Collage with a prominent black and white eye and words such as transformations.

Theme. Main Idea. Topic.

While you could argue that all writing contains a theme, I’d argue that if you were drawn to this page maybe what you are wanting to create is focused on ideas.

I'm not specifically asking you to write a classic academic essay here (although it could be a fun exercise to create an academic style essay in the voice of a character you've been imagining or on a topic that fits in with a poem you’ve been drafting etc.). Non-fiction can take many forms: biographies, memoirs, journalism, and technical writing are a few sub-genres that fall within this category.

If you aren't sure whether or not you really have a solid theme, why not play with the word a bit more as well? Think about all the definitions that fall under the word theme (from the Oxford Online Dictionary):

  • the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic

  • an idea that recurs in or pervades a work of art or literature

  • a prominent or frequently recurring melody or group of notes in a composition

  • a piece of music that frequently recurs in or accompanying the beginning and end of a film, play, or musical

  • give a particular setting or ambience to (a venue or activity)

  • any of the twenty-nine provinces in the Byzantine empire

  • an essay written by a student on an assigned subject

and some other older uses of the word theme in relation to the study of linguistics that I want to revisit because I feel like I ALMOST understand these concepts! You can go down that rabbit hole yourself if you'd like.

What to do next?

How about trying a tried and true pre-writing technique?

7 - Free-writing

8 - Clustering/Mind-mapping

9 - Outlining

10 - Listing/brainstorming

11 - Questioning

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