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202 Part III: Painting the Picture with Description
Cynical or realistic? You decide
Some contemporary writers react against what
they see as moralising in literature (and the presumption
that an author can lecture readers or
change the world), creating instead a worldweary
or even cynical view in which characters
don’t suffer pangs of guilt when they do something
dreadful or where plot events happen at
random. At first, these experiments had their
impact because they subverted what the audience
expected. In Samuel Beckett’s theatrical
masterpiece Waiting for Godot (1952), for example,
early audiences were horrified that Godot
never appeared! (Godot’s name, of course, may
well be symbolic, standing for an absent God
(of the Old Testament – OT – perhaps), although
Beckett claims it was simply a name he heard
on a plane.)
Many people react with distaste or confusion
to the postmodern, distanced kind of fiction.
They don’t want to read about people getting
away with terrible deeds, even if that seems to
happen in life. Most readers want to see generous
acts in some way rewarded. Even though
society and knowledge have changed hugely
over the past centuries, human nature has
probably altered little since ancient times; that’s
why the old stories are still read and re-read.
Allowing yourself to use symbols in your writing is the surest way to connect
readers with the deeper, often hidden aspects of themselves, and to make a
piece of fiction meaningful. Don’t worry about whether you understand why
symbols work – just trust that they do.
Good fiction is symbolic not because the writer deliberately and self-consciously
places symbols in it, but because symbols inevitably arise in your mind when
you are deeply immersed in your writing. Writing description is the best way to
allow this process to happen.
Whenever you get stuck with your writing, write some passages of description.
They may not stay in your final story – you may keep just a sentence or
two – but almost inevitably something that acts as a symbol comes up and
starts your story moving forwards again.