Symbolism, Development, Humor, Plot? Why Do You Write or Include Certain Parts?

NatAberdeen 2020-09-11 16:42:57 UTC #1

I just saw a Reddit post criticising English teachers for constantly looking for the symbolism behind every sentence an author writes. A lot of comments under it were then criticising the post and arguing that nothing would ever get published if it didn't have a deeper meaning.

What do you think about that? Does every sentence need symbolism behind it? Maybe not deep allegories, but most of the sentences I write either fall under symbolism, character development, humor, world building, or advancement of the plot. I've always had the philosophy that building the world and characters of the story is just as important as developing its plot.

What do you think? Does every story need a deeper meaning or can you write a story just for the sake of writing a story?

snailienz 2020-09-11 16:51:57 UTC #2

I have to say I agree with the comments on that post.

If a story is full of nonsense chatter, it is not much of a story. Thats one reason people hate the unnecessary romance in action films. It doesn't give us anything! How does them doing the do on screen for 3 minutes help me know what kind of people they are? If it does nothing for me but look pretty it can be feel kind of pointless.

Plus, I personally LOVE putting foreshadowing, double meanings, ect. Into everything. Hints to lore. Teasers of what's coming....i love that stuff! Most people I know who write do.

CarltonIsaac 2020-09-11 16:52:04 UTC #3

I prefer escapism in my fiction, and a good hearty laugh.
For symbolism, I read and write a lot of non-fiction.

DokiDokiTsuna 2020-09-11 16:55:37 UTC #4

...What kind of argument is that? Like, how does it even remotely make sense?? Is their only exposure to literature FROM these overzealous English classes???

Honestly, I wonder where these people come from; these who apparently believe that no one would ever want to read a book without some kind of deep symbolism within it. I've never met or seen any in the wild; I only see them referred to when these arguments come up...

If every single sentence (not just the story, EVERY SENTENCE) has symbolism in it, you are not writing a normal book. You are most likely either writing poetry or surrealist fiction. =/ I can just barely fathom reading something like that; especially from an amateur...it would probably come off as either unbearably pretentious or borderline incomprehensible. Or both...

I feel like I've answered this recently, but: no, every story does NOT need a deeper meaning. And this isn't just a "create what you want, who cares what the masses think" thing; the masses don't care about deeper meanings either. Take one look, one brief glance at the media landscape, and you will see this to be true.

TheGentleArtist 2020-09-11 17:28:06 UTC #5

Every story does not a need a deeper meaning tbh; it is too much stress and what not to do so. So you can write a story for the sake of story; any meaning from it is just the afterthought/byproduct.

domisotto 2020-09-11 17:31:20 UTC #6

I just want to write pulp fiction that keeps people reading for the adventure, laughs and romance. Nothing bigger than that.

HGohwell 2020-09-11 17:31:51 UTC #7

This is how you get surrealist stuff.

I was actually talking about this with a friend recently in regard to one of these anime's where the teacher was scolding on of the lower tier characters for "not having a message behind their music" and "having fun isn't enough" and it's total bullshit because there might not have been a message but I certainly enjoyed their songs a lot moe than the main character's message filled symbolism heavy songs. There's nothing wrong with something just being fun, it definitely doesn't need to have a deeper meaning. I wouldn't have minded this anime handling it like this if it was more in a "the best songs come from trying to say something with your heart way" but it didn't because the minor character did have his heart in it, he wanted to make people happy and I think this is also super important. If you've got a message but your heart isn't in it, then I'm not going to enjoy it. I'd rather read something the writer loves than something too heavy on symbolism and messages.

Especially if it's done heavyhandedly. The best symbolism is subtle. If it's too heavy, it gets in the way of the story and less enjoyable, and so less people read and then your message is lost.

This is definitely different though. I mean, this is sort of what editors are here to do. Maybe not every sentence, characters are allowed to make a bit of small talk to make them seem like people but even that could fall under rounding out your characters. Certainly, even if not every sentence, every scene should be there for a purpose or you've got rambling and little else bloating your plot and hampering your pace (50 Shades while a terrible set of books in many ways is a fantastic example of what happens when you don't have an editor going "is this really necessary?" and generally streamlining your plot). I remember when I was working in editing there was a general rule that on average 2/3 of what people work was waffle and could be streamlined.

