The art of fiction: a guide for writers and readers - By Ayn Rand & Tore Boeckmann Page 0,10

to make happen—your values and choices. That which happened by accident—what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school—is totally unimportant.

If an author has something of wider importance to say about them, it is valid for him to use his own experiences (preferably not too literally transcribed). But if he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book, neither for the readers nor for himself.

Your theme, the abstract summation of your work, should be objectively valid, but otherwise the choice of themes is unlimited. You may write about deep-sea diving or anything you wish, provided you can show in the work why there is objective reason to be interested in it.

The most important element of a novel is plot. A plot is a purposeful progression of events. Such events must be logically connected, each being the outgrowth of the preceding and all leading up to a final climax.

I stress the word events because you can have a purposeful progression of ideas, or of conversations, without action. But a novel is a story about human beings in action. If you do not present your subject matter in terms of physical action, what you are writing is not a novel.

Let me give a few examples of the difference between theme and plot, starting with my own works.

The theme of We the Living is: the individual against the state, and, more specifically, the evil of statism. I present the theme by showing that the totalitarian state destroys the best people: in this case, a girl and the two men who love her. When I say that the story concerns a girl under a dictatorship and the men who love her, I am already talking about the plot.

Incidentally, if one names only the most general meaning of We the Living—the individual against the state—one does not indicate on whose side the author is. It could be a communist story showing the evil of the individual; but then the plot would be different. Or it could be a Naturalistic novel, a presentation of life under a dictatorship with no moral sides taken. The theme, however, would still be: the individual against the state. So when you work on a story of your own, make sure you define your theme clearly. That will help you judge what to include.

The theme of The Fountainhead is: individualism and collectivism, not in politics, but in man’s soul. I show the effects of each principle on men’s character by presenting the struggle of a creative architect against the society of his time.

To go from the theme to the plot line, you simply ask: By what means did the author present the theme? By this method, you can also identify a story’s plot-theme, the essential line of its events. The plot-theme is the focus of the means of presenting the theme; for the writer, it is the most important element in creating a story. Your work as a novelist starts in earnest when you have chosen your story’s plot-theme.

The theme of Atlas Shrugged is: the crucial value of the human mind. The plot-theme is: the mind on strike. The latter names an action—the central action to which all the other events of the story are related. It, therefore, is the plot-theme.

The theme of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is: the injustice done to the lower classes of society. The plot-theme is: the struggle of an ex-convict to avoid the persecution of the police. This is the central narrative line, to which all the events are related.

The theme of Gone With the Wind is: the disappearance of the Southern way of life. The plot-theme is: the relationship of the heroine, Scarlett, to the two men in her life, Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes. These characters symbolize the historical forces involved. Scarlett is in love with Ashley, who represents the old South, but she can never win him; she is a Southern woman belonging in spirit with Rhett Butler, who represents the destruction of the old traditions and who pursues her throughout the story. This is an example of the skillful integration of plot to theme.

The theme of Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street is the presentation of a typical American small town. The plot-theme is the struggle of a girl of more intellectual trends to bring culture to this town—her struggle with the materialistic small-town attitude of everybody around her. I must