To craft a children's story from a theme, the first step is to know what you want to convey to the child. The next step is to brainstorm relevant words. After you have a handle on your theme, weave it through the plot, characters, and dialogue; however, don’t explicitly let the reader know what it is.
While writing, focus on age-appropriate language and storytelling to ensure the theme is relatable to the target audience.
Before we go over the steps to create a story from a theme, it’s essential to understand what the theme is.
The theme is the aboutness of your story—it’s the framework. It’s the reason for writing the story.
Now, let’s go over the steps.
1. IDENTIFY THE THEME
You may already have a theme in mind, or you may want to go with a trending theme. Just be careful with the latter choice as there will be lots of competition and trends come and go.
If you don’t have a theme, consider your genre. What journey do you want to bring the young reader on? Some common themes for children are friendship, individualism, diversity, family, courage, teamwork, and morals.
You can also draw from your own life, beliefs, values, and experiences.
Take your time and think it over.
Once you have a theme, create a list of words and phrases that relate to it. For example, when I wrote “Walking Through Walls, the theme was clear. I wanted to help kids reflect on ‘right and wrong.’
My theme keyword list included selfishness, laziness, magic, power, coming-of-age, friendship, honesty, hard work, loyalty, and helpfulness.
Think about what you want to say and how the story's events and characters will reflect it. Then, think about how your character and story arcs can subtly reveal the theme.
2. DEVELOP THE STORY
Characters: Create characters whose actions and relationships naturally demonstrate the theme.
Ask yourself what lessons you want your protagonist to learn. Then, work to show how their motivations, actions, and development will reveal the underlying theme. A helpful way to do this is to use repeating symbols, actions, and images that will reinforce the recurring idea.
In “Walking Through Walls,” the protagonist, Wang, is a twelve-year-old boy, but lazier and more scheming than most. I wanted the character arc to portray a lazy selfish boy who wants to become rich and then, through his coming-of-age journey, realizes that helping others, honesty, and loyalty are what true wealth is about.
The age of your character and setting are key to telling the story you want. For example, Wang leaves home to find what he wants. It wouldn’t be a good idea to make this a contemporary story as it’s not acceptable for twelve year olds to leave home. However, in sixteenth-century China, it was a realistic possibility.
Conflict: The conflict can be external or internal and needs to be introduced quickly when writing for children.
Conflict can be moral dilemmas, character versus character, character versus nature, or character versus himself.
In the first short chapter of “Walking Through Walls,” the conflict is conveyed: The protagonist, Wang, doesn’t want to work all his life in someone else’s wheat fields, like his father. He wants to be the richest and most powerful man in all of China. Others will work for him.
The question is, how does he get what he wants?
This conflict is character versus self. It’s a moral dilemma.
Plot: The storyline needs to demonstrate the theme’s impact on the character’s journey. As the story evolves, the events should reveal how the theme is moving the story forward and subtly being conveyed.
“Walking Through Walls” has Wang discovering how he can become a powerful, magical Eternal. Becoming an apprentice for this group will give him the powers he needs to become rich. The plot takes him from his goal, journeying to the Eternal's, an apprenticeship, and finally, his realization or awakening.
Dialogue: Remember not to use dialogue to overtly state the theme; use it sparingly and subtly. The characters' words, actions, and growth should communicate the theme.
The ending: The story’s ending should subtly reveal the theme and message.
Do the character’s choices and perspectives reflect the theme? What about the outcomes of the choices made to achieve their goals?
In children’s writing, the ending needs to be satisfying for the reader and should wrap everything up.
3. THINK ABOUT THE AUDIENCE
The age group: Everything in the story should be age-appropriate, including the theme, language, vocabulary, complexity of the plot, and readability.
Check for clarity and flow. Your story should be easy to read and understand for the reader age group.
At around 10,000 words, “Walking Through Walls” is a chapter book, so my target audience is typically seven to ten years old.
There were a lot of considerations regarding Wang’s age. In the story setting, he had to be old enough to go off on his own while still being within the chapter book audience. I choose the character to be twelve years old.
I could have added another 10,000 words and geared the story toward simple middle-grade readers, but I wanted to create a book that would be an easy read for reluctant readers.
Reader engagement: The most important element is to create relatable characters. Readers need to identify with the protagonist or at least want to be like them.
Start the story with action, use vivid descriptions that will bring the reader into the setting and scene, and build suspense or use other page-turning techniques.
SUMMING IT UP
Crafting a story from a theme requires careful consideration. All the elements involved in the story, including the characters, conflict, plot, and dialogue, need to move the story forward as well as reflect the theme.
Following these steps will help you create an engaging and meaningful children's story that effectively communicates your chosen theme.
I’m a working children’s ghostwriter, rewriter. I can help turn your story into a book you’ll be proud to be the author of, one that’s publishable and marketable.
