You're presenting here theme from the POV of conventional wisdom of most literary theory, a point I've fundamentally disagreed with for over 40 years. John W. Campbell, the great editor of science fiction whose tenure defines the Golden Age of science fiction demanded literary quality from all his writers, the Golden Great greats of the genre most of whom are studied at universities as writers of science fiction literature. He had an adage, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union." Theme is essential to literary work. It's what separates literature from mental candy floss. Yet theme is not a message to be preached to the reader. Theme is what allows the reader with no common experience with the characters in the story to relate to the story. If the character's problem is that their emotional baggage from a messed up father-son relationship with their own father is messing up their relationship with their son, the author is not preaching at the reader to be a good father but exploring the (nearly) universal theme of parent-child relationships the experience of breaking or continuing the cycle of bad relationships. Whether the reader sees the relationship as good or bad will in the end be somewhat subjective. That's theme. It touches something in the reader so that they continue to think about the story.
Agree. Meaning is ascribed by the reader through their interpretation. Better to draw a fuzzy map of a space. Here's generational trauma. Here is a father accidentally inflicting trauma on his son because he is trying to shield him from traumas he suffered. Here is someone slowly becoming spiteful due to repeated small aggressive against them. Here is a loving family destroyed by external forces. Here is water passing down a stream, disturbed by rocks, and a gardener trying to adjust the rocks to make the sound of the water only pleasing.
While I was watching I just kept tryna figure out where the hell on the spectrum Eren Jaeger's endgame choice lands him. But then you mentioned Parasite, and it's been years, but I remember it ending in a pretty shitty place for the surviving characters, continuing the theme of powerlessness that ran throughout the movie. Like, no matter what choices they made, there wasn't a chance things would have ended well. It's a lose-lose ending, so I suppose a parallel can be drawn to Eren Jaeger's choices in Attack on Titan, where ultimately the protagonist had to choose between similarly horrible outcomes. I don't think Parasite fits neatly as a cautionary tale, an alternative "good" choice was never a real option for the characters. Like a lot of his films, the director was going for a gut punch from the very beginning. So hey, there's a topic to cover. Lose-lose, feel-bad stories where the point of the story is a sort of catharsis after a hopeless struggle? There are quite a few of those, actually, tragedies that I wouldn't classify as "cautionary" bad endings. The characters struggle against impossible odds and are repeatedly swatted down, and the tragic end wasn't something they could have changed. Grave of the Fireflies is another such tragic tale, one that's as unforgettable as it is traumatic. It's not about choices the characters made, but rather the collective bad choices of society like war (Grave of the Fireflies), economic inequality (Parasite), or horrific bigotry (Attack on Titan).
I've read several. It's a special category of books that engages me so completely but then squanders all that good will with a bad ending. I call these "wallbangers," after the desire I get to throw these books at the wall.
General consensus on this is: readers don't like stories that don't complete within the book (ending twists, such as at the end of GOOSEBUMPS don't count). However, you could do serialized fiction, and have the books release close-together (like one month apart). Several authors have successfully done this. [I believe Susan Kaye Quinn, but I might be remembering wrong]. . . The TBC/cliffhangers work on TV, because the next episode is right there for you to watch (or next week), and that's how they get you to watch the next episode. But readers will never read your books if they can't trust they'll have a "satisfactory" ending (for your genre). All about reader expectations. :)
“how to make a satisfying end” What if I want to make it as unsatisfying as possible? Like the major main character perishing? (Iron man) or maybe where there is no happy ending but a new direction of life? Hm?
So, basically, I should quit thinking I can tell stories. 'Cause I ain't interested in teaching my readers anything, except maybe that messing with tentacle monsters is a bad idea. i like to make people laugh and maybe go "Ooooo". Not preach to them, not try to change their minds about anything. Heroic fantasy, not Animal Farm, not anything Orwellian, or Dickensian or any of those brilliant authors that mostly annoy me and did so when I was reading in school when I was also plowing my way through ERB and Heinlein and Norton and Tolkien, and mythology and legends and all the wonderful fairy tales of the world ... OK, the latter do teach lessons. But they didn't make me dread opening the covers of the book. Which is totally why I hated analyzing a story to pieces because the whole is more than the parts. I should be able to achieve my current objective of hitting the absolute bottom of Amazon's writer list.
I think every story can't help but make a simple thematic statement. Even a basic heroic fantasy that aims only to be entertaining, the story still has at its heart a main character who encounters a kind of problem, he must adjust his attitude or learn something, and then complete required actions for victory. So at the least, your thematic statement is "to achieve this kind of change you must have this kind of attitude, and complete these kinds of actions." That is a moral lesson. I also grew up reading Heinlein, and many of his books can be distilled to a simple message such as that - certainly all the Juveniles.
Yep so if the lesson is "don't mess with tentacle monsters" you have presumably shown this in your story by someone taking on a tentacle monster and... bad stuff. It's satisfying for the reader if they feel like they could have seen this coming, and more do if they feel like the character had it coming, and even more so if they feel like the character had it coming *and somehow caused their own demise* so a glory hunting monster hunter gets eaten by the monster and we can read into that that glory at any cost is not a strategy for a long life. Your story might nonetheless have the dead guy become world renowned for taking out the monster as he died, in which case you may be read as "death is not important as long as you achieve greatness" or "you can fight so hard for your goal that you might not be able to enjoy it". When you get such a feeling from your story, it's time to go for another edit and seed the ideas throughout. Now you have a theme.
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Me, who wrote the end first thing so i would have motivation to write the rest of the stuff:
You're presenting here theme from the POV of conventional wisdom of most literary theory, a point I've fundamentally disagreed with for over 40 years. John W. Campbell, the great editor of science fiction whose tenure defines the Golden Age of science fiction demanded literary quality from all his writers, the Golden Great greats of the genre most of whom are studied at universities as writers of science fiction literature. He had an adage, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."
