WHY USE SYMBOLS?

By Sharon May

According to LiteraryTerms.com, “a symbol is literary device that contains several layers of meaning, often concealed at first sight, and is representative of several other aspects, concepts or traits than those that are visible in the literal translation alone.” Fancy words for something that means something else. Symbols show instead of tell, which is why we want symbols in our stories.

Sometimes symbols are subtle and only come to light during a close reading. I am reminded of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, in which the sister’s stained underwear on display when she climbs a tree symbolizes her loss of innocence and growing sexuality that disgust her narrator brother. Obviously, a Freudian thing. Many readers may not think twice about her underwear unless they are thinking critically about symbolism.

Other symbols are obvious though the reader must still coax meaning out of them. In “Chrysanthemums,” John Steinbeck clearly intends the flowers to be a symbol for Elisa. When she discusses her prowess as a gardener with the traveling salesman, we see her blossom and grow strong. When she discovers the flowers lying discarded along the road, she then reflects their demise as she is described as “…crying – like an old woman.”

That’s how symbols work, but how do they get in the story? Constructing symbolism effectively is not as easy as plopping one into the text. Universal symbols, i.e. wedding rings and crosses, add meaning but their use may seem cliché. The best and most unique symbols grow organically, and sometimes the writer has no clue a symbol will appear until the story is written.

Consciously constructing symbols is partly paying attention to details. What colors and names do you use? What items or settings are associated with a character? Repetition is needed to establish these details as symbols.

You can also design motifs throughout the story. In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses the motif of incest along with Hamlet’s distrust of women to reveal both character and theme.

When to use symbols takes planning as they should appear in key moments in the story. In “A New England Nun,” Mary E. Wilkins Freeman uses the dog Caesar as symbolic of Laura’s life, known for her biting attitude, shut away from the world, and chained by her daily habits. Freeman introduces Caesar immediately after introducing Laura, and again devotes a paragraph to Caesar in the middle of the story when he is promised freedom if Laura marries her fiancé Joe Dagget. The concluding paragraph begins with Caesar forever chained to his dog house, reflective of Laura’s being “like an uncloistered nun” upon her decision not to marry Dagget.

Symbols are not necessary but they do add multiple levels of meaning and thus enrich a story. They serve as touchstones for the reader to remember long after the experience of reading the plot and getting to know the characters. Try using symbols if you don’t already. They can make your story more memorable.

What Do Writers Have Against Sports?

By Kasie Whitener

This week I had two stories were rejected from two different journals.

In “Amy Runs,” the main character goes out for an early morning jog in a continuing effort to lose the weight she put on with her first child. The run is a renewal, a chance to recover from the frustrations she feels over what’s not going right in her life.

In the second story, “Yesterday, in Boston,”a runner is recovering from the Boston Marathon after the finish line was bombed. Though physically unharmed, the runner’s expectations of the event and the reality of the terrorist attack have her moving in a kind of post-traumatic daze.

But writers hate sports.

I’ve written stories featuring football games as settings and received comments that the game doesn’t seem to be important for the story. I’ve used sports metaphors and had them struck from final copy.

Maybe it’s because my first-ever paid writing gig was as a sports journalist and the working writers I know are all sports journalists, but I think writing about sports is cool. Better than talking about sports, playing sports, or watching sports, is writing about sports.

I once wrote a passage about a bull-riding event. The gyration of the animal, the stomping of the hooves, the arc of its thrusts, all provided the perfect back drop for the main character’s struggle with self-control.

In “The Sportswriter,” Richard Ford created one of the most complex literary characters of all time. Frank Bascombe, who reappears in “Independence Day,” and again in “The Lay of the Land,” studies athletes in the same way Ford studies language. He’s curious and purposeful about it.

Frank muses, “If sportswriting teaches you anything … it is that for your life to be worth anything, you must sooner or later face the possibility of terrible, searing regret.”

That Ford uses sportswriting to examine the struggles of middle age, the recognition of one’s prime and the failure to meet expectations, all fascinates me.

In my own work, it’s the physical act of exertion that pushes the characters to change. Or it’s the meaning of the accomplishment that changes the meaning of the resistance. Or it’s the event as a large-scale metaphor for the smaller personal crisis.

In “Unrequited,” my character watches her football team lose the national championship game and feels a sense of loss over a relationship that didn’t evolve. The metaphor is about desire and achievement and timing.

