SUPPOSE you were asked to talk before a club, or a society of which you are a member. Your first question probably would be: "What shall I talk about?" Isn't that so?
Now, just transplant that problem into the field of your present endeavor—photoplay writing. You have decided to write photoplays. Therefore: "What will you talk about?"
And there you have hit upon the very important question of theme, the soul of the photoplay.
Theme may sound like a big, portentous, forbidding word. But just get a "close-up" of it and possibly you will be able to comprehend its significance more clearly.
Theme is derived from the Greek word, meaning: to set, to place.
That is simple, and sufficient. The theme is the setting or placing of your story characters into an atmosphere or condition under which they may enact a drama.
Obviously, if you set the characters into arm chairs, and do not permit them to move thereform, you will have no drama, no story. But if you have them get up and begin to move about, they must do something. And that something which you set them to doing is the theme of your story.
My dictionary has this to say in defining theme:
"A subject or topic on which a person writes or speaks; a proposition for discussion or agreement; a text."
Then a little further along, in referring to theme as it applies to musical compositions, the dictionary says:
"A short melody worked up into variations, or otherwise developed."
