Listen to the Force, Luke Skywriter

I'm of the firm belief that a writer's subconscious is busy planting things the writer is blind to at the moment. 

When I rework a novel, I'll find lots of foreshadowing of events I didn't think I'd planned until the moment I wrote it, and I'll discover that certain types of metaphors or images keep appearing that fit a theme or event I didn't know was coming.

Part of the trick for a writer is going back over your work and building on the bread crumb hints left by your subconscious.  Make it obvious enough that the reader’s subconscious also picks up these crumbs to create more resonance in the novel.  

NOTE: My subconscious just showed its unhappiness of my comments by making me unable to spell "subconscious" which is a word I normally spell with ease.

The Power of the Archetype and Symbols

 In Jayne Anne Krentz's book DANGEROUS MEN AND ADVENTUROUS WOMEN: ROMANCE WRITERS ON THE APPEAL OF ROMANCE, she explores the archetypal myths or fairy tales behind the most successful romances. She believes that “Beauty and the Beast,” “Cinderella,” and “Snow White” are often the core plot and emotional energizers for romance novels.

But there's more to the archetype than just the fairy tale, and this extra element can vitalize a writer's work and give it greater depth.

The archetype is also a symbol or image which has a strong emotional resonance for humankind. The archetypal image can raise the hackles (absolute darkness), slow the heartbeat (a babbling brook), or turn the stomach (maggots on a rabbit's carcass). The archetype image can help us push the reader's emotional buttons so we can make them feel what we want them to feel.

Horror writers already know the importance of the fear archetype, and they use it to great effect. Stephen King, for example, can go for the archetypal jugular vein with relentless certainty. It is his greatest strength as a writer. His layering of images provokes an emotional response greater than mere words.

The archetypal image can also be manipulated to express changing emotions. In an unpublished novel of mine, the hero and innocent heroine end up in bed. Afterwards, the hero sends her a dozen white roses, the symbol of pure love and innocence.

As the days pass and the hero doesn't get back in touch, the heroine watches the roses fade as her hopes fade. When she finally realizes that the roses that meant “forever” to her mean “thanks for the great sex and good-bye” to him, she smashes the vase.

Her innocence and love have faded completely, her heart is as crushed as the roses on the floor.

A writer's subconscious is busy planting things the writer is blind to at the moment, and that's particularly true of archetypes.

When I rework a novel, I'll find lots of foreshadowing of events I didn't think I'd planned until the moment I wrote it, and I'll discover that certain types of metaphors or images have kept appearing that fit a theme or event I didn't know was coming.

Part of the trick in editing is going back over the work and building on the bread crumb hints left by the subconscious so the images create a resonance within the novel. 

The danger with archetypal images is their overuse. Horror and paranormal writing is awash with archetypal images that have become cliches-- the baying wolf, the bat, the open grave. You must discover new old images to bring freshness and creativity to your writing.

Go through dream dictionaries since dreams are filled with archetypal images. Study books like A DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS by J. E. Cirlot. Read books on Jung's studies of the archetype and the unconscious to get a broad overview of the emotional significance of these images. Notice the images that good writers use to push your emotional buttons.

And, especially, consider your own dreams. For they are your most fertile creative garden. They are the true home of the archetype.

Cue the Sunlight and Golden Retrievers

One of my guilty pleasures is reality ghost shows like THE DEAD FILES and MY HAUNTED HOUSE.  One of these shows is AMERICAN HAUNTING.  

In each episode, some poor family has the show’s cameras put all over their house to record ghostly happenings, various experts like mediums and researchers are brought in, the violence ratchets up to the point that they realize something a lot meaner than an annoyed and dead former owner is around, then an exorcist, priest, or psychic exorcist comes in and kicks out the evil thing.  

Most of these shows are filmed in the darkness and even the filming in daylight tends to be in dark tones, but after the evil whatever has been removed and the miasma of dark nastiness is lifted, the outside and inside of the house are shown in much brighter light.  

At the end of one show, the family is sent away while the psychic exorcist is at work, then they return.  As expected, the sun is bright, and the house is filled with light, but very unexpected was the presence of two golden retrievers waiting for their family to come home.

Since there had been no golden retrievers present during the filming, I was flummoxed.  Other episodes had cats wandering around and an occasional small dog as well as dogs in outside pens.  Why hadn’t they shown the golden retrievers?

I thought about it for a while and realized that it’s hard to think of evil in the presence of golden retrievers, the dog equivalent of dolphins or friendly angels, so the producers of this show had them removed from the house during the filming.  

This got me thinking about writing and how most writers fail to use images and metaphors that offer such a visceral reaction.  Even though a writer thinks about creating dark images during the unhappy times in the story, she may fail to offer light images when the unhappiness has been banished.

Sure, some images like sunlight and golden retrievers are a bit cliched, but that’s because they are honest images that convey emotion.  

Consider this the next time you are rewriting those scenes after things change for the better or worse.