By Tom Vaughan in Process — Jan 13, 2026

When to worry about theme.

Of all the vital elements of storytelling, theme is probably the most misunderstood.

Craig Mazin's THE LAST OF US.

The Story and Plot Weekly Email is published every Tuesday morning. Don't miss another one.

When to worry about theme.

Of all the vital elements of storytelling, theme is probably the most misunderstood.

This is one of the reasons I encourage writers to worry less about it and let it come to them, which often runs counter to so much of the other advice they have been given!

We had a fun discussion in the Pro community in the last couple of weeks, and I realized that while I have shared my general attitude towards theme in the Weekly Email, I have never addressed it from a “here’s how to do it” perspective.

So let’s do that this week.

Do not mistake my encouragement to worry less about it as a de-emphasis of its importance.

Theme is essential to tap into the deeper emotions.

By creating a larger context for what we are thinking and feeling, theme can magnify our emotions exponentially by connecting us with deeper human truths.

And while yes, sometimes a story is just a roller coaster, with laughs and thrills only on the surface, doing that well is extremely difficult.

It is much harder than it looks.

Going without a theme places a huge burden on us, the storytellers, to write and create mistake-free, and most of us aren’t up to it, let alone consistently.

I have no interest in trying. The payoff is less, and the difficulty is more.

While it’s counter-intuitive, theme makes our jobs easier, not harder.

It allows us to tap into emotions we otherwise would not be able to, and gives us room for error in other areas as well.

Yet, we often get in our own way with theme.

We think we have to feed it more energy than we do. We too often see it as the thing that gives our story its worth.

We conflate theme with “message,” insert the thing we really want to yell at the world, and expect everyone to enjoy it.

We have all found a story that seems to align with our worldview, and we liked it a little more because of it.

Theme can definitely do that.

And that can certainly give the impression that theme is what gives the story value.

Yet, I have found theme to always be supplemental.

It only ever shines through a good story. I have never enjoyed a movie thinking, “The story was bad, but the theme was so good!”

I have seen far too many writers tie themselves in knots trying to impose a theme on a story that didn’t really want it.

I was one of them! And it never worked. Not once.

Here is how I do it now.

I have said before that, as a practitioner, I do not want or need terms and definitions designed to identify and classify things. I want terms and definitions that help me do my job.

My definition of theme is no different.

I define theme as:

The ideas and values that are rewarded or punished within the context of the story.

Why this definition?

It’s how the audience experiences theme.
It highlights for me what I need to do and what I need to worry about.

One thing you will notice in this definition is that theme is downstream of story. That is, story tells you what theme is, and not the other way around.

So this is my first step:

Determine what story I am telling. That is, who changes and how?

Using my newest spec as an example, the first draft didn’t have much of a theme at all, because the story itself wasn’t all that clear.

I wrote the first draft in 1998, after all, and I had very little process then.

It’s an amnesia story, and in that draft, the protagonist, Jack, discovers he did some awful things during the three months he had no memory of. He thought he was a good person, but he becomes unsure of this and ultimately realizes he is not so bad after all!

It was a fun ride, but that was largely all there was to it. The twists were great, but it didn’t hit you on a level much deeper than that.

I optioned it three times over the years, but haven’t touched it since 2008.

Now, I’ve grown quite a bit in the eighteen years since I last fiddled with it!

And I wanted to bring the process I’ve developed to the project.

To unify the story with the concept, Jack’s transformation is more about how he protects himself through secrets.

He tells himself he is protecting his wife by not being fully honest with her about his inner life. They are unable to form true intimacy, and the marriage dissolves.

By the end, he realizes that the relationship he wants with his wife requires the vulnerability of full disclosure. No more secrets, emotional or otherwise.

He discovers this by realizing that he is effectively keeping secrets from himself for the three months he can’t remember!

What does this tell us about the theme?

Again, the definition:

The ideas and values that are rewarded or punished within the context of story.

The story:

A man transforms from someone who loves his family but is incapable of true intimacy, to fully accepting and sharing himself with his wife and is a better husband, father, and person because of it.

The ideas and values rewarded and punished in this story are secrets (punished) and intimacy (rewarded).

You could dig even deeper with family (rewarded), untamed desires (punished), self-acceptance (rewarded), self-rejection (punished).

Just by telling a clear story, the theme announces itself to you.

When there is a transformation, or even a lack of it, we will feel either good or bad about it. If we have no emotional reaction to it at all, it means we don’t care, and we’re doing it wrong.

