Authors have Opinions on symbolism. Some of us hate it, call it useless frippery. Some of us love it, call it the lifeblood of the story, the path to true depth. Some of us think its nice but can’t figure out how it works (except it certainly didn’t work for that movie or that book). It’s a hard topic, ephemeral and complex and heated. In some stories, symbolism works to lift the narrative to another level, to illuminate crevasses of meaning and to make characters more than caricatures. In other stories, all it does is burden the story, sitting there pale and lifeless as the rest of the narrative struggles to survive its weight and implication. When we put it in our own stories, of course, we want the first, want that extra layer of meaning and vibrancy; we fear, however, that all we’re doing is the second, that all we’re doing is adding a whole dead branch of prose which serves merely to make our story-tree ugly and lopsided. Thankfully, though, we can follow some basic principles to start incorporating symbolism into our stories.

The first and most foundational principle of writing symbolism is consistency. Inconsistency will kill your symbolism faster that just about anything else. If I write a story where I have a symbolic through-line of a man’s sword being his honor, I can’t just forget that established symbolism when it suits me; if a sword shows up in the main character’s hand, it will be connected to his honor. Therefore, if I write him snapping the sword in half, I must be aware of the implications that has for the narrative through the symbolism, must ask the question of what him snapping the sword which is his honor in half says about him and his situation. Once I’ve established a symbolic link, it will remain in existence, likely for the rest of the work and quite possibly into any other explicitly connected story. Whether or not I like it, I’ve told the reader that A is a symbol for B (usually not explicitly), and he’ll remember that.

Consistency with the world is also important. Symbolism must not break the setting or the plot. Of course, in some stories symbolism is so deeply a part of the setting and plot that it can be a reason by itself for the events of the story. Allegories, insofar as they are symbolism, can plead this (at times); a story particularly centered around meta-narrative might also be able to do so, or one in which symbols have magical power. In most cases, though, I must not place symbolism over the logic of the plot. The symbolism, like the theme, should work in and through the plot and setting of the story, not against them. This is a necessity not just of prudence, of not wanting to disrupt the central through-line of the story, but of expedience for the purpose of the symbolism itself. The beauty of symbolism comes not from it being running commentary exterior to the story but from the story itself speaking through symbolism, its second voice, of the truth it bears.

Second, symbolism must bear resemblance. Symbols only work when they actually symbolize what they are supposed to symbolize. Using a midden heap to represent virtue doesn’t work unless your intent in doing so is to call virtue a pile of excrement. This resemblance can be inherent or assigned¹ (though here’s where one of the later guidelines becomes important). Doves don’t inherently represent peace, but long inculcation of the association has rendered them an almost cliché symbol therefor. Mountains, on the other hand, have an inherent association with immovability, eternity, and the unattainable, not just because of cultural baggage but because they are, to the human (even with modern technology), practically immovable, effectively eternal, and incredibly difficult (but- and this is a powerful part of symbolism- not impossible) to surmount. Consider the native and cultural resemblance your symbol bears to that which it symbolizes; remember also that good symbols can speak of the symbolized in more than one way, from perspectives more effective and efficient than trying to get the same idea across in abstract terms.²

Third, the obscurity of the symbolism must be carefully calibrated. Symbolism can be subtle or blatant, hidden or plain. As a rule, simply stating symbolism is a no-go. Saying “Flowers are a symbol for the feminine virtues” has the subtlety of a rampaging bull in a minefield, and it can easily have the same effect on the story. The spectrum of explicit-to-implicit, however, remains quite expansive. On the one end we have symbols that are never stated, that are barely implied, symbols communicated by their association with topics and ideas, lacking even a specific, clear implication. On the other end, we have symbols so plain they can hardly be missed, symbols communicated in the character’s perceptions or those of their culture. With such variety of legitimate types, I can’t tell you what to use; that depends on the story. Nevertheless, the level of obscurity your symbol possesses should be a factor you pay careful attention to.

This property of obscurity also connects to a danger of symbolism: readers misunderstanding or seeing symbols that aren’t there. A particular joke about English teachers comes to mind here- specifically, about how you can spend five months studying the implications of blue curtains in a book of High Literature,³ a real classic, and then when you get the chance to read what the author thought about said curtains, you discover he had blue curtains on his study and thought the color fitting.⁴ Of course, the problem could easily be the other way- perhaps the author did indeed have a well-thought-out reason for the use of blue curtains, and by poo-pooing it down to a one-minute discussion (skipping the five months of analysis we could have done), we missed a rich field of inquiry and understanding. The intentionality of symbols, by virtue of their possible obscurity, can sometimes be difficult to discern. As authors, then, we have a few different responses. With symbols integral to the story, we must ensure clarity; with symbols not integral, we can judge clarity versus obscurity (hiding away secrets in a book’s pages- symbols and allusions and the like- is a real pleasure at times); with symbols we don’t intend, we must apply care to determine if we’ve given good reason to find them, must do our best to guard against it.⁵

