Jay Baer started the Convince & Convert blog back in 2008, and every year we post a top 10 list of our most popular posts of the year. But for 2020, we’re bringing you our favorite posts of the decade. Some are visitor favorites. Others are team member favorites.
Dive in now as we celebrate 10+ years of marketing content:
To celebrate Convince & Convert’s 10 year anniversary in 2018, founder Jay Baer revealed the 10 biggest lessons he learned while leading the company. While this post doesn’t receive many organic visits these days (it was tricky to optimize for SEO), it did get a ton of feedback, shares and engagement when we originally posted it. It’s worth a read — for sure!
A fan favorite, we recently refreshed this popular post in early 2019 with a video, new downloadable template and updated advice—and it jumped in the rankings and receives thousands of visitors each month. And for good reason — the advice is useful and actionable.
We take the ability to get real-time answers, real-time help and real-time apologies for granted, because they are the norm today. But it wasn’t the norm in 2001 – the year the Diamondbacks won it all, and Jay spent 4 innings in handcuffs. Our very own Kelly Santina suggested this post be added to the list, and I suggest you read it too.
In terms of page views since January 2010, this post is #1, generating more than 600,000 page views since it was first published in 2013. We’ve updated it and added a downloadable template, and it’s still going strong — the post is one of our top 10 most popular.
Jay originally wrote this post based on a presentation back in 2014, and our very own Lauren Teague updated it in November 2018. Lauren is an expert in social media crisis preparation and management, and this post continues to inform visitors and clients. Keep this one handy as you update your social media crisis plan for 2020.
Another classic, evergreen post, Jay wrote the original in 2014, and C&C content strategy experts Anna Hrach and Jenny Magic updated the post in 2019. Still going strong over 4 years later, this post is popular with Google visitors and our email readers. It includes a handy, downloadable template too.
This post killed it in our weekly newsletter — some of our highest opens and CTRs ever! The subject line was “Sheryl Sandberg Is Totally Wrong About This”. People must really love to hate Sheryl Sandberg or they just really love our weekly newsletter. I’d like to think it’s the latter. But really, this is a fantastic post from Jay that explains when you follow the “done is better than perfect” philosophy, you sacrifice customer experience for speed.
In conjunction with the release of the book, Talk Triggers, Jay created this nifty infographic on the 5 types of talk triggers. It includes stats, research and the five ways you can get your customers talking about you with a talk trigger.
Here are 12 E.L. Doctorow quotes for writers and about writing from the author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March. In these quotes, Doctorow covers novel writing, the mind, retirement, and more.
E.L. Doctorow was the author of several novels, including Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March (all of which won the National Book Critics Circle Award). Many of his books have been adapted into movies and often placed fictional characters into familiar historical contexts interacting with known historical figures.
Doctorow was born January 6, 1931. In his early 20s, he was drafted into the Army and served in West Germany in 1954-55 before becoming a reader for a motion picture company. Then, he worked as a book editor at New American Library and Dial Press before pursuing a full-time writing career. Along the way, he also taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton University, and other institutions. He died of lung cancer on July 21, 2015.
Here are 12 E.L. Doctorow quotes for writers and about writing that cover novel writing, retirement, and more.
12 E.L. Doctorow quotes for writers and about writing
“America never gives you anything without you having to pay for it.”
“If you think about it, all novels, all stories, are set in the past.”
“I’ve always thought that I don’t have a style, that I don’t want one, that each book has its own style. That’s its identity.”
Write Better Novels!
Push yourself beyond your comfort zone and take your writing to new heights with this Advanced Novel Writing workshop meant for novelists who are looking for book editing and specific feedback on their work. When you take this online workshop, you won’t have weekly reading assignments or lectures. Instead, you’ll get to focus solely on completing your novel.
While it is possible to write a novel in a month, in this workshop you’ll spend 15 weeks writing yours—all the while gaining valuable feedback and getting the encouragement you need in order to finish writing your novel. You’ll also learn specific tips for outlining and how not to write a novel. One thing is for certain though—by the end of this online workshop, you will have the tools and know-how to write a great novel.
Symbols enrich your story’s meaning by connecting what’s literally happening with overarching themes. Does your story include symbols? And what symbols should you include? In this article, we’ll look at symbolic archetypes that will help you create powerful symbols in your story.
The Hero’s Journey is a beloved storytelling style. One of the reasons why audiences love it so much is that it uses familiar storytelling elements that are familiar and creating a feeling of connectedness between the audience and storyteller.
This begins with character. And while stories are essentially about great characters, a powerful Hero’s Journey also includes a number of other objects or symbolic elements.
