I've been blogging about how to write in a more literary fashion. Just getting the words down is the first step, and it's an important one. Keep in mind your first draft doesn't have to be literary. It's just for you, so it can all be one long sentence, a grammatical mess, more of a note to self, or whatever you want to do. If you're waiting for the perfect words to come to you the first time, you won't write anything. Building in the literary happens in subsequent drafts. That's when you carefully ponder your foreshadowing, symbolism, precise language, authentic dialogue, and other literary techniques. One of the most meaningful is symbolism.
I've been helping Evelyn Furbish, a friend, reshape her draft into something literary. Her draft is fine. It has clear characters and moves quickly. But adding in the literary turned her simple story of an abused child into something that means more on several levels, something truly special and powerful that could not just be published but also win awards. It won second place in a first-chapter contest for League of Utah writers. And a big part of that is symbolism. Symbolism makes your character into something more than just a person. It draws on the traits of the animal, or whatever is used as the symbol. It also draws on common cultural associations with that animal. If you use a fox, you can draw on the speed and agility of the fox as well as associations like "sly as a fox" or the associations with the word vixen, a female fox, a "shrewish or ill-tempered woman" (Mirriam-Webster), or a sexy seductress. You can draw on a lot with one well-chosen symbol.
In my friend's draft, that boy is becoming a symbolic mouse. As we rewrite and reshape her prose, we carefully ponder the language to show him as a mousy, skittery little boy who hides in corners and is targeted by everyone. He's still a human child, but the book builds him up as easy prey for any number of emotional predators.
Meanwhile, his mother has been reshaped as a rabid dog. She's a druggie who leaves her son every day to get high and drunk with her dealer boyfriend, but he doesn't know. He sees her through rose-colored glasses, comparing everything he sees in the world with his narrow view of the world seen in comparison to the unpleasant mess he knows from his mouse hole. She is his comfort, his home base. When he sees fancy houses or food, he treats them with disgust because they can't measure up to the processed and cheap food he's been given at home. He doesn't see his mother's symbolic slavering teeth. She doesn't use claws because that's not a dog thing, but in the next chapter the author has planned, this mother will bark and threaten like that dog, showing him unmistakably his true colors.
The CPS worker who takes him away from his familiar mouse hole is the one with the claws. She's the cat who hisses and growls when pushed. She's the one who chases the little boy verbally and corners him with her words. She's the one who snatches him with her claw-like nails from home and exposes him in his miserable nest to take him away. She snaps him up, metaphorically, like a furry little snack.
The little boy's foster dad is the snake, sly and cold and ready to swallow him whole and turn that little boy into part of himself. He knows just how to make eye contact with his acid-green eyes and freeze him in his tracks, so his prey can't even ponder escape. He uses manipulation instead of violence to reshape the little boy into her own image.
Meanwhile, the boy's allies, whose symbolism has yet to be determined, will be something warm, fuzzy, and comforting. There will be hope, and it will be built through the language and metaphors of the text. They could be the warmer side of dog or puppy, a teddy bear, a kitten, a hamster, or anything else that gives the friends appropriate meaning on every level.
For a reversal of this pattern, you could read Orwell's Animal Farm, which uses animals to symbolize types of humans. There is a wealth of information out there on the characters and what they mean. Now, ponder your characters. Would it be helpful to do an exercise like this, where you use overall symbolism to shape the characters into something greater than the individual parts?
