Two months ago, I discussed plotting and dominoes, remember? (If you don’t, have a look here.) Today, I’d like to share with you another plotting technique that works for me. I call it theming. No, not The Ming, it’s not nearly as valuable (LOL). I mean, scheming using a theme, or theming for short.

Naturally, for this method to work, you have to be aware of your theme, whether it’s “Love conquers all”, “Behind every successful man is an exhausted woman” or “Man, the world was a truly great place back when I was growing up, and today’s reality sucks major in comparison”. I’ll say it again: you have to be aware of your theme, and I mean, really aware. Dream it, breathe it, eat it for breakfast.

Now it’s time to bring plotting into it.

So let’s assume your theme is “Even a very loving family can have a domestic violence problem”. When plotting your conflict points, think in terms of family love and domestic violence. All right, we have our typical household of one mother, one father (ok, perhaps in today’s suck-ey world that’s not a typical household, but bear with me) and two daughters. They all love each other, but the father is prone to losing his temper in an uncontrollable manner that involve smashing the crockery and shouting words of abuse. All right, we need a conflict: the mother is close to achieving her life’s ambition at work, but she needs to concentrate fully on the job.  Meanwhile, one of the daughters is failing maths at school and brings home a no-good boyfriend. The father feels it’s his wife’s responsibility to keep the daughter in check, but the wife is too damned busy making herself a career to pay attention to her children. You can write the first conflict point as a verbal argument with harsh words flying between the two parents. The mother undertakes to come home early twice a week to supervise the girls’ homework, but when she does come home two hours earlier than usual, she finds her daughter in bed with the unsuitable boyfriend (the second conflict point). The mother overreacts and slaps the daughter’s face, and when the father finds out about it… you plot out the rest.

The subplot in the book could serve as a beautiful counterpoint, with another family who has little love but whose members are very polite to one another. Never an argument, no passion, you bury your problems and never discuss tricky situations. If this mother finds her daughter in bed with a scruffy fellow, will she tactfully retreat and place condoms in her daughter’s toothbrush cup, or will she tactfully retreat and try to forget the problem? What’s worse: violent arguments or emotional neglect? Your theme has suddenly expanded. Neat, huh?

I used theming successfully in my second cozy murder mystery, “Murder @ Play”. My theme wasn’t nearly as philosophical as the one above, but I did my best with all the shades of the word “play” (theatrical, recreational, fun, marital games, fooling around and gambling). Whenever I needed the proverbial shotgun to go off, I tried to do it in a way that related to the theme of “play”: the murder is committed during a weekend of party games, one of the characters is an actress and another has a gambling problem, even the final showdown involves tricking the murderer in a set-up parlour game (akin to Hamlet’s “a play within the play”). 

As with all writing tricks, use it if it works for you, otherwise ignore it and tell us what’s more successful in your writing.