These are called Symbolic Archetypes.
If character archetypes are the steak, symbolic archetypes are the delicious seasonings that bring out the meat’s flavor (sorry to all you vegans/vegetarians out there!).
These storytelling elements are often subtle details that the reader may not consciously notice, but work to great effect in telling your heroic story in a way that establishes a deep and meaningful theme.
Here’s how to weave them into your story and create a wonderful reading experience for your audience.
Symbolic Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey
Is this post going to be another boring lesson from high school English class?
Of course not! We’re about to discover how to put symbols in your story, often hiding them in plain sight.
Here’s what a symbolic archetype is and how it works.
Symbolic Archetype Definition
A symbolic archetype is an object, location, or image in a story that contains more than one functional meaning. It has both a physical meaning in the story world and a thematic meaning for the reader to interpret.
First, the object, location, or image “is what it is” in the world of the story. A dungeon is a dungeon. A river is a river. And a sunrise is a sunrise.
But second, the object, location, or image also contains an additional function or meaning connected to eternal themes of human existence. A dungeon represents captivity. A river represents a journey or growth. And a sunrise represents rebirth or a new opportunity.
The Power of Symbols
Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” theory, also known as the Hero’s Journey, is the idea that all characters, situations, and symbols in any story (regardless of culture, genre, or time period) are incredibly similar. This means that stories are the product of human psychology, not just a specific culture or generation.
Symbols form the physical fabric of meaning in society. We use them all the time, often without thinking of their meaning.
Companies use them by creating logos, and then fill our world with that symbol everywhere they can. Religions use them, and followers wear those symbols as jewelry and tattoos. We even notice them when certain situations seem ironic, as when a red light stops us in our tracks and we are forced to wait when we’d much rather hurry onward.
Symbols are a bridge between the physical world and our nonphysical feelings about the world. They connect what we experience externally to what we experience internally.
In stories, symbols do the same thing. Symbolic Archetypes connect the physical world your characters live in to the nonphysical world of Theme.
That being said, it’s important to make a distinction before going forward: Not all symbols are the same.
A better way to say this is that while archetypes are universal, their implementation and interpretation is not. Here’s an example.
In the West, black clothing is symbolic of death and mourning. In many other cultures, however, the color for death and mourning is white. If you’re from Europe or America, it may seem absurd to wear white clothing to a funeral! Yet this is exactly what one would find in many other cultures and religious sects.
However, the colors “black” and “white” are not archetypes. They are simply colors.
What is universal and archetypal is the association of color with grief. It is a symbol (an image) that functions as it is, clothing, and as a thematic message, grief.
How you choose to implement this in your story is up to you. What if characters in your world used a different color for grief? This is one way to consider innovating an established symbolic archetype.
So as you consider texturing your world with Symbolic Archetypes, remember that the archetype is a way that humans connect the physical world to the nonphysical, not necessarily the specific way that connection is made (in various cultures, perhaps).
The 5 Essential Symbolic Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey
What are the most common symbolic bridges in the Heroic Journey stories that readers love? Let’s discuss five essential symbols you can use to add meaning to your story and help establish its themes!
1. Light vs. Darkness
The dichotomy between light and darkness is a straightforward way to show contrast. Usually, light means purity, truth, hope, or holiness. Darkness and shadows, to the contrary, represents guilt, deceit, despair, and being cursed or damned.
This dichotomy works as an archetype for a number of reasons. Humans tend to fear the dark and all the unknowns within it. But when light is thrown upon that darkness, revealing all to see, healing can occur and hope is restored. To see this in effect, simply turn on the bedroom lights for a child who thinks there’s a monster in his closet.
How to Use It
In your story, consider how this dichotomy can occur. Remember that the colors, or shades of light, don’t have to mean what I’ve written above. What’s primary is the functional fear of darkness that lives inside your reader, and the peace that comes when light shines into that darkness.
2. The Magic Weapon
Heroes are heroic because of their ultimately selfless actions.
However, they may exhibit physical heroism through mastery of some kind of weapon, known in Campbell’s theory as the Magic Weapon. Just look at Marvel’s superheroes to see this in action.
Iron Man’s weapon is his suit. Captain America’s weapon is his shield. Black Widow doesn’t have a tool as her weapon; her weapon is her body and the martial arts skills she possesses (though she shoots a lot of guns in the Marvel movies, too).
How to Use It
If you’re going to give your hero a Magic Weapon, then you do consign yourself to at least one “obligatory” scene: the loss of the Weapon.