DiegoPalacios 2020-09-11 17:33:14 UTC #8

Sometimes the meaning behind the story is just something simple, like "i wanna make people laugh like crazy", so not every story needs to be deep.

They can be deep, but deepness is not neccesary for a story. If that were the case, fifty shades of gray would be considered a literary masterpiece among critics.

Characters are the ones that make the plot happen, of course they are important.

How relevant is the worldbuilding will depend of the story. For example, a fantasy needs a solid worldbuildign, but a romance, not so much.

domisotto 2020-09-11 17:33:36 UTC #9

i wish I could write a terrible book like that, that everyone reads... (sighs wistfully)

Kittyfoofo0 2020-09-11 17:39:58 UTC #10

Aah, symbolism.
The stuff of psychological thrillers and major mind f$(k plots.

darthmongoose 2020-09-11 19:24:31 UTC #11

I'm assuming the post was written by somebody who doesn't have an English Lit degree. They seem to be confusing two different things that sometimes overlap: Metaphor and Subtext.

Sometimes a writer deliberately puts subtext into their work, usually this is in the form of metaphors, where something in the story actually represents something else. If this is not strongly pointed out or even alluded to by the narration or directly discussed by the characters, it's a form of subtext.

However! Subtextual meaning still exists when unintended. For example, you might say that Batman is an implicit endorsement of western authoritarianism and cultural dominance, being a story about a straight cis white American man with lots of money who is stacked with muscles like a classical god and dressed in a costume that is a sort of symbolic nudity, and a cloak (a symbol of rulership) who is celebrated for freely blasting his way around the city in his powerful muscle car hitting people who refuse to conform, often due to mental illness, and is attractive to every woman he meets.
This is almost certainly not intentional subtext. But that doesn't mean that it's an invalid thing for a literary critic to say, or should simply be dismissed. Acknowledging this as a valid way to read batman can tell you a lot about the people who are obsessed with him and how he's remained one of the most popular characters in the world for decades. It might also make you a better writer if you can think in such an objective, abstract way about deliberate versus unintended subtext and how your work could be read.

The entire point of literary study is to understand ourselves, humans, through texts. What we deliberately say about our desires, hopes and fears... and what we might say involuntarily. Was Dracula intended to reflect the fears of strangers from countries we knew little about coming over and destroying the purity of our English women? Or is that an element of unintended subtext? Are classic Disney villains often coded gay in their appearance and affect deliberately to demonise homosexuality, or is it an accident of cinematic tradition based on much older homophobic tropes used unthinkingly, or perhaps a reflection of subconscious fears and biases the creators of those movies might have had?

It's fine to just enjoy something for fun because it's fun. I'm not going to rain on your parade if you like... I dunno... Sword Art Online or something, but if you're studying something in English Literature... well, the whole point is to find things to discuss, and if you can't find anything to discuss about a text, whether the author intended it or not.... you're not looking hard enough.

NickRowler 2020-09-11 19:25:14 UTC #12

I think that being able to analyze a piece and find deeper meaning is sort of what sets Literature apart from literature. Standard popcorn novels are not what English teacher tend to pick because they are mostly designed for just enjoyment.

However, I do feel like sometimes people see symbols that the author never intended. I once heard a professor who thought all apples symbolized the fall of man. And all wine symbolized blood.

Penni 2020-09-11 19:35:20 UTC #13

I think it depends on what you're going for when writing.

Not everyone reads looking for some deep meaning and having their life changed by a book. Some people just want to read as entertainment or escapism.

Having EVERYTHING in a story have some sort of deep meaning to it is a bit elitist but in the case of English teachers, that might be a different situation. For a teacher, I imagine that want the student to be able to critically think about the work. A lot of books that teachers assign in school is for a purpose, like Animal Farm or Dante's Inferno.

Short answer: No I don't think stories need to have any deep meaning to them if that's not what the writer is going for. Different strokes for different folks.

