Imagery

I've been writing about what makes a piece literary.  One important literary device is careful use of sensory imagery.  Imagery should be used to emphasize and elaborate on significant moments.  If you describe every little thing as your character walks down a hallway, your reader will be so tired of overwhelming amounts of detail that he or she won't be very interested in your story by the time you take them into the room with the actual murder victim and start describing that.  Say an author wants to make sure his reader doesn't miss a moment.  He figures the more description, the better readers will like it.  So he writes, "The shaggy, smelly, dark man with a slow, sluggish, tired trudge carried his large, heavy, leather-shod feet through a cluttered, long, cherry wood hallway and through the tall, brown, oversized door." He may not realize it's just too much.  I have read a book recently that was descriptive as to be what writers call "purple." The author described every moment of the entire book with such detail that very little happened.  I found it boring.  If an author occasionally writes a paragraph that is lavish with detail, it's okay if that scene is important.  It would be better if the author simply wrote description sparingly.  For instance, if that same author wrote the following, it would be much better.  "The shaggy man walked through a cluttered hallway to a wooden door."  The reader gets the idea without being so tired of detail that she's stopped reading.  

It's also possible to go too far the other way, to write in such a spare fashion so as to bore readers on the other end.  Such writing shows the bare facts of the events but does not transport or take the reader there.  Even spare literary authors like Ernest Hemingway use some description.  He said of his description, "I take great pains with my work, pruning and revising with a tireless hand. I have the welfare of my creations very much at heart. I cut them with infinite care, and burnish them until they become brilliant. What many another writer would be content to leave in massive proportions, I polish into a tiny gem." And that is the key to great, literary writing: balance.  You need description, but it should be carefully crafted and trimmed so as to be just enough but not too much.  Now go and impress the world with your careful detail.  

Symbolism

What is a symbol?

My blog recently has been all about how to make your writing, any writing, more literary.  One of the key literary devices that can elevate a piece from just a story to something above that, something more meaningful, is the use of symbolism.  Symbolism is where one thing--say, a fish, a snake, a tree, or a lamb--can represent something deeper and more culturally significant.  All of the aforementioned items are used within the Bible to reference the divine.  The symbol of a snake in the Old Testament appears in the story of a brass serpent used as an object of healing, one which many consider a foreshadowing and reference to the story of Jesus.  The medical symbol of the crossed snakes references this same symbol while also alluding to Hermes in Greek mythology.  Yet at the same time, a serpent is also used in the Old Testament to represent the devil.  Say you want to make a character, a doctor, who is mysterious and could be either evil or good.  You associate this symbol of the crossed snakes with him to make him seem noble and good, someone seeking to heal.  Yet there's also something else snakelike about him, and these snake symbols seem more sinister and are somehow associated with temptation, an apple, and a fruit.  You have now used commonly understood cultural symbols to make this doctor both confusing and intriguing.  Is he a healer?  Is he bent on your main character's downfall?  How did you do this?  By use of symbolism.

Examples of Literary Symbols

A symbol is most often an object that means more than what it seems at face value.  Let's consider Hester Prynn's badge in Nathaniel Hawthorn's Scarlet Letter.  At first blush, it seems to be simply a letter.  What's in a letter?  To the characters in the book, it's a badge, a brand to show that she is a fallen woman.  The red marks her as a scarlet woman, a whore undeserving of membership in the regular community.  Yet at the same time, the A sets her free to become what she wants.  It frees her from the regular constraints of a very restrictive society.  It sets her apart and makes her both special and unique.  It ceases to be just a letter and becomes a symbol of the outsider.  In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, the white whale is a symbol of the power of nature.  Most characters in the novel self-destruct when they joust that mysterious and insurmountable power.  One could discuss the phallic nature of both harpoon and whale and see this novel as the ultimate masculine face-off, the moral being that man cannot withstand the power of nature.  In F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, a pair of glasses on a billboard seem like just an image, yet they come to symbolize the all-seeing eye of God, which sees and judges society and finds it wanting.  Great authors know and use the power of simple symbols that represent so much more than just a simple object.