The audience may not like what is being rewarded, and it may not like what is being punished, but that is what the story is giving them.

What do we do with this theme?

Once we recognize and define it, we want to return to the story and explore and highlight it further.

Everything is there to support the story already, right? Because the theme is downstream of that story, everything is there to support the theme as well!

Remember our criteria for every scene: does it push, pull, or tempt the protagonist from the eventual outcome of their story?

For example, in earlier drafts, a supporting character, Rachel, was the femme fatale. She existed this way because my life experience back then was mostly the movies! I needed a femme fatale because these movies had one!

However, because her role in the story is a temptation away from his wife, she must offer an alternative to his ultimate transformation.

He is not tempted by the childish dichotomy of whore/madonna, and so the pure femme fatale just felt very boring.

Instead, he is tempted by a more effortless relationship with less reward, but one that he need not risk vulnerability with.

We made a point of highlighting this several times. Whenever the possibility of actual intimacy would arise, she would decline.

At one point, he wants to confess something, and she replies:

This is slam, bang, on-the-nose dialogue that presents a counter-view of the theme and tempts him in a whole other direction. But the moment earns it, and you see it as character and a choice, rather than a “state the theme” moment.

Here is the key:

Because every character and every scene already supports the story (that specific transformation), they also support the theme.

It's baked in.

Another common approach to theme comes from Craig Mazin.

Mazin did a now very popular solo episode of his podcast, SCRIPT NOTES, on story structure.

He is a proud grump, but a natural teacher. I consider his “Thriving Through Development” seminar, which he used to do at the WGA, one of the most influential lectures I’ve ever experienced.

In his story structure talk, he embraces the thematic statement or “dramatic argument” and what he calls thematic structure.

This is an approach that puts theme first. It states your theme as a statement of truth, and “The purpose of the story is to take a character from ignorance of the truth of the theme to embodiment of the theme through action.”

It is a character transformation by way of theme. That is, their change is that they accept and embody this truth.

Now, there is no discernible difference here in outcome, only approach, which is just the opposite of mine!

In his version, story is downstream of theme.

This appears easier when you are reverse-engineering other people’s stories, less so when creating your own.

In terms of a dramatic argument, here are some examples:

RATATOUILLE: Greatness can come from anywhere.

STAR WARS: Faith is stronger than technology.

Mazin mentions FINDING NEMO in his talk and addresses the theme: “If you love someone, let them go.”

As I mentioned earlier, the biggest mistake people make here is landing on the theme too early. Like, first thing. They start with it.

Mazin isn’t saying to do this: “You should probably not start with an argument.”

So the question becomes how and when do you let theme take over and dictate your choices? When does this approach give this thematic argument priority above all else?

Mazin doesn’t entirely say, but it’s early in the process. Before breaking the story at least.

My approach says theme will tell YOU when it’s ready.

Because once you know your story (as I define it), the theme and its dramatic argument will announce themselves anyway.

Yet it is never the other way around. Theme will never tell you what the story is.

Why is that?

Because stories have themes. Themes do not have stories.

I never tackled BACK UP in terms of theme, only the story. Yet I can clearly see the dramatic argument if I ever wanted to take this approach.

Its dramatic argument would take some form of:

You cannot have true intimacy while keeping secrets.

The character Rachel mentioned above would represent the “antithesis” of this theme, as would the elements that compel the protagonist to deny this truth.

Because this theme emerged organically and, most importantly, was tied to the story's emotional core rather than an intellectual idea I imposed, it is much easier and more fun to explore.

This is a little bit of semantics here.

And it may appear even more so because the eventual outcome is the same! But I am a teacher as much as I am a writer, and what I am sharing here is a process.

Screenwriting is hard, and I like to make choices that make my job easier. If the outcome is the same, I want the easier path.

Now, whatever works for you, embrace it. Of course. Do that. There is a version of this in which the theme and the story mean pretty much the same thing.

But theme trips a lot of people up, and it shouldn’t. Focus on the story first. Always.

Determine who changes and how.
That’s your story.
Find what values and ideas are rewarded and punished in that story.
That’s your theme. If you like, you can write it as a statement.
Find how each character, event, and choice moves the characters to where they will end up, pushes them back to where they started, or diverts them in another direction.
Emphasize these moments, highlight them, and explore them. Create more moments if you need to.
That is you thematically unifying your story. In Mazin’s terms, that is the thesis and the antithesis battling it out.

Do this right, and it doesn’t have to be much more complicated than that.

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