Since it is ultimately the hero’s heart, not his weapons, that make him a hero, there is almost always a scene where the hero’s weapon is lost, damaged, or stolen, rendering the hero vulnerable for a period of time. It is in this time of testing that his true nature is revealed and he becomes “worthy,” at least in the narrative, of wielding the weapon once more.
3. The Underworld
This archetype is so common that it was spoofed in the Austin Powers films: the villainous underground “lair.”
This archetype is derived from classic epics like Beowulf and Dante’s Inferno, where the hero must descend into the depths of a cave or underwater cavern to slay a beast. In medieval tales, it evolved into dungeons, tunnels, crypts, and more.
But the reason why your story needs a symbolic Underground is because as humans, we know what “going underground” really means: Dying. As is spoken at many a funeral, “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” In our guts, we know that the Underground or Underworld is a place of death, darkness, and evil.
That’s why so many climactic scenes take place underground. It could be a confrontation with the Shadow or Devil Figure character(s); it could be an escape scene, where the hero(es) must pass through a tunnel or flooded area.
One of the earliest examples of this step is the famous “Red Sea” scene in the story of the Hebrew Exodus. Fleeing from Pharaoh’s army, the Hebrews pass through the parted Red Sea, a place where no human should logically be. At any moment, God could release the waters and every single man, woman, and child would be destroyed.
But instead, the Hebrews pass through unscathed, a symbolic resurrection and baptismal washing from their previous slavery status.
Indeed, it is not uncommon for the Resurrection step of the Hero’s Journey to take place in a symbolic Underground or Underworld!
How to Use It
There are a lot of ways to craft an Underground or Underworld: cellars and basements, caves, tunnels, ditches, underwater areas, and so on. Regardless of your story’s genre, there are ways to craft your darkest and highest-stakes scenes in a place that is underground or near to it.
How can you put your characters in a position of symbolic death while they wrestle with the death of their hopes and dreams as well?
4. The Castle
Just as every human instinctually associates the Underground with death, humans connect castles and fortresses with power. There is something overwhelming about a massive structure of reinforced stone, wood, and steel. Even visiting a crumbling castle from the ancient past, one can easily imagine its ramparts manned by innumerable soldiers and archers ready to repel any attack.
This is why your Shadow character needs a Castle.
Of course it doesn’t need to be an actual European castle. Remember, symbols are physical representations of nonphysical truths. And the nonphysical truth of a castle is power.
How to Use It
To fashion your Shadow’s Castle, consider: What is the type of power that the Shadow wields in your story?
Is it political power? Then perhaps the Shadow should be hidden behind the facade of a massive government building, like the Kremlin.
Perhaps the power in your story is military. In that case, the Shadow should lurk inside the fenced, heavily patrolled walls of a base or compound.
If the power in your world is financial, put your Shadow in a mansion or skyscraper.
Even a film like Elf uses this archetype when Buddy first attempts to connect with his father, Walter Hobbs, who works in the upper floors of the Empire State Building. Buddy doesn’t realize that his father is the Shadow of the story, a man who hides in his office, surrounded by secretaries and security staff, doing little-to-nothing as he produces crappy children’s books.
Yet Buddy, through his kindness and perseverance, is able to penetrate the defenses of Walter’s Castle (for awhile) until the story no longer needs the archetype anymore.
So consider what goal your hero is pursuing, and what the Shadow would logically do to thwart the hero. What kind of fortress would the Shadow erect for himself in the world of your story? What defenses would the Shadow put in place?
Remember, the Castle is symbolic, evoking the idea of great defensive power gathered into one impressive place. How would your Shadow bring this about in his or her world?
5. The Unhealable Wound
Injuries are a part of life. Thankfully most of them heal within a few days or weeks.
However, sometimes life brings an injury that never fully heals. The victim is forever scarred, perhaps unable to walk without a limp, use an arm, or live a functional life like before.
While these types of injuries are physical and not symbolic, the emotions that come from them are. With an Unhealable Wound comes feelings of brokenness, mortality, and an inability to let go of the past. That’s why this archetype is a subtle-yet-powerful element to include in your story.
As an example, think of Frodo Baggins’s wounding by the Witch King of the Nazgul. Trapped on the hilltop at Weathertop, Frodo puts on the Ring of Power to avoid being seen. Instead, however, he sees his attackers in the spiritual realm and one of them stabs Frodo in the shoulder with a Morgul blade.
While he is healed of the wound’s immediate danger by the elves, it continues to hobble and hurt him throughout his life. Even at the end of the lengthy novel, Frodo complains of its pain as he nears the time when he will have to choose between staying in the Shire or taking the boats to the Undying Lands (which is, conversely, a symbolic death).