Theme is essential to literary work. It's what separates literature from mental candy floss. Yet theme is not a message to be preached to the reader. Theme is what allows the reader with no common experience with the characters in the story to relate to the story. If the character's problem is that their emotional baggage from a messed up father-son relationship with their own father is messing up their relationship with their son, the author is not preaching at the reader to be a good father but exploring the (nearly) universal theme of parent-child relationships the experience of breaking or continuing the cycle of bad relationships. Whether the reader sees the relationship as good or bad will in the end be somewhat subjective. That's theme. It touches something in the reader so that they continue to think about the story.
Agree. Meaning is ascribed by the reader through their interpretation. Better to draw a fuzzy map of a space.
Here's generational trauma. Here is a father accidentally inflicting trauma on his son because he is trying to shield him from traumas he suffered. Here is someone slowly becoming spiteful due to repeated small aggressive against them. Here is a loving family destroyed by external forces. Here is water passing down a stream, disturbed by rocks, and a gardener trying to adjust the rocks to make the sound of the water only pleasing.
Listening ...
While I was watching I just kept tryna figure out where the hell on the spectrum Eren Jaeger's endgame choice lands him. But then you mentioned Parasite, and it's been years, but I remember it ending in a pretty shitty place for the surviving characters, continuing the theme of powerlessness that ran throughout the movie. Like, no matter what choices they made, there wasn't a chance things would have ended well.
It's a lose-lose ending, so I suppose a parallel can be drawn to Eren Jaeger's choices in Attack on Titan, where ultimately the protagonist had to choose between similarly horrible outcomes. I don't think Parasite fits neatly as a cautionary tale, an alternative "good" choice was never a real option for the characters. Like a lot of his films, the director was going for a gut punch from the very beginning.
So hey, there's a topic to cover. Lose-lose, feel-bad stories where the point of the story is a sort of catharsis after a hopeless struggle? There are quite a few of those, actually, tragedies that I wouldn't classify as "cautionary" bad endings. The characters struggle against impossible odds and are repeatedly swatted down, and the tragic end wasn't something they could have changed. Grave of the Fireflies is another such tragic tale, one that's as unforgettable as it is traumatic. It's not about choices the characters made, but rather the collective bad choices of society like war (Grave of the Fireflies), economic inequality (Parasite), or horrific bigotry (Attack on Titan).
Makes sense, it is simple when you think about it, but crucial. I have read a book where it ends terribly.
I've read several. It's a special category of books that engages me so completely but then squanders all that good will with a bad ending. I call these "wallbangers," after the desire I get to throw these books at the wall.
How about both endings? Hero/Anti-hero makes right choice - Villain/Anti-hero makes wrong choice.
Question: What's your opinion on cliffhangers or to be continued. Just asking.
General consensus on this is: readers don't like stories that don't complete within the book (ending twists, such as at the end of GOOSEBUMPS don't count). However, you could do serialized fiction, and have the books release close-together (like one month apart). Several authors have successfully done this. [I believe Susan Kaye Quinn, but I might be remembering wrong]. . . The TBC/cliffhangers work on TV, because the next episode is right there for you to watch (or next week), and that's how they get you to watch the next episode. But readers will never read your books if they can't trust they'll have a "satisfactory" ending (for your genre). All about reader expectations. :)
“how to make a satisfying end”
What if I want to make it as unsatisfying as possible? Like the major main character perishing? (Iron man) or maybe where there is no happy ending but a new direction of life? Hm?
Those can still satisfying endings. No one insists that 'satisfying' means only 'happy' endings.
So, basically, I should quit thinking I can tell stories. 'Cause I ain't interested in teaching my readers anything, except maybe that messing with tentacle monsters is a bad idea. i like to make people laugh and maybe go "Ooooo". Not preach to them, not try to change their minds about anything. Heroic fantasy, not Animal Farm, not anything Orwellian, or Dickensian or any of those brilliant authors that mostly annoy me and did so when I was reading in school when I was also plowing my way through ERB and Heinlein and Norton and Tolkien, and mythology and legends and all the wonderful fairy tales of the world ... OK, the latter do teach lessons. But they didn't make me dread opening the covers of the book. Which is totally why I hated analyzing a story to pieces because the whole is more than the parts. I should be able to achieve my current objective of hitting the absolute bottom of Amazon's writer list.
I think every story can't help but make a simple thematic statement. Even a basic heroic fantasy that aims only to be entertaining, the story still has at its heart a main character who encounters a kind of problem, he must adjust his attitude or learn something, and then complete required actions for victory. So at the least, your thematic statement is "to achieve this kind of change you must have this kind of attitude, and complete these kinds of actions." That is a moral lesson. I also grew up reading Heinlein, and many of his books can be distilled to a simple message such as that - certainly all the Juveniles.
Yep so if the lesson is "don't mess with tentacle monsters" you have presumably shown this in your story by someone taking on a tentacle monster and... bad stuff. It's satisfying for the reader if they feel like they could have seen this coming, and more do if they feel like the character had it coming, and even more so if they feel like the character had it coming *and somehow caused their own demise* so a glory hunting monster hunter gets eaten by the monster and we can read into that that glory at any cost is not a strategy for a long life. Your story might nonetheless have the dead guy become world renowned for taking out the monster as he died, in which case you may be read as "death is not important as long as you achieve greatness" or "you can fight so hard for your goal that you might not be able to enjoy it".
When you get such a feeling from your story, it's time to go for another edit and seed the ideas throughout. Now you have a theme.