The Princess and the Frog, in my humble opinion, is one of the best animated films that I have seen (a close runner up, for me, is Frozen).  The animation, characters, music, and storyline were simply brilliant in this 2009 Disney movie.

This movie is the basic readapted Cinderella story where a princess that finds her prince.  But there is a HUGE plot twist regarding the whole ‘kiss a frog get a prince’ deal.  You’d have to see the movie to know what I mean.

Anyway, our hero (main character) is a confident, strong-willed, hard working young girl named Tiana.  Tiana teaches us through hard work and persistence your dreams can and will come true.  We learn not to idly set by and hope for our dreams to come true but to MAKE them happen.  This is the THEME that is threaded throughout this story.

Every story must have a theme in order to make it relevant to the audience.  Your theme is the message or central idea that you want to relay to your audience.  It’s what you want your audience to think about long after they have seen your film.

The theme is always subtly stated in the movie by at least one character.  Take a look at the movie “The Princess and the Frog” and see how many times the theme is stated.  There’s even a song about it.

Okay, get back to writing and don’t forget to weave in your theme!

Happy writing!