And yet, the trouble I’ve had getting these stories into journals makes me wonder if other writers are less enamored with sports than I am. Or maybe I’ve pinned the stakes of the stories on the sports as a kind of cheat? Let the sports do the heavy lifting and let my characters off the hook? Maybe the stories just aren’t ready yet.

I’ll bring them back into the huddle, make some adjustments, and see if I can’t score in the next round of submissions.

SATIRE

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

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 “’She has a pretty racy past, and she loves talking about it. And you know how I love airline pilots and Italians.’”

Stephen McCauley writes a lot of light satire in My Ex-Life, the novel. Stuff like, “She’d met and eventually married Henry Bell, an investment advisor David had had the pleasure of never meeting.” The approach works.

McCauley makes the most fun of parents who had “fallen into the trap of telling their kids they could do anything…going to Harvard, retiring before ever working, giving an Oscar acceptance speech, and become the next Mark Zuckerberg, except hot.”

The zingers only work because McCauley also makes fun of his main character, David, who is gay and overweight and falls for impossible “boys” who are younger than 40. Self-deprecation seems to be the secret to keeping the narrator likeable enough to make fun of everyone.

It’s curious that McCauley’s villains, especially Renata, are not especially funny. Renata is a calculating real estate broker, living in San Francisco, who takes advantage of David in a way that makes the reader want to punch her. This works only because Renata does not live a desirable life. She subsists with her husband, the loathsome Leonard, and she thinks uncircumsized men are exotic.

As I write Tall Woman Orchestra, I try to infuse it with as much satire as possible without making the reader cringe. Most of this involves Floris, the mad scientist, who has a brilliant mind and a penchant for revenge. The reader must realize that Floris, outside of her basement laboratory, is an awkward social prick who cares nothing about appearances and seeks to bend people’s will to her own. Floris is no Hedy Lamarr; she’s better.

The beauty behind Floris is that appearances mean nothing, and she knows it. If she can control the world while wearing bedroom slippers, why not do it? The greater Floris’ power, the less she needs to fuss with her hair. Lamarr failed to understand this, which is why she died a recluse.

Skillful use of satire can get across more points more quickly than any historical treatise or legal essay.

WHY DO YOU WRITE?

By Bonnie Stanard

Nobody asks Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates why they do what they do. Or Hillary Clinton or Michael Bloomberg. For that matter, nobody asks James Patterson or J.K. Rowling. So is it a matter of celebrity or wealth?

However, does anybody ask teachers why they teach? Or pilots why they fly? Waiters why they serve tables? Or farmers why they farm? Okay, so you’re not earning a living wage by writing, maybe that’s it.

On the other hand, does anybody ask you why you watch television? Or collect recipes or go fishing? Or do things we consider pastimes rather than professions? Well, can we say writing is not perceived as a pastime?

Then how do you explain your writing to yourself, much less anybody else? There are probably as many answers to that question as there are writers. Here are some of my ideas about why we write.

Uncertainty as a way of life.

No morning is like another. What we think on a given day never returns. The house we live in is temporary. The weather is different every day and we perceive it differently every day. Our beliefs change. So too our likes and dislikes. Friendships come and go. And we forget, unless we write.

Exactitude is not the truth.

The bank puts a number on your monthly statement but that is no truth. We know the hour and minute of every day. We know the cost of a gallon of gas; the address of our dentist; the speed of light; the depth of the ocean, and the distance to Mars. What we know as fact is not the truth. We write in search of the truth.

Limits of language to relate reality.

Language is our inheritance. Our words are tailor-made by our predecessors who would guide us in the path they found valuable. While our language benefits us, it limits us, may even bully us into extrinsic concepts. As writers we try our best to transcend the prison of words.

Instability of morality.

What is good and what is evil is decided by people, humans. And human fallibility affects our decisions. A hundred years ago people of good conscience enslaved other people; unwanted newborns were drowned; poverty led to imprisonment. Today you find people who believe a person is “good” if they obey a country’s laws. What is orthodox is praised even if dishonest. Amid this moral perplexity, we write to discover our beliefs.

Affirm our self-consciousness.

Writers such as Wolfe or Joyce showed us that much can be said about what goes on inside our heads. We write to get to know ourselves.  

In many of these instances, we are in conflict with either ourselves, our culture, or our human condition. What we see on television or in our neighborhood inspires us with feelings such as pride, suspicion, hatred, admiration. Then it’s time to sit down at the computer and start a story or poem.