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What even is a story?
Every story teaches its audience something. Every story has a moral. Sometimes this moral is hefty and soapbox-y, and sometimes it is lighthearted and simple, or easy to overlook. But it is always there.
There are only two ways this works: a character that the audience can identify with, does something, and the Universe they live in either rewards them, or punishes them for their actions. Through this medieval method of carrot or stick, the character learns a lesson. And we, the audience, learn that lesson with them. Often these lessons are broad and easy to understand: in most fairytales for example, characters get rewarded for things like Showing Bravery, or Being Honest. Or they get punished for the opposite: Cowering in the face of danger, or Lying. In your story, you should make this a lesson about what you think of the world, or better; how you think the world works.
Some writers use this opportunity to make big sweeping universal statements about truth and love and right and wrong. Others explain something about their tiny little corner of the world, and what goes on in there. But whatever the lesson is, it is taught through a character that is setting a good example, or is being made an example of.
The lesson that a story teaches is what we will call THE Theme. Notice that I capitalize THE in THE Theme. This is to differentiate it from whatever movie reviews or college classes call the "various themes discussed in blablabla". From a structural perspective, a story has one theme and one theme only. THE Theme.
THE Theme, at its core, is always a question with two possible answers. Most of the time, the writer picks one answer as the correct one, but in some cases, the two answers are presented for the audience to choose between; an open-ended story. But even most open-ended stories nudge the audience towards one of the two possible outcomes. Why? Because writers are teachers that tell audiences their preferred answer through their stories.
We talkin’ about practice?
Stories have to be written and thought up by a writer. If you are just documenting what is happening you are a stenographer, not a storyteller. This is why even reality TV is scripted. Writers in every medium want to share their point of view and audiences all over the world want to hear it. If there weren't writers behind the episodes of whatever celebrity-family you like to watch, you would very rapidly find out that their lives are just as boring as yours and mine, and none of them are as bad/good, kind/evil, driven/lazy as they pretend to be. If you want to be truly surprised by an outcome you should watch sports games; they can be decided by everything but the narrative: practice, tactics, weather, fans, gamblers, athletes' personal lives and most importantly: luck. When a writer has their story be decided only by luck, the audience will reject it as unsatisfying. Teaching the lesson: “you need to be lucky”, is not very inspiring. Other writers will call out the hand of god - dues ex-machina - and your story will probably not go very far. Sports fans on the other hand will be much more appreciative of the luck factor in the “story of a game”.
Since you started this course I am assuming you want to Spin some Tales, and thus, you are now a writer and you need to come up with the correct answer to THE Theme of your story. The correct answer to your lessons should not be a hard-scientific truth. If that is what you want to talk about, you should write a paper or an essay. But if you decide to write a story, you will need to construct, inside your Story World, some proof for your answers to be the correct ones. In your story, you need to convince your audience with examples. So for you to write a good story, you need to know THE Theme.
Every story, regardless of where it takes place and if it ends happy or sad, works the same way: The Protagonist needs to achieve something. This can be as simple as surviving the night, or as expansive as saving the universe, but they always have some sort of finish line at the end of the story. In order to get there, they can either approach this journey the way they always have, or they can learn a new way of doing things. This is what I mean when I say: "THE Theme is always a question with two possible answers":
THE Theme: To achieve X, the Protagonist should do Y, not Z.
But what is X?
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