Subconcious Writing?

[Vanessa99]

Does anyone else find themselves foreshadowing and making the best symbolisms in your novel without thinking about what your writing with no planning put into it. You just look back and realize later that by describing for example, a bridge you foreshadowed an entire part of your story in great detail.
Or that you write things that you don't remember ever thinking about. Or things that posess wisdom that you yourself do not. It's wierd.

[TerriLynn]

lol...ah the life of a writer.

actually, I foreshadow a lot in my books, but I know I'm doing it. I'm a fan of Hitchcock and M.Night Shamalyn(sp?) style storytelling.

[Yeshanu]

Sometimes my inner genius shines through, and sometimes it needs a little help... :grin

Meaning:

Sometimes.

[writerscut]

It's wierd, but I'll be sitting around, not having an idea in my head, but then finding more than I can chew come flying at me while I'm laying awake at two in the morning. I love the ideas, but can't a person get their sleep!|I

[maestrowork]

Some come to me subconsciously. Some are deliberate. Some I have to add in my later draft as the plot takes on unexpected turns...

It's all part of the wonder of creation.

[James D Macdonald]

Sometimes it happens that way, yeah.

It gets refined in subsequent drafts.

[macalicious731]

Sometimes it happens naturally.
Other times it's deliberate.

Other times I find myself consciously building off a little detail that was subconsciously placed earlier in the story.

[Gala]

Happens to me. Sometimes a scene I'm working on takes a tangent, introducing a new plot point or character. I go with it; anything that doesn't work can always be deleted later. All writing is good practice.

In one case recently, as I was revising, I realized that two characters are actually the same person. I was planning to delete one of them, but instead they whispered to me that making them the same person solved a major plot question.

[Greenwolf103]

This has happened to me, too. I usually just let the writing happen. It often explains itself later on. :grin

[MrAngelwithnowings]

Sometimes I have unconscious writing. LOL

Its always in a secret code that I have yet to dicipher.

Here is a one of the codes I wrote that last time I was unconscious on the computer:

ljhvui./.kkkkkkkkk.....................k....

[tfdswift]

Ever since I was very young (like 12 or so), my mom has told me how I would get up in the middle of the night and write. I would wake up the next morning and not even remember it, but there would be paper with something written on it. Sometimes a poem, sometimes a story, or sometimes just an idea to play with later.

Now as an adult, I am more concious of getting up when an idea or poem strikes and writing it down. But then when I have no more words in my head, I just leave it and go back to sleep. Sometimes it's good stuff and sometimes it's jibberish, you never know when inspiration will hit and what it will bring.:shrug

~~Tammy:thumbs

[LiamJackson]

Here is a one of the codes I wrote that last time I was unconscious on the computer:

ljhvui./.kkkkkkkkk.....................k..

Wait! It's coming to me..yes, yes! I have it! It reads "Send large sums of money to Liam's paypal account...now!"
:grin

[arrowqueen]

Funny. Mine said:

fffkkk/ffff

I think it translates as 'Tell that money-grubbing chancer to sod off.'

;)

aq

[LiamJackson]

Egads! AQ is on to my subliminal **US currency, tens and twenties** scheme!

[LiamJackson]

A serious answer to the original question:

I rarely design and plant symbolism in a story, although inadvertent, unintentional symbols pop up on a regular basis. I'm sure someone has a theory(s) on why this happens, but I won't even try to explain it. It just happens.

[cluelessspicycinnamon]

Shymalan. But hmmmm, I"m not sure how much forshadowing I do. I try to add more "literary elements," but I'm not sure I do. Subconsciously, though, maybe. I'd have to reread everything after I'm done and see if I've done that.

[sc211]

Hemingway said that it was best to work like that - to not plan out any symbolic stuff, but just let it be. Also, there'll always be some academic who'll see the whole history of European domination in Post-War Uruguay in your description of an outhouse.

As for sleep, Twain recommended it highly, and there's a good section on the collective unconscious in Jenny Boyd's collection of musician interviews, "Musicians in Tune." (Keith Richards woke up from a nap, strummed the opening chords to "Start Me Up," and fell asleep again before he could shut off the tape recorder.)

[ChunkyC]

there'll always be some academic who'll see the whole history of European domination in Post-War Uruguay in your description of an outhouse
:lol SC, and how true!

[macalicious731]

One hundred percent on that one, SC...

Academic: Why did he choose to describe the chair as blue? What is the significance of the blue color of the chair?!?

Me: Uhm... he likes the color?

:smack Sometimes there's just too much literary theory.

[sc211]

Exactly. And your bit about why the chair is blue reminded me of seeing these academics in a documentary about Emily Dickinson discussing this poem:

I heard a fly buzz when I died...

