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Theme and Purpose

Writing for pure enjoyment is a wonderful thing! God has given us all gifts, and if you enjoy writing for fun, that's great!

If, however, you want to write a story for a specific reason, it might help if you can ask yourself the following questions:

• Who am I writing for (we covered that last week, right?)
• What is the purpose of this story?
• What reaction am I hoping to get from my readers?

Here's an example: you may be thinking about writing a story for church children on the Good Samaritan theme. Your aim might be to help your readers to see that every person is a neighbour, even if other people don't like them. You may want your readers to respond by being friendly and caring.

Whatever your purpose, write it down. Be specific. Then while you are planning and writing your story, keep your readers and your theme in mind from the beginning right to the end. It will help you stay on track!

Oh, and don't forget that every story needs to have lots of fun and humour, and be exciting. As we’ve already said, even the most earnest of themes and purposes needs to be wound up in a thrilling plot. :-)

We go into theme and purpose in a lot more depth in the Write for a Reason Academy – if you’re not sure about the theme of your story, this will definitely help you. The Write for a Reason Academy is a ten week online writing course you can do anywhere in the world. It will transform your writing – that’s a promise! I set it up to give new writers everything they need to write a successful first novel. You can read more about the course here.

Love in Christ,

Janet

P.S. In the Academy we go through characters, setting, theme and purpose, stakes, conflicts, beginnings and endings, narrative voice (something a lot of novice writers get wrong) and lots more. There are videos, teaching and lots of assignments for you to get your teeth into. One of our students, Michaela, said, “I am now doing the full course and finding it incredibly valuable and useful.” Why don’t you give it a try? I know it’s an investment of time and money, but it’s excellent value (cheaper than a weekend away!)... and actually, you will be working towards something of eternal value. Feel free to check it out, anyway, if you think it might be useful. :-)

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