Universal Themes
A story succeeds or fails on empathy, or lack of it. If you don’t care, it’s not a relevant story. Understanding themes offers a quick way toward understanding how to tell a story about which people will care deeply.
Ask a friend what the last film they saw was about, and the usual answer will be a recap of the plotline. Character X did this, and then this happened, and to get out of it he did this and this, etc. That’s plot. But a plotline doesn’t describe what a movie is about. The plotline is a story of, for example, a boy and girl, but the story is about something more. Perhaps it was about revenge or love or the search for meaning—the deeper theme that moves the film from beginning to end. Remember the earlier discussion ...
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