How to Use It
Consider a way that your Hero can be injured or wounded, even nonphysically, in pursuit of their goal.
How can this wound hamper the Hero throughout the journey? How can learning to live with it be a part of the Hero pursuing their internal needs, rather than just external wants? Also, how can this process help the Hero become more selfless (and therefore heroic) in a way that benefits the entire community of your story?
4 Additional Symbolic Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey
There are a lot of ways to add meaning and depth to your story using other sources of symbolism. An internet search for “symbolic archetypes” will take you to a long list of Western-centric colors, shapes, and numbers, along with their “meanings.”
But it’s important to remember that these are often culturally specific and only reflect how one particular group of people link the physical world to nonphysical meaning. How will you innovate the following four tropes for your story?
1. The Significance of Color
Physical colors bear nonphysical meanings in various cultures. In the United States, for example, red is often associated with love and passion; however, it is also associated with violence, blood, and death. Green, on the other hand, represents a wide variety of things: nature, money, and greed, to name a few.
You are welcome to incorporate these interpretations into your own story. But be aware that all readers might not make the same symbolic connections that you intend.
That is why I encourage you to forge ahead with your own use of symbolic color.
J. R. R. Tolkien did this, making the color “white” differ based on regions in his world of Middle Earth. In Gondor, “the White Tower” was a symbol of hope against the black smoke and ash of Mordor. But in Rohan, “the white hand of Saruman” was a symbol of terror and evil, as a “white wizard” attempted to eradicate an entire race of men.
Numerical symbology is heavily dependent on cultural context. In Judeo-Christian societies, the numbers three, seven, and twelve are very symbolic and used in countless ways. This is connected to the Trinity, the holiness of the number seven, and the twelve disciplines and months of the year.
But in other cultures, especially ones that don’t embrace Judeo-Christian heritage, the number four is deeply symbolic. It is tied to cycles of nature: the four cardinal directions, the four seasons, and the four classic elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.
So what numbers will be significant in your world? What mythology or history will they be based on?
If your genre is more realistic, like a contemporary romance, then you’d be wise to adopt the numeric symbolism of your story’s setting or your character’s backgrounds. This could be especially interesting in a story about two people from vastly different cultures falling in love.
But if your genre is more fantastical and open to creative world-building, feel free to conjure a few symbolic numbers. Just make sure they are tied to mythology or history that is relevant to your hero’s pursuit of the goal.
3. The Significance of Shapes
Shapes are like the bones of many symbols. For more on this, see anything by Dan Brown about the Catholic Church!
Essentially there are four shapes used to establish physical symbols: circle, triangle, square, and diamond. Animators often use these simple shapes as the building blocks for characters. Pixar’s Inside Out features five main characters each based on a simple shape.
Another example of this symbology put to use is that of the “deathly hallows” in J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter novel. Even today you can see this symbol on people’s car windows and flesh.
A guiding principle for this is to limit the number of shapes you use in your story’s symbolic world. Don’t overwhelm your reader with ten symbols when one will capture the ideas you’re presenting.
Think of it this way: Use the symbol to establish or illustrate your story’s primary theme. Make it simple, memorable, and easy to draw (even in one’s mind). One can see this principle embodied perfectly in Rowling’s “deathly hallows.”
4. The Significance of Seasons
Finally, human beings who live in any latitude with seasons have gut-level feelings that associate seaons with nonphysical realities of life (sorry, Floridians).
In a nutshell, Spring symbolizes birth (hence the festival of eggs and rabbits that we now connect with the resurrection of Jesus, called “Easter”). Summer represents the vibrancy of youth and adulthood.
Autumn symbolizes advanced age and the slow decay of the body (consider how the image of slowly-falling discolored leaves makes you feel); and Winter undeniably represents death, as all life ceases to thrive and succumbs to a long, quiet sleep under the cruel, cold snow.
As with color and numbers, you are free to co-opt these commonly understood associations of the seasons. However, these associations are specifically Western and may not reflect the values of your story’s culture, or the culture you are creating for your story.
What does each season mean? Why? How can the passage of time and seasons provide a meaningful backdrop for your Hero’s transformation into a truly sacrificial source of hope and redemption?
Bring Meaning With Symbols
The great news about Symbolic Archetypes is that you don’t need a ton of them to succeed. You also don’t need to use them throughout the entire story. If it serves your story well, you may use an archetype in only a small number of scenes, as Elf does with the Empire State Building (the Castle).
So how will you build the bridge of meaning between your story’s physical world and the nonphysical feelings, sensations, and beliefs we all experience?
