Subconcious Writing?

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.

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.

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

Meaning:

Sometimes.

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

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.

Sometimes it happens that way, yeah.

It gets refined in subsequent drafts.

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.

Yep.

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.

Re: Yep.

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

yep

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....

Re: yep

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

Re: yep

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

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

Click to expand...

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

Re: yep

Funny. Mine said:

fffkkk/ffff

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



aq

Re: yep

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

Re: yep

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.

Re: yep

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.

Re: yep

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.)

Re: yep

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

Click to expand...

:lol SC, and how true!

Re: yep

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.

Re: yep

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! g 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.

symbolism

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

Re: symbolism

>...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

Re: symbolism

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.

Re: symbolism

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.

Re: symbolism

>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.'