Writing Tip Wednesday: It’s All About Theme

Writing Tip Wednesday: It’s All About Theme

Hello and happy Writing Tip Wednesday!

I’m fresh off Crime Bake 2025 — and I’ll wax poetic about that tomorrow. But for today, I want to talk about theme.

On Saturday, I moderated “What It Means: Choosing a Theme” with Lori Rader-Day, Edwin Hill, and Carolyn Wilkins. Their bios and links are at the end of this post, but this one’s dedicated to that conversation.

What is a theme, anyway?

When I used to teach 8th grade, I once fell flat on my face with a lesson.
I wrote the daily question on the board:

“What is a theme?”

Crickets.

I was frustrated because I knew my students were into the book. I knew they had things to say. My coach looked at the question and said, “That’s boring. What if you asked, Which is more powerful: hope or despair? Why? Do you think the author agrees with you?”

Game changer.

That day, I learned two things:

Good questions matter.

Themes live in the universal questions we can’t stop asking.

Writing is about expression — but it’s also about connection. Reading, then, is a conversation between writer and reader about what it means to be human.

When I taught, my students would read Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask.” I wouldn’t tell them who wrote it. We’d just read the poem and discuss what it mean to them.

And they got it. Nobody wears a mask better than a middle schooler trying to figure out who they are, how others see them, and where they fit.

Then I’d share Dunbar’s biography — a late-19th-century Black writer, the son of formerly enslaved parents — and we’d read it again.

“Oh,” they’d say. “Wow.”

Then we’d listen to Maya Angelou’s “The Mask.” Same conversation, but deeper now — about identity, performance, and survival.

That’s what theme is: both deeply personal and deeply universal. The thread that makes us who we are and binds us to others. Literature is uniquely human because it’s always about the individual and the collective.

Where themes really come from

During the panel, Lori, Edwin, and Carolyn all agreed: You don’t start a story thinking, This is my message.

As Carolyn said, “We write mysteries, not manifestos.”
Lori added that her stories often orbit around powerful men behaving badly.
Carolyn’s focus: characters who struggle and overcome.

Stories, Edwin said, come from an idea, a character, a person, a moment, a snapshot in time.

“A girl on stage, the shadow from the spotlight stretching behind her,” Lori added.

Writers start with curiosity — not answers. The themes emerge after the story is told. Sometimes, as Edwin shared, a reader articulates a theme better than the writer ever could. “Yes,” he said, “that’s exactly what I meant.”

When you’re stuck on what you’re “saying”

If you’ve ever hit that wall — What am I even trying to say here? — you’re not alone.
I hit it constantly. Always around 25,000 words.

Carolyn and Alison McMahan once told me, “That’s the end of the first act.”
Of course it was.

Lori said the same thing happens to her — especially when her sleuth is an amateur. (“Why wouldn’t she just call the police and go home?”)

Here are a few tricks that came up during our panel:

Drop an XXX instead of Googling. Research can wait. It isn’t worth interrupting the flow to add the tempting details that will take you down rabbit holes.

Skip the stuck scene. Write a placeholder: [Something big happens here.] You’ll fill it in later.

Embrace the ugly draft. Lori calls her first drafts a “massacre.” Edwin calls it “culling.” I call it necessary. Get it done. Fix it later.

The heart of it

During the Maine Literary Awards this year, Morgan Talty said,  “It isn’t about the questions we’re answering as writers — it’s about the questions we’re asking.”

Writing and reading are conversations — about who we are, how we see the world, and what it means to be human. The themes that emerge are the threads that bind us together.

Back to when I was teaching, we’d read Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18.” My student Chloe said, “It’s not about her. It’s about him — his writing. His words giving her immortality.” There was a pause, then she added, “That’s pretty dope.”

And I think I agree.

Lori Rader‑Day
Lori is an Edgar®-nominated and Agatha, Anthony, & Mary Higgins Clark award-winning crime fiction author. Her novels include The Death of Us, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, and Little Pretty Things. She lives in Chicago, teaches creative writing for the MFA program at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, co-chairs the Midwest Mystery Conference, and served as national president of Sisters in Crime in 2019-20. Lori Rader-Day

Edwin Hill
Edwin is a crime and suspense novelist known for his Hester Thursby series (Little Comfort, The Missing Ones, Watch Her) as well as stand-alone thrillers The Secrets We Share and Who to Believe. He’s been nominated for Edgar and Agatha Awards, and holds a background in academic publishing and teaching. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and their dog Edith Ann. EDWIN HILL

Carolyn Wilkins
Carolyn is a professor at the Ensemble Department of Berklee College of Music, an accomplished jazz pianist, composer, and vocalist who toured as a U.S. Jazz Ambassador. She is also a multifaceted entrepreneur working at the intersection of spirituality and creativity and a psychic medium, Reiki sound healer, and the author of six books. Including her latest Murder at the Wham Bam Club. Carolyn Wilkins.