Because this is what separates “good” stories from truly great stories. The truly great stories that we love and talk about are layered with symbolic meaning that seem to say something important about how we live our lives.
And these great stories do so with carefully crafted subtlety. Finding the balance between a story with no meaning and a story that bashes readers over the head with preachy symbolism is a tough, time-tested challenge. You will need to rewrite scenes and chapters several times to find the right balance.
You’ll also need to share your drafts with your writing community, asking its members to let you know if the symbolism and themes were clear without being too heavy-handed.
Looking for feedback on your writing? Our online writing community, The Write Practice Pro, is full of members sharing meaningful feedback on each other’s writing every day. We’d love to support you in your writing, too. Click here to join the community »
After some focused and insightful feedback comes your way, you’ll be able to sharpen your symbols like chef’s knives so they make a precise impact on your story, and its readers, all the way through.
What symbols can you think of from stories you love? Let us know in the comments.
PRACTICE
Think about the Hero’s Journey story you’ve been planning throughout this series. (Want to start from the beginning? Kick off your own Hero’s Journey here.)
How might these Symbolic Archetypes appear in your story? Take fifteen minutes to journal about one of the five Essential Symbolic Archetypes, brainstorming ways to craft a physical object, location, or image that could have nonphysical meaning.
Share your writing in the comments, and then leave some constructive feedback on another writer’s post!
Symbols enrich your story’s meaning by connecting what’s literally happening with overarching themes. Does your story include symbols? And what symbols should you include? In this article, we’ll look at symbolic archetypes that will help you create powerful symbols in your story.
The Hero’s Journey is a beloved storytelling style. One of the reasons why audiences love it so much is that it uses familiar storytelling elements that are familiar and creating a feeling of connectedness between the audience and storyteller.
This begins with character. And while stories are essentially about great characters, a powerful Hero’s Journey also includes a number of other objects or symbolic elements.
These are called Symbolic Archetypes.
If character archetypes are the steak, symbolic archetypes are the delicious seasonings that bring out the meat’s flavor (sorry to all you vegans/vegetarians out there!).
These storytelling elements are often subtle details that the reader may not consciously notice, but work to great effect in telling your heroic story in a way that establishes a deep and meaningful theme.
Here’s how to weave them into your story and create a wonderful reading experience for your audience.
Symbolic Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey
Is this post going to be another boring lesson from high school English class?
Of course not! We’re about to discover how to put symbols in your story, often hiding them in plain sight.
Here’s what a symbolic archetype is and how it works.
Symbolic Archetype Definition
A symbolic archetype is an object, location, or image in a story that contains more than one functional meaning. It has both a physical meaning in the story world and a thematic meaning for the reader to interpret.
First, the object, location, or image “is what it is” in the world of the story. A dungeon is a dungeon. A river is a river. And a sunrise is a sunrise.
But second, the object, location, or image also contains an additional function or meaning connected to eternal themes of human existence. A dungeon represents captivity. A river represents a journey or growth. And a sunrise represents rebirth or a new opportunity.
The Power of Symbols
Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” theory, also known as the Hero’s Journey, is the idea that all characters, situations, and symbols in any story (regardless of culture, genre, or time period) are incredibly similar. This means that stories are the product of human psychology, not just a specific culture or generation.
Symbols form the physical fabric of meaning in society. We use them all the time, often without thinking of their meaning.
Companies use them by creating logos, and then fill our world with that symbol everywhere they can. Religions use them, and followers wear those symbols as jewelry and tattoos. We even notice them when certain situations seem ironic, as when a red light stops us in our tracks and we are forced to wait when we’d much rather hurry onward.
Symbols are a bridge between the physical world and our nonphysical feelings about the world. They connect what we experience externally to what we experience internally.
In stories, symbols do the same thing. Symbolic Archetypes connect the physical world your characters live in to the nonphysical world of Theme.
That being said, it’s important to make a distinction before going forward: Not all symbols are the same.
A better way to say this is that while archetypes are universal, their implementation and interpretation is not. Here’s an example.
In the West, black clothing is symbolic of death and mourning. In many other cultures, however, the color for death and mourning is white. If you’re from Europe or America, it may seem absurd to wear white clothing to a funeral! Yet this is exactly what one would find in many other cultures and religious sects.
However, the colors “black” and “white” are not archetypes. They are simply colors.
What is universal and archetypal is the association of color with grief. It is a symbol (an image) that functions as it is, clothing, and as a thematic message, grief.
How you choose to implement this in your story is up to you. What if characters in your world used a different color for grief? This is one way to consider innovating an established symbolic archetype.
