Book Themes & Chocolate Cake Recipes

You’re eager to begin writing your book. You’ve made a list of your best stories and gathered up your favorite quotes. You’ve figured out what type of book you’ll be writing, who you’re writing for, and what you want them to get from reading your book.

That means you’re ready to begin writing, right?

Not necessarily. You still have to figure out your theme.

A theme is like the wooden studs hidden inside the walls of your house or the steel beams that hold up a skyscraper. Whether a building is tiny or huge, hugs the ground or soars into the sky, is balanced or crazily shaped, it depends completely on its inner framework in order to stand.

So does your book. It’s held together and given shape by its theme.

This is true even with an autobiography, which seems like the easiest type of book to write because it’s a chronological presentation of the facts of your life. But your life is a very complex topic. Just imagine the sheer number of facts you might relate: including all of them might produce a 4,000-page book that would bore the readers. Think about the many facts that are relevant but need to be placed into context to be understandable, and the relatively small number of facts that truly explain your life and point of view.

This means that, among other things, you’ll have to cull through all these facts, decide which to leave in and what to forgo, determine what to highlight and what to simply touch upon. In other words, you’ll be forced to make choices, even for an autobiography. But as you make those choices, you’ll be building a framework for your book—that is, creating a theme.

But is your theme logical and coherent? Is it practical, does it make sense for the story you want to tell?

We work with themes all the time, even if we don’t realize it. And we generally know what goes with a theme and what does not, even if only subconsciously.

If we’re building a house and the theme is Victorian, we don’t cram a 6-lane bowling alley into the kitchen.

If we’re building a car and the theme is sports, we don’t tack on a 10-foot cargo bed complete with a winch.

If we’re baking and the theme is chocolate cake, we automatically set aside the mustard, soy sauce, anchovies, and guacamole.

Treat your book’s theme as you would a chocolate cake recipe. Include everything necessary to make a great chocolate cake, and feel free to experiment a bit. But always remember that you’re making a chocolate cake not Lobster Newberg.

Your stories and ideas, your favorite quotes and stats, your pictures and documents, are the potential ingredients for your chocolate cake. Gather up all those that do not belong to chocolate cake—that do not belong to your theme—and put them aside. What remains is what you work with. These are the ingredients for your masterpiece.

Yes, this means that some of your favorite stories may not wind up in your book, and other items may only be mentioned briefly. You may feel sad about that, but by sacrificing what doesn’t contribute to the theme, you’ll protect your masterpiece from turning into a mishmash.

The right theme, tightly adhered to, allows your book to soar because it ensures all the parts work in concert to delight/educate/amuse/inspire or otherwise please your readers.

Possible Themes for Your Life Story or Best Business Practices Book

There are as many great themes for autobiographies and memoirs as there are chocolate cake recipes. Here are a few:

1.     Creating something wonderful, important, exotic, or profitable

2.     Accomplishing despite great difficulties

3.     Taking a stand, despite the risk

4.     Wrestling with right versus wrong or good versus evil

5.     Love and loss

6.     Rising above betrayal

7.     Losing a child, parent or spouse, a friend, or even an enemy

8.     Finding or losing faith in God

9.     Being incredibly lonely or depressed

10.  Looking back and feeling bad about something you did or didn’t do

There are also many wonderful themes for a "best business practices book," including:

1.     Creativity and innovation

2.     Leadership

3.     Money, making lots of it

4.     Teamwork

5.     Mastering specific tasks (such as starting an online business) or bodies of information (such as accounting)

6.     Seeing what others can not

7.     Applying lessons from other walks of life to business

8.     Advertising and/or marketing

9.     Company history

10.  Courage and perseverance

Any of these themes can provide a solid foundation for the creation of a masterpiece.

But once you pick a theme you must stick with it. If you start slipping in stories, stats, and ideas that don’t fit your theme, you may wind up with garlic-drenched escargot right in the middle of your chocolate cake. 

If you'd like help writing your book...

Contact Barry Fox and Nadine Taylor, best-selling ghostwriters and authors of business books, memoirs, and more. See our website at www.BarryFox.us.