How can you use symbols? 

If you want to consider symbolism, look at the meaning of color in your books.  Let's consider the image of a blanket.  You say, "Wait.  But a blanket is just a blanket, right?"  Oh, but in a literary book, whether it be a sci fi, fantasy, romance, or something else with literary overtones, a blanket can be so much more. In your text, you can suggest a blue blanket represents depression, sadness, and loss with its color.  You can hint that a person hiding under that blanket is so steeped in sadness that he can't face the world and seeks to hide under a blue blanket.  Say you want the blanket to be yellow.  You suggest this character is reminded of all things bright and sunny, of his mother, of her warm embrace, every time he looks at the yellow blanket she gave him.  Now she's gone, that yellow blanket represents all that is light and happy in the world as the rest of the universe grows cold and ugly.  He would die to save that yellow blanket because it's all he has of her.  Say the blanket is red.  It was steeped in the man's people's blood.  He tries to get rid of it, burn it, but it will not disappear.  Everywhere he looks, he's haunted by the image of that blanket that speaks to him of death.  He goes mad because he can't handle the depth of pain held in that one red blanket.  Say the blanket is white.  He has become a serial killer but misses the innocence he had.  The blanket represents the innocence he seeks to destroy because he can't handle that anyone can be as innocent as he was when he was hurt by someone he loved.  One blanket can be a symbol for so much more.

Pick an item.  Find out how you can make it a symbol.  How can you turn it into something beyond just what it is at face value?  Consider how that can add meaning to your whole book or story.

Archetypes

What is an archetype?

In an ongoing attempt to explain how one can make any piece of writing more literary, we can next look at archetypes.  What is an archetype?  It is "a character, an action or a situation that seems to represent [...] universal patterns of human nature" (literarydevices.net)  So what does this mean, exactly?  Most people think of an archetype as a general kind of character, place, etc. that can appear across many literary works.  These behave, in many ways, like a literary allusion [like I wrote about in my last blog] not just to one other work but to several other works at once.  It helps your character feel familiar, normal in some ways, to your reader.

Catalyst

Everyone knows about the stranger walking into a town, saving the day, then walking out again. The common name for this is the catalyst.  The character effects change without being changed.  This is a common figure in so many westerns that it's hard to count. But it can also appear in fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, romance, and in just about any other genre one can name.  Once you notice this character is a catalyst you know what to expect from him.

Archetype vs. Stereotype

It's important to remember, however, that if you rely too much on the archetype without fleshing out the character and making him unique, he remains a stereotype, a cliched gesture at a character who isn't fully fleshed or interesting. There is a fine line between an archetype and a stereotype.  Han Solo could have remained a stereotype but didn't because he became an interesting character with his own needs, desires, and drives.  He plans to walk out, unaffected like a proper catalyst, but then he returns.  He suddenly becomes a different sort of hero.  Our expectations become challenged as the character becomes more than just a cliche.

Clown/Fool

Another archetype is the clown, as in a Shakespearean clown.  This is not to be confused with a buffoon.  A Shakespearean clown is someone who says humorous or whimsical things, but he says them as social commentary.  He seems a fool, but there's a wisdom in his foolishness.  One great example of that is Olaf from Disney's Frozen.  On one hand, he was quite literally born yesterday.  He is a snowman who looks forward to summer because he does not understand he will melt.  However, he also knows more about love than anyone else.  He embodies both wisdom and foolishness.  A buffoon is someone to be mocked and laughed at, someone who is bereft of wisdom and is just foolish such as Jar Jar Binx from The Star Wars saga.  A buffoon is easy to make into a stereotype and hard to make work on any other level.

See Literarydevices.net, also linked to above, for a short list of other archetypes.  The use of archetypes makes your writing seem more grounded in literature, or, by definition, more literary.  Just beware of stereotypes.  Make sure to flesh your archetypes out.  Try using archetypes and see how they work for you.