When considering a story, a message is an important factor--something the audience can understand apart from the plot of the story. This message can be a common value, an aspect of daily living, or whatever else the writer determines that encapsulates or expands their story overall. This element of story is known as the Theme and is defined on the Master Class website as ''the main idea or underlying meaning a writer explores in a novel, short story, or other literary work. The theme of a story can be conveyed using characters, setting, dialogue, plot, or a combination of all of these elements." As described in the Master Class website, Theme can be expressed in various ways. In this post mainly characters, dialogue and plot will be used to discuss how Theme is expressed--in the form of a movie and two anime television series that I found each have the Theme of Humanity involved in different ways. For pretext of our discussion to come, Humanity is define...
Knowing what a character strives for is important to drive the story forward, but just as important is where that character came from. This is defined as the backstory of the character, which has two aspects of character arcs: The Ghost and The Lie the character believes. As mentioned by some writers other than K.M.Weiland, The Ghost is also referred to as The Wound or an open wound. This is known as a harsh event that occurred to the character that still resonates with them presently. Some examples of The Ghost would be leaving a homestead, having a fight with a loved one, being a sole survivor of a crash etc.. This event gives reason for a false belief the character now has, either about themselves or the world around them. This false belief is known in writing as The Lie , which defines the actions a character will take. These two elements (The Lie & The Ghost) shed light on "why" a character behaves a certain way. In the case of Olive...