Symbols

[E.G. Gammon]

What if in your novel, there is a significant symbol of some kind, a symbol you can't really put into words? (In my WIP, a novel series, I'm referring to a symbol a serial killer leaves at each crime scene). I have drawn out the unique symbol and embedded it into a font. Now, when I am typing my manuscript for submission, should I put the symbol into the text? For example: Should I write a paragraph and say something like: "...the killer left its mark:" and then put the symbol right below that paragraph, centered, on a line by itself? The symbol is UNIQUE and can't really be put into words (without giving away its meaning, which I don't want to do until much later). And I don't want to wait (to describe it) the moment I explain its meaning, because it doesn't get explained until Book 5 of the series. Basically what I'm asking is if I put a hand-drawn symbol into my MS, will it turn off agents/publishers? I don't want to seem like an amateur, but I have to show the symbol somehow.

[Sarita]

Could you slip it in there as a chapter heading, or use it as a break? (Thinking out loud)

[Andrew Jameson]

I personally would find an odd glyph plunked down in the middle of the text a bit distracting, but one person's opinion does not a concensus make.

Let me ask you this, though: why is it important that your readers know exactly what this symbol looks like in book one if the meaning isn't explained in book five? Couldn't you just give a bit of description, enough to limn out the basic shape, and leave it at that? Then, as the glyph becomes more important to the story, you can always add description in. [And just how complicated is this glyph, anyway? I would think that anything that's so overwhelmingly complicated that you can't describe it would be very distracting to have plunked into the middle of a story.]

[maestrowork]

If the symbol is truly unique and it will take 100 words to describe it adequately, I would put a small graphics in the ms. Books have graphics all the time (Angels and Demons, frex) and you're only going to help the readers and the editors if you include a small graphics ("small" is the keyword).

[James D. Macdonald]

Discuss with your editor using the glyph as a dingbat in linebreaks, or at the head of chapters, or on the cover.

Or: Post a graphic of it here, and I'll give you a description in 100 words or less.

[SJB]

I quite like seeing a symbol on the page. There's a Sherlock Holmes story (Can't think of the title, off the top of my head) which revolves around a mysterious set of little dancing stick men. Reproduced on the page in bold black lines, they're creepy as hell.

[James D. Macdonald]

That was, believe it or not, "The Adventure of the Dancing Men."

[SJB]

That was, believe it or not, "The Adventure of the Dancing Men."

Ha! Fancy that!

Thanks, Unk. I posted the above at around midnight last night- not a good time to dip into a Sherlock Holmes collection if you're a big wuss like me.

[MacAllister]

Ahhhhh, but that's the BEST time, SJB. :) Your natural resistance to the suspension of disbelief is lower and you're more suggestible, therefore you take the richest cathartic experience possible.

heheheh...

[Alphabeter]

I don't want to seem like an amateur, but I have to show the symbol somehow.

I'm with Uncle Jim that I would be interested in seeing it. (PM me if you're worried about publishing it.)

However, in reading a manuscript (in beta or bound form) I would rather a separate paragraph with the mark than a description-particularly for the type of usage you're describing.

[oswann]

Go for your life.

Symbols - DaVinci Code - 300000 zillion books sold and counting.


Os.