...I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

These professors, all PHDs in English literature and Harvard and all, were all arguing over "Why was the fly blue?" Just pulling so much sh*t out of their collective asses about this significantly-blue fly buzzing around her room.

But hey - anyone who reads it clearly can see there's no damn fly! :bang It's just a image she used to convey the confusion as she was blacking out as dying. You know, her ears buzz, the room goes from white to blue, and she's gone. The fly's no more real than when she says "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain."

Been wanting to unload that one for years. Thanks. I feel much better.

[maestrowork]

My dream to have a Cliff note on my book(s) in which they dissect it and analyze all the hidden meanings and symbolisms -- especially when there aren't any. :grin

[Euan Harvey]

>...all the hidden meanings and symbolisms -- especially when there aren't any.

Okay, I have to chime in here. Just because *you* don't think that there is any hidden symbolism is your book doesn't mean there isn't any. It may be hidden from you as well.

The meanings that any reader gets from your book are not necessarily the ones that you think you have put in there.

As for the Harvard Professors spouting crap out of their collective asses...

Well, all I can say to that is that there is a reason they're Profs at Harvard -- and it ain't because of their looks.

Creation and criticism are two completely different things. Critics do not necessarily make good writers (one of my colleagues describes critics as one-legged dancing teachers), but equally, writers do not necessarily make good critics.

Anyway: my 2c,

Cheers,

Euan

[maestrowork]

Let me further qualify my statement then. :-)

"hidden meanings and symbolisms -- when there are none *that I know of*"

I'm sure my subconscious mind works mysteriously. When some of my betas told me what they got out of the story, and what they thought the themes/morals were, they surprised me. Then I thought about it, and realized they were right. That's why I said, it would be very cool to have a college lit class analyze my book(s) and see what they come up with.

[macalicious731]

Along the lines of what Ray's been saying, I think it's funny to imagine that, somewhere along the line, some professors could be arguing about why the room was red, or something, and you didn't mean it to be significant at all.

Crazy.

[Euan Harvey]

>you didn't mean it to be significant at all.

No no no! Shhhhh! You can't say this!

What you do is you lean back in your chair, peer over the top of your glasses and say something like 'Ah, yes. I was wondering when someone would catch onto that.'

[DanALewis]

There is blue splashed all over Madame Bovary in appropriate places. It is all symbolic, sure. And why blue instead of some other color? Because we are swimming in a deep sea of connotations and literary allusions. In that novel it meant something like freedom, or escape.

[maestrowork]

I have used subtle symbolisms as simple as colors, usually subconsciously. As I paint the pictures with my words, I choose them carefully, but not always consciously. I'd think about what colors are the rooms, the chairs, the drapes... and it's only later that I realize what I'm doing -- to set the mood or to have some subliminal coherence (a conflict scene vivid with bold colors such as red and violet; a relatively calm scene ripe with soothing colors such as green and blue).

There are other things that creep up on you as your subciously mind does it work -- especially if your story has a strong theme. For example, duality is one of my themes, and I find myself putting things in pairs, sometimes contrasting each other, here and there. I don't do it on purpose, but they're there.

[sc211]

Euan, I didn't mean to be so hard on all critics. God knows I've read plenty of works where I've put my own in-depth interpretations onto it. Especially with songs, which, as with poetry, are made for the audience to project their own experience onto.

As Neil Gaiman said, "If you are pointing out one of the things a story is about, then you are very probably right; if you are pointing out the only thing a story is about, you are very probably wrong - even if you're the author."

My Emily Dickinson example is actually a bad one, since they were taking a simple object literally rather than extrapolating a simple object into a giant metaphor. I was going to use something I read a critic wrote of Dylan's "Idiot Wind," but I couldn't remember it exactly. It was something like, "Here Dylan is inviting us to throw off the weight of post-modern sensibility for the unconscious revealing of man's inner pain in a fragmented society." I read that and threw the book away.

Some are great at interpreting Dylan's work, like Jonathan Cott and Greil Marcus, and Dylan himself has said he doesn't know what a lot of his songs are about, but... well, I was gonna say the academics get carried away, but hey, what better songwriter is there to get carried away with? I can't blame them - I just don't want to read them.

About colors, check out "The Last Emperor." The director worked with three colors to show the changing times. It's all yellow at first, and then the first use of green is used with the western tutor's bicycle - the change to the modern age. And finally, in the collapse of the old empire, he switches to blue. Find an interview with Bertolucci for the facts on that.

Finally, for some funny bits on critics...

"I can imagine nothing more distressing to a critic than to have a writer see accurately into his own work."
- Norman Mailer

"The only really difficult thing about a poem is the critic's explanation of it."
- Frank Moore Colby