I’ve recently discovered that whenever I think something is great or fantastic, and it’s worth commenting on how great or fantastic it is, I default to the exact same word in every conversation. It’s “awesome”. Everything is awesome.
If it’s funny, it’s awesome. If it’s pretty, it’s awesome. If it makes you think, it’s awesome. If it’s a weird random fact, it’s awesome. It’s funny because most of the time, I speak in SAT words.
I was talking to a friend the other night, and somewhere in the conversation we started making guesses about where the rest of our crew was at that point in the night. I started to say, “I assume…” but then I stopped myself and had a second guess moment. “Assume? Presume? Which one is it?” Obviously since we live in the age of smartphones and instant Google, I looked it up. Believe it or not, there is a slight difference, and I’m sharing it with you today.
Over the weekend, Joe sent me a link to a blog that talks about how students are apparently saying “all of the sudden” instead of “all of a sudden”. Is that a thing? It was actually the first time I’d heard of the words in idioms being switched around. In case there was any confusion, “all of the sudden” is incorrect, “all of a sudden” is correct, and whoever created the idiom made it a completely arbitrary decision.
I did it. After months of anticipation, it finally happened. This past Sunday night, I watched Sharknado.
Most of you are probably familiar with Sharknado, but if you’re not, get out from under that rock and go look it up on Wikipedia. It’s a SyFy original movie, and the only really important thing you need to know is that a guy chainsaws a shark in half. From the inside. It’s amazing. It’s probably the greatest made-for-TV movie that I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m not using that much hyperbole.
What’s hyperbole, you ask? Great question.
We’re all familiar with the term climax in reference to the point of a story where the action has reached its peak, the conflict is at its tensest, and the rest of the plot is a movement towards the resolution.
But did you know that climax also is a figure of speech that you can use in your storytelling?
Nothing adds depth and meaning to a story like symbolism. It acts as webbing between theme and story. Themes alone can sound preachy, and stories alone can sound shallow. Symbolism weaves the two together.
What better way is there to avoid “telling” and instead “show” your story? A symbol conveys complex ideas with few words. Symbolism can also achieve the same results as several sentences of explicit imagery. How’s that on your Show-And-Tell Meter? If a picture is worth a thousand words, a symbol is worth ten-thousand.
The most critical reason I use symbols for me is inspiration. I may have to do upfront research, often spending a few hours collecting a list of symbols for each story, but, like an investment, I get a continual creative flare from it.