Fourth, symbols can’t be the be-all and end-all of the story, at least if your goal is art.⁶ To quote Andrew Peterson, “You can’t just dress up your opinions in meter and rhyme” (89).⁷ Symbolism, as its generally used, is message and truth conveyed through beauty. If you make your symbolism king, make the truth you want to convey the determinant of the situation, the beauty of the story dies away, and you’ve written a narrative theology, not a theological narrative. The first is teaching; the second is story and art. Symbolism must enhance beauty with truth, not replace beauty with truth, else it diminishes rather than magnifies the art. Story, not symbolism, is the backbone of narrative art, whether you define story as being made of characters moving or of plots peopled.

Fifth, symbolism benefits from being incorporated into the narrative on a level that isn’t just you, the author, speaking directly to the reader. How, though, can you do that? Character and culture, character and culture.

Characters can present a rich opportunity for incorporating symbols into the story. Their perspectives, their understandings of the world, provide a path to show not only a symbol but a symbol connected to a (fictive) reality. The symbol can then be understood not just through your eyes or the reader’s eyes but through the characters’ eyes. Perhaps it remains with a single character; perhaps it mingles, bouncing through the speech and minds of a myriad of others. Either way, the symbol gains depth and richness from the interaction with the rest of the narrative, gains connection. This provides too an organic, efficient path to teaching it to the reader, always a benefit with something as slippery as this.

Culture, meanwhile, is an aspect of setting. Pay attention to the symbols built into the cultures you’ve set the story within. For a real culture, this may mean research (or mindfulness, if it’s your own); for a fictional culture, this means working through the possible symbolic connections their history, religion, and environment (neighbors, animals, geography, etc.) could lead to, finding ones that you like and grafting them in (this sort of creation involves working backward from the desired result as much as working forward towards its), and choosing the best ones both for the culture’s realism and for your story. Like with characters, these symbolic connections internal to the world can give you an extra layer of depth to the symbol, an extra layer of vividness and value, an integral connection between the symbol, the story, and the reader.

One other avenue to find symbolism in is the literary legacy you draw on in writing. The legacy of literature left by history to us is vast and varied, even just counting the worthwhile stuff, and in that vast body, symbols aplenty can be found, symbols to which you can draw by careful allusion or by genre proximity an increased richness, the richness of different contexts and different ideas. These borrowed symbols too can allow for you to engage with the ideas and stories of another, to corroborate their worldview or to repudiate it, to call upon their symbol in agreement or to demonstrate a falsehood.

What I’ve done today is the very definition of ‘dipping your toes in’. Symbolism is a vast field, filled with brilliant stars and pitfalls and an uncomfortable amount of ‘merely disappointing’ mediocrity, unfulfilled potential. Worse, symbolism has a thousand facets that change in a thousand ways in response to the particular circumstances of the story.⁸ The principles I’ve outlined are a good start. Consistency (almost invariably) should be inviolate; obscurity and resemblance are nearly inviolable, woven into the very nature of symbolism. The other two, though, are a little more malleable, more direction than rule, true in general but not always right for the specific circumstance. It just takes a careful judgement to figure out when they’re false (in default, they are true). How, then, do we build up the discernment necessary to make that judgement aright? I have only one answer, a set of twins that will eventually pop up for any question of skill an author has: Practice and Read, Read and Practice. Thus, by experience of observation and experience of application, God may be pleased to grant you and I alike greater skill in this art.

God bless.

1 – Check out this article for more (particularly this section).

2 – Check out this recent article for more on how symbols work.

3 – A legitimate category, but one that often deserves mockery and skepticism.

4 – I’ve seen a reviewer arguing that The Last Jedi (a movie famous for being worshipped by some and despised by others, loudly) presaged the controversy it would stir up by injecting “themes of schism” throughout itself. I don’t buy it (though admittedly I have not and hopefully never will watch that film).

5 – They’ll still probably happen sometimes- in areas other than symbolism, too- but hopefully they’ll be made entirely of mirage rather than being truly plausible from the reader’s perspective.

6 – Allegory is a difficult case, but allegory is so symbolic its almost a separate category from symbolism as it’s usually used, being more of a language or code. Regardless, I stand by my position. Pilgrim’s Progress is a work of art, but it’s a work of art only second to its theological message. If that’s your goal, have at it.

7 – From Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson. Check back here in a few weeks for the review I’ve written (Link here now that it’s published).

8 – Symbolism can be ambiguous even of existence; meta circumstances like genre, known inclinations of the author, and more generally don’t make the situation any easier.