After completing the second draft of “Ordinary Life,” I spent two days mapping the manuscript for objects and ideas. Examples of objects are locks, Half Dome, and postcards. Examples of ideas are the virtue of courage, truth vs. lies, and having children. By ideas, I don’t mean the ideas I hoped to invisibly incarnate in the novel, but ideas that are part of my main character’s thoughts and experiences.
Foreshadowing
Personification
Personification is giving human characteristics to nonhuman things. This novel is full of nonhuman concrete things. One example is Royal Arches in Yosemite Valley. The arches can be said to look like eyebrows. You could feel like they were frowning at you. I am a little ambivalent about this. I can think of three places where I personified. I think the test of whether to keep them or not is if my protagonist is the one who gives them that meaning. My intuition for this novel is to not be literary. This might disappoint English teachers when they teach this novel in high school. (That’s a joke.)
Symbolism
Symbolism is when something stands for an idea beyond itself. An example from The Great Gatsby is the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. I think I want zero symbolism because while I want the novel to be full of ideas, they are to be incarnated in the details of the story, left for the reader to experience. In “Jack and the Beanstalk,” the magical beanstalk is not a symbol of man’s aspiration to be godlike. It’s just a way to get up in the cloud kingdom.
I think the novel will be done by the end of the week.
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