Theme
What exactly is?theme? In literature, theme is a central idea or message that the author intends to convey through a story. It is often a universal concept that is explored throughout the book, and is most often inferred through the characters’ actions and motivations, events that unfold, and setting. A theme can be as broad as love or as specific as the dangers of ChatGPT technology.
Theme is a statement, or series of related observations, about some aspect of the human condition, interpreted from the unique viewpoint of the author. Theme can also be used to connect the story to larger social or cultural issues and to explore how the story may relate to the reader's own experiences and understanding of the world.
Let me put this into commonsense terms. If you shoot a movie of your novel, the "who," "what" and "where" could all be captured by the camera and projected onto a screen for the audience to see and hear. Theme, on the other hand, happens?beneath the surface. The camera wouldn't pick it up because?theme?is abstract, not concrete. But it's still there in the form of the?lesson that the surface story (and the characters) teach us. Another way of looking at it: the theme is the conclusion?that can be drawn from the concrete events; or even the moral of the tale.?