So as you consider texturing your world with Symbolic Archetypes, remember that the archetype is a way that humans connect the physical world to the nonphysical, not necessarily the specific way that connection is made (in various cultures, perhaps).
The 5 Essential Symbolic Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey
What are the most common symbolic bridges in the Heroic Journey stories that readers love? Let’s discuss five essential symbols you can use to add meaning to your story and help establish its themes!
1. Light vs. Darkness
The dichotomy between light and darkness is a straightforward way to show contrast. Usually, light means purity, truth, hope, or holiness. Darkness and shadows, to the contrary, represents guilt, deceit, despair, and being cursed or damned.
This dichotomy works as an archetype for a number of reasons. Humans tend to fear the dark and all the unknowns within it. But when light is thrown upon that darkness, revealing all to see, healing can occur and hope is restored. To see this in effect, simply turn on the bedroom lights for a child who thinks there’s a monster in his closet.
How to Use It
In your story, consider how this dichotomy can occur. Remember that the colors, or shades of light, don’t have to mean what I’ve written above. What’s primary is the functional fear of darkness that lives inside your reader, and the peace that comes when light shines into that darkness.
2. The Magic Weapon
Heroes are heroic because of their ultimately selfless actions.
However, they may exhibit physical heroism through mastery of some kind of weapon, known in Campbell’s theory as the Magic Weapon. Just look at Marvel’s superheroes to see this in action.
Iron Man’s weapon is his suit. Captain America’s weapon is his shield. Black Widow doesn’t have a tool as her weapon; her weapon is her body and the martial arts skills she possesses (though she shoots a lot of guns in the Marvel movies, too).
How to Use It
If you’re going to give your hero a Magic Weapon, then you do consign yourself to at least one “obligatory” scene: the loss of the Weapon.
Since it is ultimately the hero’s heart, not his weapons, that make him a hero, there is almost always a scene where the hero’s weapon is lost, damaged, or stolen, rendering the hero vulnerable for a period of time. It is in this time of testing that his true nature is revealed and he becomes “worthy,” at least in the narrative, of wielding the weapon once more.
3. The Underworld
This archetype is so common that it was spoofed in the Austin Powers films: the villainous underground “lair.”
This archetype is derived from classic epics like Beowulf and Dante’s Inferno, where the hero must descend into the depths of a cave or underwater cavern to slay a beast. In medieval tales, it evolved into dungeons, tunnels, crypts, and more.
But the reason why your story needs a symbolic Underground is because as humans, we know what “going underground” really means: Dying. As is spoken at many a funeral, “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” In our guts, we know that the Underground or Underworld is a place of death, darkness, and evil.
That’s why so many climactic scenes take place underground. It could be a confrontation with the Shadow or Devil Figure character(s); it could be an escape scene, where the hero(es) must pass through a tunnel or flooded area.
One of the earliest examples of this step is the famous “Red Sea” scene in the story of the Hebrew Exodus. Fleeing from Pharaoh’s army, the Hebrews pass through the parted Red Sea, a place where no human should logically be. At any moment, God could release the waters and every single man, woman, and child would be destroyed.
But instead, the Hebrews pass through unscathed, a symbolic resurrection and baptismal washing from their previous slavery status.
Indeed, it is not uncommon for the Resurrection step of the Hero’s Journey to take place in a symbolic Underground or Underworld!
How to Use It
There are a lot of ways to craft an Underground or Underworld: cellars and basements, caves, tunnels, ditches, underwater areas, and so on. Regardless of your story’s genre, there are ways to craft your darkest and highest-stakes scenes in a place that is underground or near to it.
How can you put your characters in a position of symbolic death while they wrestle with the death of their hopes and dreams as well?
4. The Castle
Just as every human instinctually associates the Underground with death, humans connect castles and fortresses with power. There is something overwhelming about a massive structure of reinforced stone, wood, and steel. Even visiting a crumbling castle from the ancient past, one can easily imagine its ramparts manned by innumerable soldiers and archers ready to repel any attack.
This is why your Shadow character needs a Castle.
Of course it doesn’t need to be an actual European castle. Remember, symbols are physical representations of nonphysical truths. And the nonphysical truth of a castle is power.
How to Use It
To fashion your Shadow’s Castle, consider: What is the type of power that the Shadow wields in your story?
Is it political power? Then perhaps the Shadow should be hidden behind the facade of a massive government building, like the Kremlin.
Perhaps the power in your story is military. In that case, the Shadow should lurk inside the fenced, heavily patrolled walls of a base or compound.
If the power in your world is financial, put your Shadow in a mansion or skyscraper.
