1. Desire Struggle Realization
What is a Story?
Desire
Struggle
Realization
First, before showing this slide: write a fairy tale about your life (or an episode in your life) in a short paragraph (not more than ½ page)

2. Introduction of Conflict and Rising Action
Character Arc
Begin
Introduction of Conflict and Rising Action
Climax
Resolution
End
Refer to Narrative Structure handout. Outline the fairy tales you just wrote.
Progression of the Story

3. What is a Theme?
A theme is the conceptual string that holds your story together. Point or Thesis. So What? The Pearls
A theme is the conceptual string that runs through and holds a work together (conceptual coherence). Story is the growth of character, theme is the development of an idea. Only write about the incidents, characters, and scenes that directly support and connect to the theme. You’ll have to be very selective about the details you choose.

4. Theme as Opposition of Values
Value System of what you desire Vs. Value System of what’s stopping you
Theme can be stated as and opposition of ideas: What you desired has a value system in opposition to what impeded the desire. The values inherent in your desire come into conflict with values opposed to it.

5. Themes stated as oppositions:
“My desire to be part of the white world vs. my need to know myself as a black woman.” “Growing up in Vietnam I fantasized about and loved everything American, though my real experience of American culture was destructive.”
Another example: “My determination to overcome the problems inflicted by my head injury vs. the reality of permanent damage I’d received.”

6. Where’s My Theme?
Formula for a Theme: The story you were told + The story you told yourself = The story life has told you
Example:
I was told I should become a lawyer, like my father.
I told myself I would be a famous opera singer.
Life has told me that I’m a romantic that struggles to be logical.

7. Example of the Theme Formula:
I was told that boys are superior to girls and that to succeed I have to marry a rich man.
I told myself that I was different from other women and that I could do what other women could not.
Life has told me that I’m intelligent, but emotionally I’m just like other women and that I haven’t reached my full potential because I’ve been seeking the approval of men.
Yet Another Example:
I was told I was more loved than other children because I was adopted.
I told myself that because I am adopted my parents do not really love me.
Life has told me that I’m worthy of love and my parents loved me in their way, but I felt unloved because their way in the world is so different from mine.