What Does Your Genre’s Theme Promise to Readers?

Theme is one of those concepts that can be hard to understand. We probably all learned in school that theme is a story’s “message”—the ideas that readers are supposed to take away from the story—but even that definition doesn’t clarify the answer enough.

We often repeat themes in our stories. Why? We want to come up with unique characters and plots, so why are themes different?If we understand why we repeat themes, we might gain a better understanding of what themes really are.

Our uncertain...