HGohwell 2020-09-11 19:41:18 UTC #14

I think one of the major issues with English Lit as a subject that leads to a lot of frustration in students, at least when I was studying it, was that many teachers wouldn't so much have you finding meanings in the text so much as tell you what the meaning is and that is the meaning, the only meaning, definitely what the author intended and all other meanings are wrong. Which, as I'm sure many of us know, not really how it should work. But lots of teachers do teach it like that. For instance, I once went off script and wrote about Macbeth wrote an essay on why it's actually about impotency and the teacher went off because it wasn't what they'd taught us the meaning and symbolism but I was familiar with Macbeth so wrote my own stuff.

I definitely think this sort of teaching when it comes to finding meanings is what gives it a bad name and leads to people getting frustrated with "everything has a meaning" in English teachers. Especially when they also insist this is absolutely what the author meant, and this can lead to new writers thinking every sentence they write has to have a deeper meaning. And especially especially when teachers don't bother explaining how English Lit is different from English Language classes, where they're sometime just all collected together under the umbrella of English class, so it's never made clear there's a difference.

darthmongoose 2020-09-11 19:47:17 UTC #15

Yikes, those teachers are definitely doing it wrong. The whole point is supposed to be that if your analysis can be supported by citations from the text and logical assertions, that it's a valid analysis.

Of course... you always get bad teachers. Like I had a lecturer on my Tolkien module who simply considered the idea that Tolkien had some racist beliefs, even just ones typical of the time and that he put in without thinking rather than deliberately, to be incorrect, no matter how much you pointed out passages that would reasonably allow a person to conclude that.

Legendofgenii 2020-09-11 21:59:29 UTC #17

Look how well 50 Shades of Grey did!

Edit: Whoops didn't see @HGohwell post above. Lol!

DiegoPalacios 2020-09-11 23:03:39 UTC #18

While i agree that everything communicates to some degree, it is important to make a distinction from unintentional subtext and the biases of the person interpreting the work.

Sometimes people just try to look for subtext when there isnt anything deeper down there.

A solid example is the hype about the movie Avatar (the one with the blue aliens). Dont get me wrong, i liked that movie, it was entertaining, with solid world building and the visuals were pretty unique. But the plot is basically Pocahontas in space.

MoseyP 2020-09-11 23:37:10 UTC #19

In my opinion, I think every single piece of media has some kind of underlying symbolism to it. Yes, even the pulpy junky stuff that people read just for pleasure.

We all have our biases and subtle influences and those are reflected in our work. For example, if we look at the horror genre (specifically the horror genre in the west), it's always been heavily influenced by the culture and context of the time they were made.

Fear of nuclear weapons = giant mutant monster movies

Fear of other cultures/people invading our country = The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Fear of pesky teenagers, sex and drugs = slasher movies

Fear of the other humans and illness = zombie movies

It's super interesting in my opinion. Makes me wonder how media is going to be influenced by the subtext of 2020.

joannekwan 2020-09-11 23:46:02 UTC #20

Sometimes I will intentionally think of a symbol and employ a motif for deeper meaning, but other times things might just be colored by my subconscious or life experience. So for my works it's usually more unintentional symbolism than intentional. Like on occasion I've had readers comment on certain aspects of my work that make me rethink it and go, "hm, maybe they're right! Guess it was my subconscious working."

Of course things can be read into each line included in a piece, but I don't like it when an analyst insists that the author meant such and such when they didn't. Or the thing in question can symbolize something else entirely. Like a cigar doesn't have to be penile, but it could symbolize looming death. And then again sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

lilithfairenwrites 2020-09-11 23:54:17 UTC #21

While I don't go overboard with symbolism myself, I do feel a touch here and there adds to the depth of a story. Not to the point of every sentence dripping with symbolism and subtext, but having major symbols that represent themes in the story.

For example, with my magical-girl stories, while each of the girls' alter egos isn't necessarily symbolic, the protagonists' are, having a deeper meaning pertaining to their role in and growth throughout the story. Papillon also has the main character's selfies of her and her friends' past as a significant symbol.