It is very easy to come up with a nice story line that has wonderful characters, a great plot points and scenes, juicy dialogues and perfect sequences, but f you are unable to define the theme of your entire story, your screenplay will always end up confusing even a novice in movie production that gets to read it.

The theme is simply what your entire story is all about or simply put the message your story is trying to pass across to the audience who will be watching it.

You can consider a theme as the building blocks where your characters, plots, scenes and everything about the whole story stretches upon.

Most screen writing advisers recommend penning down several drafts before you can emerge with a theme for your story but to me I would strongly advise you to ignore such mentality and create your theme before you even pen down your logline.

Even before I come up with a concept for my screenplay, I always like to figure out a theme for my entire story, and keeping that theme in mind enables me to easily create my characters, plots and scenes of my story.

In this article therefore, I am going to reveal to you how to create a theme for your screenplay.

How To Create A Theme For Your Screenplay.

To create a theme for your screenplay you must first of all understand all the basic thematic categories so you don’t end up mixing them up and end up confusing whoever gets to read your screenplay, especially if you are planning to pitch it for the movie market.

Below is a step by step approach on how to create a theme for your screenplay.

1. Understand the basic thematic categories.
2. Use your characters to clearly define the theme of your story.
3. Use obstacles to spice up your theme.
4. Let your resolution compliment your theme.

1. Understand the basic thematic categories

If you want to write a great screenplay you must ensure you employ a step by step approach while sticking to the basics of screenplay writing, from penning down your logline to crafting your script treatment, and moving on to create a concept and plot your sequences.

But all this could become vain if you do not have a theme you are sticking to. And lest I forget, before you attempt to create a theme for your screenplay, you must ensure you understand the basic themes and their categories so you don’t end up mixing things up and getting your viewers confused at the end of your story.

That’s if you are the one who will provide the budget to fund your story because if you don’t your screenplay will not even make it out the pitching phase in order to see the light of the various stages of film production that will enable you to have viewers who will watch your messed up story.

The best thing to do in order to figure out a theme for your screenplay is to analyze your characters, oversee your plot points as well as start imagining the scenes that are going to make up your entire story.

But then, it is worth noting at this point that mixing up different themes to arrive at a particular story is not wrong, but you must do it in a way that helps your audience to relate and understand your story.

For example, you can use the theme of war and romance to create a screenplay where two soldiers fall in love but the sudden emergence of war that warrants them to go to the battle field creates an obstacle they need to overcome in order to remain in love.

2. Use your characters to clearly define the theme of your story.

Your characters are the ones that are going to interpret your story from the start to the finish, and for that reason you must use them to clearly reveal what your whole story is all about.

For example, if romance is the theme of your story, you can create a screenplay that revolves around three characters where two are madly in love but the third character emerges to snatch one of the lovers and trouble begins from there.

3. Use obstacles to spice up your theme.

One of the elements in filmmaking that will spice up the theme of your screenplay is obstacle.

Naturally, we are all faced with one problem or the other in life; no matter how wise or financially sound we might seem to be.

And do you know that these obstacles are the things that really make life very interesting?

For example, you can ask yourself, who does an husband and wife living in the same room and sharing every kind of intimacy always fuse and fight in the slightest opportunity?

Now when you dig them you will get to understand that there is an obstacle or another always standing in their way and without working hard to overcome these obstacles, there is no way they can live under the same roof till their grey old days.

So id you are writing a romance screenplay about couples who fuse and fight even though they are madly in love, you must clearly show the obstacle that always puts them in that position every other time.

4. Let your resolution compliment your theme.

You can start your screenplay with the best theme ever and mess it all up when you switch to another time that does not compliment it in the resolution. Always ensure you end your screenplay with the theme that revolves around it.

I have watched this kind of movies a couple of times, where the resolution is entirely different from the main message the movie was trying to pass across from the very beginning. And I think this usually happens in a case where the screenwriter did not see the end of his story from the beginning.

If you however want to bring another theme in the end of your story, you must ensure it compliments the main message of the story.

For instance, you can end a romance screenplay in a tragedy where the lovers face an untimely death in an auto crash after defying all odds to keep their love afloat.