The story is the thing itself. Greater than the sum of its parts. When a story works, theme arises interstitially like harmony, and you are convinced because of the story’s spiritual truth and internal logic.

“Theme” isn’t something you can break out and isolate, it’s a layer of meaning that depends on the whole. An attempted theme that fails to convince because of errors elsewhere is like a legal defense that fails on the facts.
“Oh my defense was great, I should have won—if only I had the right facts. Shut up about the facts of the case!”

My friend, you lost.
What these people see dimly is that some minor inconsistencies or logic errors can be forgiven. But not if they 1) affect the ‘argument’ of the story’s internal logic, and/or 2) build to a critical mass that the story no longer seems ‘bound’ to our own lives.
By bound to our lives, I mean along the specific lines the author chose to reflect reality. I’m not sure it would be possible to write a completely disembodied and unidentifiable story—although Samuel Beckett tried.
You know—by giving you a character, an individual to follow, a name, a description, or giving you a social structure recognizable AS a social structure at all, even if the details are imaginary. These make fiction identifiable to us. Even weirdest sci fi offers this much.
You can effect various techniques to edit your work and try to head off any plot holes that will torpedo the delicate harmony of your work, but it’s actually an extremely complex proposition. This is why excellent and transcendent work is so rare.
But the better lodestar is the truth you see in the story. Understanding that well FORCES you into the right choices more reliably than you can pick them based on theory. Theory is more successful on how to present them.
I’ve quoted Horace before saying that the point of poetry is to delight AND instruct. Well, shouldn’t the instructor be in a position to teach? The great author must be committed to truth. not in a cliche way, but an honest committed interest in the story.
You certainly can’t be using subject matter you actively resent with an ulterior motive. People will know instantly.

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