Candle Craft 4: Undermine & Underline
by Royal McGraw
Royal McGraw has written professionally for film, television, comics, and games for over 20 years. He led development on the mobile smash hit Choices: Stories You Play and currently serves as CEO of Candlelight Games.
Welcome! This is the fourth installment of a multi-part series intended to provide you with 10 Quick And Actionable Adjustments that you can make to your own writing process to improve your storytelling. Some of these process adjustments will be strategic, offering suggestions to improve how you think about storytelling from a big-picture standpoint. Some of these process adjustments will be tactical, offering suggestions to improve how you think about tackling scenes or even individual lines of dialogue. In all cases, these lessons have been hard-won, gleaned from over 20 years of experience writing across a variety of different mediums.
In the second installment of Candle Craft, we introduced the concept of two-beat storytelling and why it’s essential to crafting compelling narratives.
In the third installment, we built on that foundation, showing how two-beat structures can create the backbone of your overarching story.
Now, we’re zooming in even further to explore a foundational technique for creating impactful two-beat moments: undermine and underline. Mastering this method will reveal its presence in nearly every aspect of your writing and elevate your storytelling.
What Are Undermine and Underline?
Let’s begin by defining these two essential terms:
Undermine: To weaken or erode something by degrees, subtly changing its foundation or integrity.
Underline: To emphasize or reinforce something clearly and emphatically.
But what exactly are we undermining or underlining?
The answer is simple: our theme.
In our previous discussion of two-beat structures, we examined the storytelling arc Kurt Vonnegut described as “Boy Gets Girl.” This simple, timeless structure serves as a perfect example of how undermine and underline can be used to craft compelling moments within a broader narrative.
Let’s look at it again to refresh our memories:
Graphic courtesy Column Five
The title “Boy Gets Girl” implies a central theme: achieving love leads to happiness and fulfillment—not just for the fictional couple, but for the audience, who internalizes this idea long after the story ends.
In Vonnegut’s graph of the arc of the story reflects how the author alternates between providing his characters with Good Fortune and Ill Fortune. In fact what he is doing is underlining and undermining the central theme.
One Love Interest meeting the other forms a good argument for romance. And the two staying together happily ever after forms a great argument for romance. Likewise, the Love Interest breaking up with the other forms an argument against.
But all of that is a little too simple to be useful.
Tension and the Central Theme
In most romantic comedies—and in many other genres—the core theme often emerges through seemingly irreconcilable tensions. These tensions manifest as central questions the characters grapple with, such as:
“Should I choose work or love?”
“Should I seek status, or pursue a simpler but happier life?”
“Should I choose the safe option, or should I follow my heart?”
At first glance, these questions create conflict and complexity. However, they ultimately circle back to reinforce the singular theme: Boy Gets Girl. This is made clear when we examine the implied answers:
Work or love? → Choose love (Boy Gets Girl).
Status or happiness? → Choose happiness (Boy Gets Girl).
Safety or love? → Follow your heart (Boy Gets Girl).
These thematic questions are the vehicle through which the story’s theme is alternately undermined and underlined. Let’s break this down:
Undermine: The narrative creates doubt about the central theme by presenting challenges, complications, or opposing values (e.g., the protagonist prioritizes work or status over love).
Underline: The narrative resolves these tensions by demonstrating why love ultimately prevails and reinforces the theme (e.g., the protagonist realizes love brings true happiness).
By toggling between undermining and underlining the central theme, the story creates emotional stakes and keeps the audience invested.
Work or Love? A Practical Example
A narrative exploring the question, “Should you choose work or love?”, establishes an oppositional tension where the two seem mutually exclusive. The story alternates between undermining and underlining the central theme. Here’s how this might look in practice:
Undermining Love
A boss congratulates a Love Interest (LI) on a job well done.
A LI receives an enticing career advancement opportunity.
A successful character is shown thriving after prioritizing their career.
A potential romantic partner is introduced through work, highlighting a possible alternative to our other LI.
These scenarios aren’t inherently negative; in fact, they might appear beneficial! The context, however, creates tension by making love seem like the less practical or rewarding choice.
Underlining Love
Conversely, underlining the theme involves moments that support love as the ultimate answer:
A LI succeeds at work by applying values learned from their romantic partner.
A character chooses a fulfilling opportunity over career advancement.
A seemingly successful work-focused character is revealed to be deeply unhappy.
The work-related partner is shown to be unfaithful or otherwise unsuitable.
Just like with Undermines, these scenarios aren’t all positive or negative. But they do all bolster the theme of Love.
Moving Forward
Carrying these ideas into our own work, we first need to answer the following questions:
What is the central theme I’d like to pursue?
Is this scene I’m working on intended to support or undercut the central theme of my work?
Which other scene is this scene connected to as a two-beat narrative?
Armed with the answers to these foundational questions, you now can begin to perform the most joyous part of writing: determine the most exquisite possible torment you can inflict upon your character.
Torment, in this context, refers to any challenge that pushes your character further from the lesson they ultimately need to learn. For a romantic comedy, that might be a tempting promotion. For a thriller, it might be a serial killer.
Whatever the genre, ensure that every undermine is balanced with a corresponding underline, testing and then ultimately vindicating your central theme.
TIP #3: Undermine and underline your central theme to craft stronger scenes and narratives
Embrace the reality that stories are vehicles for exploring themes. Use undermine and underline techniques strategically to challenge your characters and elevate your storytelling.
We’re going to discuss how to evolve past the oppositional dualities to yield a more interesting narrative conversation in our next installment: STORY MIND.