Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between!

We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves.

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Episode 44: Theme and Character Arcs

transcribed by Sara Rose (@saraeleanorrose)

 

[0:00]

R: Welcome back to We Make Books, a podcast about publishing—and writing. And sometimes going backward and revising. Whoops. I’m Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore.

 

K: And I’m acquisitions editor, I, Kaelyn Considine, at Parvus Press.

 

R: How dare you.

 

[Both laugh]

 

K: It’s the heat. It’s the heat and then quarantine.

 

R: The heat is definitely getting to us. We have to turn off the AC to record these, folks, so pity us.

 

K: Hi, everyone! No, today we actually have, I think, an interesting episode. We are going based off a Twitter question we got from one of our listeners, Ashley Graham, about themes and character arcs and how to manage them and make them good in your story.

 

R: And by good, we mean strong or tight or—

 

K: Pervasive, efficient—

 

R: Pervasive. [giggles]

 

K: What are some other words we use to describe them here? Lots of very positive adjectives, to be sure.

 

R: Mhm, yeah.

 

K: You want your character arcs tight and your themes pervasive.

 

R: Yup. 

K: It’s kind of what we’re left with here. Anyway, we had a lot of fun talking about this because it’s something that I really enjoy working with authors on.

 

R: Yeah, when Kaelyn gets a novel manuscripts, this is what she dives in and gets to.

 

K: It is, yeah. This is at the very developmental level and I think anybody who’s a writer that’s listening to this and has submitted and gotten rejections has probably, at some point, gotten a note to “work on their themes or character arcs.”

 

R: Mhm.

 

K: Which is just so helpful and specific.

 

R: That’s why they call them form rejections.

 

K: Yes. So, we spent a lot of time in this talking about, first of all, what are these themes and character arcs? And how do you work on them? A lot of fun examples in movies and shows and, you know, like I said this is one of my favorite things about editing, is working on these parts of the book.

 

R: See, Kaelyn thought that she could ask me to restrain her, but the fact is I also love these, so we did go on a little bit. But I think we’ve had longer episodes. We’re fine.

 

K: Definitely, yeah. We were like kids in a candy shop for this, to be sure.

 

R: That’s true.

 

K: Anyway, so take a listen. We hope this is helpful, if this is something you’ve been struggling with in your writing process, and we’ll see you on the other side of the music.

 

[intro music plays]

 

K: I don’t know what I could’ve hit. That’s upsetting. Anyway! So, if my elbow hit something is that a character arc or is that a theme?

 

R: I think that’s a theme. Or it might be a story element…

 

K: It could be a plotline. Is the elbow a character?

 

R: Is the elbow haunted?

 

K: I mean, I assume so. It’s mine, yes. Anyway, today we’re talking about—one of our listeners, Ashley Graham, sent us a question about, I don’t know. Do we wanna read the question?

 

R: I’m gonna summarize it. Basically, Ashley was working on a short fiction piece and was suggested to, by an editor, that the theme and character arc could use some clarification. So, what the heck does that m