Even a film like Elf uses this archetype when Buddy first attempts to connect with his father, Walter Hobbs, who works in the upper floors of the Empire State Building. Buddy doesn’t realize that his father is the Shadow of the story, a man who hides in his office, surrounded by secretaries and security staff, doing little-to-nothing as he produces crappy children’s books.
Yet Buddy, through his kindness and perseverance, is able to penetrate the defenses of Walter’s Castle (for awhile) until the story no longer needs the archetype anymore.
So consider what goal your hero is pursuing, and what the Shadow would logically do to thwart the hero. What kind of fortress would the Shadow erect for himself in the world of your story? What defenses would the Shadow put in place?
Remember, the Castle is symbolic, evoking the idea of great defensive power gathered into one impressive place. How would your Shadow bring this about in his or her world?
5. The Unhealable Wound
Injuries are a part of life. Thankfully most of them heal within a few days or weeks.
However, sometimes life brings an injury that never fully heals. The victim is forever scarred, perhaps unable to walk without a limp, use an arm, or live a functional life like before.
While these types of injuries are physical and not symbolic, the emotions that come from them are. With an Unhealable Wound comes feelings of brokenness, mortality, and an inability to let go of the past. That’s why this archetype is a subtle-yet-powerful element to include in your story.
As an example, think of Frodo Baggins’s wounding by the Witch King of the Nazgul. Trapped on the hilltop at Weathertop, Frodo puts on the Ring of Power to avoid being seen. Instead, however, he sees his attackers in the spiritual realm and one of them stabs Frodo in the shoulder with a Morgul blade.
While he is healed of the wound’s immediate danger by the elves, it continues to hobble and hurt him throughout his life. Even at the end of the lengthy novel, Frodo complains of its pain as he nears the time when he will have to choose between staying in the Shire or taking the boats to the Undying Lands (which is, conversely, a symbolic death).
How to Use It
Consider a way that your Hero can be injured or wounded, even nonphysically, in pursuit of their goal.
How can this wound hamper the Hero throughout the journey? How can learning to live with it be a part of the Hero pursuing their internal needs, rather than just external wants? Also, how can this process help the Hero become more selfless (and therefore heroic) in a way that benefits the entire community of your story?
4 Additional Symbolic Archetypes of the Hero’s Journey
There are a lot of ways to add meaning and depth to your story using other sources of symbolism. An internet search for “symbolic archetypes” will take you to a long list of Western-centric colors, shapes, and numbers, along with their “meanings.”
But it’s important to remember that these are often culturally specific and only reflect how one particular group of people link the physical world to nonphysical meaning. How will you innovate the following four tropes for your story?
1. The Significance of Color
Physical colors bear nonphysical meanings in various cultures. In the United States, for example, red is often associated with love and passion; however, it is also associated with violence, blood, and death. Green, on the other hand, represents a wide variety of things: nature, money, and greed, to name a few.
You are welcome to incorporate these interpretations into your own story. But be aware that all readers might not make the same symbolic connections that you intend.
That is why I encourage you to forge ahead with your own use of symbolic color.
J. R. R. Tolkien did this, making the color “white” differ based on regions in his world of Middle Earth. In Gondor, “the White Tower” was a symbol of hope against the black smoke and ash of Mordor. But in Rohan, “the white hand of Saruman” was a symbol of terror and evil, as a “white wizard” attempted to eradicate an entire race of men.
Numerical symbology is heavily dependent on cultural context. In Judeo-Christian societies, the numbers three, seven, and twelve are very symbolic and used in countless ways. This is connected to the Trinity, the holiness of the number seven, and the twelve disciplines and months of the year.
But in other cultures, especially ones that don’t embrace Judeo-Christian heritage, the number four is deeply symbolic. It is tied to cycles of nature: the four cardinal directions, the four seasons, and the four classic elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.
So what numbers will be significant in your world? What mythology or history will they be based on?
If your genre is more realistic, like a contemporary romance, then you’d be wise to adopt the numeric symbolism of your story’s setting or your character’s backgrounds. This could be especially interesting in a story about two people from vastly different cultures falling in love.
But if your genre is more fantastical and open to creative world-building, feel free to conjure a few symbolic numbers. Just make sure they are tied to mythology or history that is relevant to your hero’s pursuit of the goal.
3. The Significance of Shapes
Shapes are like the bones of many symbols. For more on this, see anything by Dan Brown about the Catholic Church!
Essentially there are four shapes used to establish physical symbols: circle, triangle, square, and diamond. Animators often use these simple shapes as the building blocks for characters. Pixar’s Inside Out features five main characters each based on a simple shape.
