Create Greater Depth in Your Stories with Symbolism

Symbolism in storytellling can create depth in your writing. Symbols represent deeper ideas in your narrative that you wish to explore. For instance, the green light at the end of the pier in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby represent the desires of the characters that are just out of reach. The wall in Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place represent the racial and sexual constraints black women faced in 1960s America. The use of these symbols thus take on greater meaning when characters respond to them within the narratives. When the women in The Women of Brewster Place systematically demolish the wall blocking off their neighborhood, they and the readers experience an epiphany that climaxes the novel's emotional narrative.

There are a number of ways in which symbols work in stories. Symbols can be inanimate objects or they can be personifications of the characters themselves. It's important to understand what type of symbolism you want to use in your story and how you want to use it within the narrative. For instance, in Daphne Du Maurier's novel Rebecca, the color black is used as a signifier for Maxim de Winter's late wife and a source of distress for his current. Whenever the color is introduced, the reader is clued in to the narrator's emotional insecurities, creating the tension and growing hysteria in the novel straight to its shocking twist. In the William Faulkner novel The Sound and the Fury, shadows appear continuously in Quentin Compson's narrative, thus foreshadowing his own suicide. Again, these symbols reflect the character's emotional distress and create greater emotional depth in the readers.