I've just watched an interview with John Bucher on the YouTube channel Film Courage, Everybody Tells Stories But Not Every One Is A Writer. The interview covers Bucher's perspective on what it is to be a writer and how writers tend to revisit the same themes in their stories. I find Bucher's delivery a little earnest, but much of what he says did chime with me. Particularly this (at 6'03" in the video):
A little self reflection suggested that the principal themes I always return to, in both my reading and writing, are parent/child relationships, how the living relate to death, and how numinous experiences affect people. This is interesting to me because in my day-to-day life my general perspective on things is – I tell myself, at least – rational and physicalist. Perhaps I'm drawn to the numinous in my reading and writing because a daily diet of rationalism and physicalism leaves the soul undernourished. And yeah, I'm aware of the contradiction in that last sentence. That kind of thing is what keeps life interesting, isn't it?
So, themes, then. Do you agree with Bucher? If not, why not? And if you do, what are yours, and why?
[Edited for typos]
One of the greatest discoveries that a writer can make are the specific themes that they are most compelled by. Many of us think early in our writing careers that there are thousands of themes that we want to explore, but I think the hard truth is if you look at any great writer, any great filmmaker, you find just a couple of themes that they keep coming back to over and over and over again.
A little self reflection suggested that the principal themes I always return to, in both my reading and writing, are parent/child relationships, how the living relate to death, and how numinous experiences affect people. This is interesting to me because in my day-to-day life my general perspective on things is – I tell myself, at least – rational and physicalist. Perhaps I'm drawn to the numinous in my reading and writing because a daily diet of rationalism and physicalism leaves the soul undernourished. And yeah, I'm aware of the contradiction in that last sentence. That kind of thing is what keeps life interesting, isn't it?
So, themes, then. Do you agree with Bucher? If not, why not? And if you do, what are yours, and why?
[Edited for typos]
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