Dispatch From The Quest: Christian Fontenot
Over the course of the 24 weeks I am working with the writers in The Quest, each will write a weekly dispatch to share with the GITS community. There are several reasons for doing this, the main one educational: Hopefully you will learn something of value for your own understanding of the craft from the experiences of the Questers. I should also add they are a great group of people, so I expect you will enjoy getting to know them.
Today: Christian does some ‘preaching’ about theme:
Theme is meaning. Everything in my life is dictated by theme. As a GU13 soccer coach, our 2013 theme is “Possession”. All of our practices are based on passing and movement and not just shooting. A sub-theme could be “the best defense is a good offense” which leads back to “Possession”. At dinner in the Fontenot household, Sunday is “Breakfast for Dinner”, and Tuesday is “Taco Night.” These mealtime themes help us to narrow down decisions on what’s for dinner as well as set expectations so there’s no whining about wanting something else because you know what night it is and what’s for dinner. Tuesday — tacos, damn it!
By my math, this dispatch will fall right between the eighth anniversaries of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. A quick history lesson, Hurricane Katrina completely destroyed the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the southeastern parishes of Louisiana as well as flooded 85% of the city of New Orleans. 26 days later, Hurricane Rita struck land, wiping out the rest of the Louisiana coastline. My real time blogging from these hurricanes can be found here.
In the aftermath of these hurricanes, I had the privilege of working with 10 of the smartest people in the world as well as a $100MUSD budget to help rebuild and transform education in the impacted gulf coast. Beside the challenges of both physical and emotional damage inflicted in the region, our team was leaderless, or should I say that we were all leaders. Theme was key to overcoming the kitchen full of chefs and improving our effectiveness. Our main theme was collaboration — collaboration between student, teachers, school districts and states. Having this theme empowered each of us to make important independent decisions necessary for the program’s success.
All of our life experiences shape us as writers and as a writer I always start with theme. Theme is the air that our characters breathe; it’s the water that our characters drink; it’s the unified field theory of our characters’ universe. Theme is God.
Can I get an “Amen”? CAN I GET AN AMEN!
Theme as God. How about theme as The Force:
“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”
John August describes theme as DNA here.
God. The Force. DNA. Whatever metaphor or imagery we use, one thing is certain: Theme is a helluva lot more than simply a story’s premise.
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch From The Quest.
About Christian: From Louisiana, now in Seattle. Turns off street lights with his mind. Regrets not learning the tuba — TUBAS ROCK! Storyteller. @cmfontenot.