It's theme, stupid

Busy day today.

I thought a lot about my screenplay today. THEME was the answer. I thought and thought and decided that I have been writing about the dichotomy between wanting to protect your culture and wanting to rebel against the status quo. So it's all about rules and a person's willingness to break them.

I needed to add a scene of two people talking for a while, kind of exposition heavy, so I needed something for them to do to serve as a metaphor to get the point across more quickly. If I'm thinking about the theme of breaking rules, it makes sense that they could play a game with a lot of complicated rules. Instant fodder for conversation that reinforces the theme. There's a lot of stuff like that I can do.

It makes complete sense. The movies I love most are the ones with a clear sense of theme, but here I was, well aware I didn't really have one but hoping it didn't matter. Silly Emily. It always matters.