral.

And love is the most important Christian message. A Christian writer who begins writing must learn not to lean upon her own understanding or on a particular moralistic lesson. She must not say, “What moral truth do I want to teach?” She must ask herself, “What vice, political issue, social issue, political trait or virtue do I wish to explore and study through the lens of a loving eye? And am I willing to journey to dark places of my own doubt as I write a story? Places which might make me a trifle uncomfortable?” A brave journey indeed.

Then said I, “Here am I; send me.”
Carole McDonnell
Wind Follower, Juno Books