Dispatch From The Quest: Waka Brown
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: Waka finds relevance to the concept of theme in an ice cream cone:
A lot of birthday parties I’ve attended recently (kids’ parties, of course) have had themes. Back when I was a kid, the theme of the party was 1. Presents 2. Cake. Nowadays, parties are fancier. For instance, one might have a princess-themed party. Or a pirate-themed party. Plates, napkins, cake decorations, party favors, all fitting the theme. One of my best friends from college threw the most elaborate theme-oriented party I’ve ever seen for her 3-year-old daughter. It was an ice cream theme and boy, did she carry it through. Cupcakes baked into ice cream cones (cake looks like ice cream). An ice cream cone game in which kids raced to scoop pom-poms into ice cream cones. Ice cream cone-shaped piñata. Ice cream bowls shaped like waffle cones in which kids scooped their own ice cream, created their own ice cream sundaes and ate with spoons shaped like ice cream cones (ice cream theme within a theme within a theme). Ice cream cone-shaped bubble wands, with the bubble solution smelling like vanilla or chocolate, you guessed it — ice cream. Toys shaped like ice cream cones but that were actually like little weapons. (I like how in the advertisement, it mentions it’s “fun for the whole family!” Yes, fun for the kid launching the ice cream cone. Not so much fun for the receiving eyeball).
When we started studying Theme this week, I thought about my friend’s party. Now that’s a theme, I thought. In terms of writing, I’ve always kept the concept of “theme” in mind, basically as a kind of “What is it that I want to say with this story?” Last week, when we discussed each scene having a theme, I was like… what?? It’s difficult enough having a coherent theme for a screenplay, but for each scene? And this week, we discussed themes from all sorts of angles, and, just as I thought “Wow, I didn’t realize there were so many different ways to incorporate an ice cream theme into a party,” this week, I thought, “I had no idea there were so many ways to incorporate theme(s) into a screenplay.” For instance, I had always been wary of multiple themes because I worried about how they might muddle the central theme. This week, we had an exercise in which we brainstormed as many themes as we could think of that could apply to our stories. For me, this was very freeing, a kind of letting go of certain ideas I’ve had about writing. In addition, I had never thought of theme as a talisman. In one of our exercises, we were instructed to find a sort of talisman that could serve as a theme in our stories. I didn’t have one, so I made one up for the purpose of the exercise and… I think it works! In summary, I think this week was a big one for me. A kind of fuzzy ice cream projectile to the eyeball kind of wake up call. But in a good way!
There you go: Ice cream projectile as a talisman, a physical object with a symbolic meaning. It’s not a dessert item, it’s a weapon. Or in this case, a wake up call. And right there, we are dealing with thematic content.
Wait a minute, Scott. You’re saying an ice cream cone can carry some significant thematic weight? C’mon, dude! It’s a freakin’ ice cream cone, right?
Friends, we need to move beyond the shackles of “theme as premise” or “theme as the moral of the story.” That’s all well and good, but theme can be so much more, like the wonderful set-up and payoff of an ice cream cone in the movie Up, serving as the emotional touch point of the story’s Denouement…
Or a wake up call to a screenwriter.
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch From The Quest.
About Waka: Kansan turned Californian turned Oregonian. Fan of Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, Richard Curtis, Tina Fey (who isn’t?), & I still use a $30 Tracfone @wakatb.
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