To give you an idea, we’ll talk about a story probably everyone knows: The ugly duckling.

In the story, the duckling feels sad as he compares the way he looks to how all the other babie ducks/birds look. He feels awkward and ungainly. At the end, he finds out that he is a swan and feels proud of how he will one day look…after he’s grown up.

What I just told you above is the plot.

The theme would be “you can’t judge a book by its cover” to use the cliche. What’s inside a person is what makes them beautiful…because the duckling’s beauty can’t be seen NOW but it is there…and will eventually come out with the passage of time.

Does this help?

To Ruth: I think you mean “setting”. Setting is WHERE the story takes place.

Why don’t you try this. You can say that there is guy at school and he’s about average in popularity but still rather good looking. Everyday he’s been getting little notes from a secret admirer telling him that they’ve been watching him and are interested in him. At first he is flattered but then he becomes infatuated and eventually he falls in strong like with the person sending the letters. He’s not sure who but there are three possibilities. There’s the head cheerleader, the leader of the mathletes and a new girl who just transferred in. He delves deeper and deeper into the letters trying to find their sender but he is shocked at exactly who sent the letters when he finds out who they are and begins to question his feelings (note: It’s none of the people mentioned earlier). It’s a girl that no one really sees. she is pretty but kind of an outcast because she is so quiet. He finds that he is still interested in the person that wrote the letters and decides to give it a chance but it doesn’t work out so in the end they break up but he keeps the letters as a reminder of the brief but sweet relationship they had. The final scene would be at the end of grade 12 he’d at a river bed and has a box of the letters in his hand. He sets them on fire and then scatters the ashes in the river kind of as a final good bye

A theme is the idea or general lesson (sometimes called the ‘moral’) of the story: As with the above example, the lesson the author might want you to learn from the story could be “true love conquers all” or “true love is rewarded in the end”.

Plot: what happened

Theme: what I can generalize and learn from and apply to my life.

The plot is what happens: one friend dies; the couple breaks up; Russia bombs Japan, etc.

Hope that makes it clear.

Theme is the idea the author is trying to get across. A theme could be “love sux” or “all men are dogs.”