Words With Impact: Describe Symbols as Allusions and Echoes: Mirrors

Workshop: Discover Words That Sing

“A fantasy novel is more than an adventure or a quest. Rather it is a series of image-repeating glasses, a hall of mirrors that brings past and future into focus and calls it the present.” Jane Yolen

Even when the glass is smudged, a mirror reflects an image. So do memories, even though sometimes they shift and blur like a house of mirrors giving a distorted emphasis. But then we can filter and process and hold onto the parts that have meaning.

A series of repeating images also connects us in our personal histories, our personal daily adventures, and our quests. They’re not always easy to grasp though because of other influences, and often jaded opinions.

In the movie Larry Crowne, Larry’s navy experience is dismissed by a thoughtless co-worker as irrelevant because of him only being a cook. Yet when Larry himself finally has the opportunity to share his memories in a safe environment, we see what an enriching life that opportunity gave him. His memories hold his audience rapt as he shares traveling the world, crossing the equator, and seeing the Northern Lights, places we often only see in magazines and television. He lived it. And with humor he also shares peeling potatoes, serving up pasta, and doing dishes. His day-to-day adventure.

His perspective takes that particular season of his life and then holds in his memory the parts that matter, the parts that make him real. It has focus in the present.

Action Steps:

1. Take a memory your main character has from childhood that she remembers with extreme fondness. Then have a relative turn the actual memory upside down. What impact does that have?

2. Repeat with a memory that causes fear.

Share: Which one gave a stronger image?

Read deep, marcy

A Mythic Definition as Hope

Write with Impact

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face;….. . But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  1 Corinthians 13: 12-13

A mirror reflects images. Outer landscapes often act as mirrors in myth and fantasy, allowing the characters and/or reader a deeper insight into themselves, a reflection of their inner (soul) landscape, and recognition of shared humanity. When the inner and outer landscapes connect, this combination often illumines spiritual imagery through mirrors and maps. They translate the character’s internal landscape for him/her.

In a similar way the mythic stories that are handed down from generation to generation act as mirrors of hope. They include an assortment of proverbs, parables, wisdom stories, creation, family heritage, cultural, songs, fairy tales, and folktales. But a common thread they all share are that the stories are considered of value, the reality of what has gone before and the promises that the future will bring. Through a heart of love they continue to pass along hope.

In some ways myth as hope is tied into myth as yearning although this is not a fabricated put on a happy face future, but rather an expectation based on experience and relationships and truth. It is hope in story that brings about new beginnings. It shares dreams fitted with solid hiking boots.

James N. Frey, in his book The Key, points out that a hero’s journey does not necessarily mean the hero will survive, but rather that he succeeds and if he perishes—he dies victorious.

“The hero faces natural fears. They include the terrors of height, fire, wild animals, creepy things, dark places, claustrophobic spaces, physical combat, inhospitable environments, monsters, evil spirits, and perils involving water: storms at sea, rapids and so on.” James N Frey

When we can connect our stories to these characteristics and the patterns they provide as they pass down through generations, then we discover and develop personal essence that resonates today. They bridge the past, the present and the future with possibilities—with hope.

Share: What is the first novel you remember reading that gave you a sense of timeless hope?

Read deep, marcy