Story Meetings - Character Problems and Themes

I feel like almost not every, but almost every story meeting ends up devolving into talking about character and theme because that's the easiest stuff to talk about. So for example, you could have a version of Hamlet, right, where Hamlet meets his father's ghost,. And then he dithers around and he doesn't know what to do. But now the place of thing we're in, I'll catch the conscious of the game. He has a plan to go forward. A lot of times we're identifying what's actually working or not working in the story. As screenwriters, how much control do we have over telling the stories in this way?