Another example of this symbology put to use is that of the “deathly hallows” in J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter novel. Even today you can see this symbol on people’s car windows and flesh.
A guiding principle for this is to limit the number of shapes you use in your story’s symbolic world. Don’t overwhelm your reader with ten symbols when one will capture the ideas you’re presenting.
Think of it this way: Use the symbol to establish or illustrate your story’s primary theme. Make it simple, memorable, and easy to draw (even in one’s mind). One can see this principle embodied perfectly in Rowling’s “deathly hallows.”
4. The Significance of Seasons
Finally, human beings who live in any latitude with seasons have gut-level feelings that associate seaons with nonphysical realities of life (sorry, Floridians).
In a nutshell, Spring symbolizes birth (hence the festival of eggs and rabbits that we now connect with the resurrection of Jesus, called “Easter”). Summer represents the vibrancy of youth and adulthood.
Autumn symbolizes advanced age and the slow decay of the body (consider how the image of slowly-falling discolored leaves makes you feel); and Winter undeniably represents death, as all life ceases to thrive and succumbs to a long, quiet sleep under the cruel, cold snow.
As with color and numbers, you are free to co-opt these commonly understood associations of the seasons. However, these associations are specifically Western and may not reflect the values of your story’s culture, or the culture you are creating for your story.
What does each season mean? Why? How can the passage of time and seasons provide a meaningful backdrop for your Hero’s transformation into a truly sacrificial source of hope and redemption?
Bring Meaning With Symbols
The great news about Symbolic Archetypes is that you don’t need a ton of them to succeed. You also don’t need to use them throughout the entire story. If it serves your story well, you may use an archetype in only a small number of scenes, as Elf does with the Empire State Building (the Castle).
So how will you build the bridge of meaning between your story’s physical world and the nonphysical feelings, sensations, and beliefs we all experience?
Because this is what separates “good” stories from truly great stories. The truly great stories that we love and talk about are layered with symbolic meaning that seem to say something important about how we live our lives.
And these great stories do so with carefully crafted subtlety. Finding the balance between a story with no meaning and a story that bashes readers over the head with preachy symbolism is a tough, time-tested challenge. You will need to rewrite scenes and chapters several times to find the right balance.
You’ll also need to share your drafts with your writing community, asking its members to let you know if the symbolism and themes were clear without being too heavy-handed.
Looking for feedback on your writing? Our online writing community, The Write Practice Pro, is full of members sharing meaningful feedback on each other’s writing every day. We’d love to support you in your writing, too. Click here to join the community »
After some focused and insightful feedback comes your way, you’ll be able to sharpen your symbols like chef’s knives so they make a precise impact on your story, and its readers, all the way through.
What symbols can you think of from stories you love? Let us know in the comments.
PRACTICE
Think about the Hero’s Journey story you’ve been planning throughout this series. (Want to start from the beginning? Kick off your own Hero’s Journey here.)
How might these Symbolic Archetypes appear in your story? Take fifteen minutes to journal about one of the five Essential Symbolic Archetypes, brainstorming ways to craft a physical object, location, or image that could have nonphysical meaning.
Share your writing in the comments, and then leave some constructive feedback on another writer’s post!
This past weekend the Sunday Review from the New York Times declared the past ten years as the “Decade of Mistrust” and suggested that “Americans learned that they shouldn’t believe anyone or anything.” This rise in mistrust seems connected to the rise of bullshit too – and so it felt like a fitting theme for my first post of the new year.
But this doesn’t have to be a negative thing. Non-Obvious thinkers aren’t afraid of bullshit. We see it all the time and have learned to be strategically skeptical. And in this new year, the world needs more of us to have this mindset.
It all starts with maintaining a healthy skepticism and this week there were several stories that might have inspired more need for this skepticism than usual. Here are a few …
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New Pew Report On Media Trust In The Age of Trump This latest report from Pew looks at the relationship between political beliefs and faith in journalism and finds some interesting parallels between those beliefs and how much people believe in the media itself. It is disturbing, though, just how eroded trust in the media has become – partially through shoddy work but perhaps even more because of authoritarian leaders and manipulative politicians who aim to benefit from the distrust.
11 Trends Changing the Way We Read While the eleven points in this article aren’t what I would call “trends” – they are interesting observations of how the way that we read and what we read has been shifting. From movie adaptations of film to the rise of activist books for children, there are some interesting shifts happening in how we read and this article will give you more than one to get your mind racing.
Editor note: At the start of the new year, I thought it would be a good idea to kick off with a tech article. because, like it or not, technology will play a larger and larger part in all our lives, whether we are writers, bloggers or freelancers. And QR code has been around a […]
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