As 2009 comes to a close, I’ve spent much-appreciated time with my family over the holidays, and one of the gifts we received from Santa was the 6th Harry Potter DVD (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). Unless you’ve been living under a literary rock over the last decade, you know this is the movie adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s book of the same name.

I’m a serious student of the HP series. I think Rowling is one of the most talented storytellers of our time. And I’ve read the books so many times, I can easily recite lines, plots, motivations and themes.

It’s the themes I’d like to address. While Harry’s obvious battle of good versus evil doesn’t translate to the average romance novel (hey, not every hero can literally save the world), a theme is critical to a great book. Rowling’s theme is certainly good versus evil, but it’s also (and maybe more importantly so) the power of love. Love as a mother’s sacrifice, a character’s compulsion to defend his or her friends, a hero’s ability to find and return love that’s offered.

Whatever we, as authors, write plot-wise, the real story comes down to theme. What’s the story beneath the tale? What overlying compulsion drives the story? What do these characters really care about, want, need…have to have to survive?

The rest is movements on a chess board.

Rowling, her characters and her message are clear. As readers, we spent years trying to discern her purpose, her goal and endgame. When you complete the series, it’s obvious she stayed true to her story from the first word to the last. That’s theme. That’s what separates good, interesting and entertaining from great and epic. While I have no illusions that I’m the author of epic stories, I’ve learned through much trial and error about the importance in keeping my theme true and clear.

So I, as weird as it seems, have something in common with J.K. Rowling. We’re both storytellers at heart. That theme bonds us, no matter how different the tales we tell.

We writers can’t cure cancer, or bring peace on Earth, but I know many if not all of us think the world is a better place with a few more stories about the power of love.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.