A few weeks ago, I talked
about purple prose as a style. I also said I’d have a few more posts examining
style. Well, here’s one of those so that’s fun. Today, I’m going to look at two
very similar writing choices which can affect the style of your writing.
One of them, I write very
often, one I’ve never written and never intend to (as a personal choice more
than anything else).
Symbolism and allegory.
The Power of a Symbol
I’ve written a post
before about symbols, but I wanted to take the time to address them here, since
they’re a valuable stylistic choice. They can strongly affect the choices you
make in your writing, and can produce very strong emotion in the readers who
understand their meaning.
One of the most important
parts of writing symbolism is this: not
every reader will understand, and that’s okay. Symbolism is a background style. It’s almost
subliminal. Not everyone will understand because not everyone pays attention to
symbolism. Some symbols will pass over the heads of some people.
And that’s okay.
As a writer, you have to
accept that not everyone is paying enough attention to catch all the nuances
you write. Even you. I’ve had beta
readers point out symbolism I didn’t intend to write, but they still found it.
Once I knew it was there, I made sure that I was writing it well and that it
came out in a way that fit the themes of my writing.
While symbolism can be
powerful, presentation is everything.
A forced symbol isn’t a symbol at all. If you write something purely as a
symbol pointing to something else, then it has no meaning. It’s a cardboard
cutout. That cardboard cutout of Ron Swanson isn’t actually Ron Swanson. It
symbolizes him, but it’s not very good at being the real Ron Swanson.
In writing, it is always
best to use symbols that come naturally to the story. For instance, in Lord of the Rings the ring itself
symbolizes many things to many people. These things come from individual people
and no two people have the exact feelings on the meaning of the ring.
It’s a natural
consequence of how Tolkien wrote the story.
Personally, I don’t think
he wrote the ring to intentionally inspire one or two specific themes. He wrote
it as a ring of terrible power, and let every reader decide for themselves what
that power meant to them.
That is a strong symbol.
All of the strongest
symbols in literature are vague. They’re
present just enough to make the reader think and draw their own conclusions.
The weakest symbols are specific, overdramatized, and pointed out time and time
again in the narrative until they lose all meaning and relatability.
Allegory: A Strong Weakness
Personally, I never write
allegory. I don’t want to. It’s not that I hate allegory, I just find no draw
to writing it myself. Writing an allegory well takes a lot of work, work I’m
not particularly drawn to. If you are, great.
Go you.
Just… do it right, yeah?
Since I don’t personally
write allegory, I don’t have a lot of tips for writing it well. As an avid
reader, however, I do know many ways in which allegory does not work well from the eyes of the
reader (and I’ve read many of them).
Most allegories are
religious in nature (for instance, Chuck Black is a highly lauded Christian
Allegory writer). They’re written to point toward a religious narrative, or
some other narrative outside their own.
One of the strengths of
allegory is this: theme plays a huge role. Readers of allegory are supposed to
come away having learned about something outside of your own work. They’re
anticipating it, if they know ahead of time that your work is allegory.
Allegory primes the reader to learn.
This is attractive to
those who mainly want their story to teach. Allegory attempts to use
entertainment as a medium for message-spreading. This can be both good and bad,
depending on how it is done.
The weakness of allegory is
this: agenda can quickly overcome story
in the order of importance. Now, I realize “agenda” is a hyper-charged word
in today’s world, but it’s the honest word for this situation. Allegory wants
learning to occur, and a very specific sort of learning.
Any other message is
unimportant to allegory.
One side has to be
correct and the others wrong.
The reader must agree with the writer.
And there is the
weakness. When allegory focuses too much on the message, the story is set
aside. It’s secondary, which is never a good idea in books. The moment the
reader disagrees with the message behind the allegory, the story no longer
matters.
That’s the danger of
allegory.
Using Symbols and Allegories
Am I saying you should
never write allegory and just write symbolism?
No.
There is a time and place
for allegory. It may be a limited time and place, but it does exist and
allegory can be there to fill that time and place.
Much the same, there are
times when symbolism can be distracting from the story, especially when it’s
supposed to be the focal point of the story.
These stylistic choices
can provide strength to your story, or weakness. The point is not to avoid them
for fear of the weaknesses, but to write them in the hope that the strength
comes through, and to work at them until that hope becomes a reality.
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