Symbolism in the pedestrian4/7/2023 One way you can employ thematic repetition is with a technique commonly referred to as "spiraling." Essentially, spiraling is the idea of exploring a story’s prevailing theme from as many different angles and perspectives in the narrative as possible. The more you spiral a symbolic idea - through metaphors, perspectives, visual cues - the more its message will be felt. It offers an unmistakably unique and more rewarding experience. If you express an enigmatic meaning or prevailing theme in the work however, and if you use repeated patterns to reiterate that theme whenever and wherever you can, you’ve left readers with the task of decoding the implications of the world you’ve created. In terms of a thematic take-away, the stakes fall low. If your plot relies too much on real-world effects following real-world causes, you’ve left readers with the pedestrian task of essentially watching the inevitable being carried out. It is a place where everything that happens does so necessarily. Fiction however, is a place where occurrence implies emphasis. Sadly, most of our universe is wholly indifferent to significance, the result of mere happenstance. The “real world” offers plenty of disparate, anomalous occurrences, many of which have no meaning and almost none of which offer any substantive symbolic merit. The reason is this: the world of narrative and the world we live in are two vastly different ontologies. The power to do so is what ultimately separates great works of fiction from facile entertainment.Įvents in stories should be linked by symbolism and theme, not necessarily cause and effect. More importantly however, it should be pervasive: it should haunt the story, taking so much residence that it becomes a fundamental cog in its internal logic, a presence reflected in every component of the storytelling process: structure, characters, plot. Ideally, a narrative’s theme or principle meaning should be enigmatically original. An excellent story says something new about the world in a completely new way. A good story says something new about the world.
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