Does a story necessarily need a theme?
I'm writing a short story
From what I understand, the theme is the message that I want to send across. Akin to Beauty and the Beast's "Don't judge a book by its cover" theme, or "Opposites attract."
I have a story I am trying to write. Just a character story about two friends. I'm not sure what the theme is. I know the beginning, middle, and end. I know the setting, characters, the problem, motivations, and the result, but not the message I'm sending across. I just wanted to write a story about these two friends.
Do I need a defined theme to complete a story?
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I just wanted to write a story about these two friends.
So, maybe that is your theme. That friendship is beautiful, rich, enduring; that friends help each other through obstacles, or despite them; that friendship is more powerful than X or Y.
It's a perfectly legitimate thing to write about. If your story has a beginning, middle, and end, with an obstacle which is overcome, you have an actual plot — it's not even like you just have a character study. (Which is also fine, but a different thing.)
A theme doesn't have to be an Aesopian punchline. It can be something very simple and straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that.
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Theme is not necessarily a message. It is more the thing that you are exploring. If the theme is love, for instance, you don't have to take a position on love, you don't have to have a covert message, like "love hurts" or "love sucks". The theme is love simply because the story is about love, is an exploration of what love is like.
The great privilege of a storyteller is not to have to draw a conclusion. The job of the story is to give the reader an experience, an experience that is, at some level, human, and, at some level, true. As with first hand experiences, it can be left to the reader to draw their own conclusions (if they are the sort of person who is minded to interpret everything they experience, rather than just being content to experience it).
Some people do like stories that reach conclusions, that express positions, but generally only if those positions happen to match their own. A story that resists the urge to take a position may be much more widely enjoyed (and therefore much more influential). But a position is not a theme. Love is a theme. Love sucks is a position.
If you have coherent characters, setting, and plot, you have a theme. Character, setting, and plot would not be coherent if they did not have a unifying thread running through them, and that thread is theme. In other words, you don't have to add theme to story because if you have story you already have theme.
Finally, be wary of categories of analysis when you are writing. The tools of dissection are not the tools of creation. The tools of analysis are not the tools of synthesis. Storytelling is first and foremost an act of imagination -- of seeing a thing whole and describing it. Anything can be analysed down into component parts, but that does not mean that it was built or imagined that way.
See it whole. Write it down. Leave the analysis to others.
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