Complexity and depth help engage and involve the audience.

Q. What are imagery and symbolism? 

A. You’re always saying more than you know. So, make sure you’re saying what you mean. 'Symbolism' refers generally to metonymy, one way or another, one thing howsoever suggesting if not signifying another, however similar or different, the systematic utilization of symbols in order to represent or allude to something or anything else, particularly as a rhetorical device central to the meaning of a written work, and especially including the revelation or suggestion or Objective Correlative of intangible conditions or truths by just such artistic invention.

Indeed, the range of art ever extends from the sensory to the cognitive, the prosaic to poetical, and the concrete to the abstract.

Religious experiences such as possession, trance, visions, dreams, miraculous healings, dramatic forms of conversion and various shamanic experiences in diverse setting and milieu, often take narrative form. Symbolic Anthropology is a field of Cultural Anthropology exploring verbal and non-verbal symbols including narrative, dreams, myth, ritual and icons. Anthropologists examine the link between symbols and a society's cognitive structure or worldview/POV, rules of moral conduct and patterns of social interaction. studying the meaning and the structured interrelationship of symbols. Symbolic play, is such as wherein toys or props may signify and stand in for other things and phenomena.

Indeed, the poetical sensibility of art often entails pondering and reflecting upon ideas and problems but via the unique conceptual medium of images, visualizations, sense memories and the like, as opposed to rhetoric, conceptualizations and linguistic abstractions otherwise. Indeed, imagery may be employed to remind us, by approximation, of whatever meaning said imagery may represent, either conventionally within a culture, intentionally by the invention of the writer or even quite surprisingly in reception by an audience, depending upon one one asks, because in delving layers of subtext and ambiguity the experience thereof becomes richer and more thought provoking.

In 'The Forgotten Language' (1952) Erich Fromm distinguishes between between three distinct types of symbol:

Even though in the most literal sense, all language is symbolic being metonymy, generally symbolism refers to the use of iconic figures with particular and even conventional meanings. Symbolism is an important element of most religions and the arts. Indeed, many cultures incorporate complex symbolic systems which assign certain attributes to specific things, such as types of animals, plants or weather.

Well rounded fictional characters like unto the real people they generally represent, are wont to associate emotionally to setting via meaningful key "objects" or personal symbols, not only real physical props, decor, senses, smell, mood, ambiance, light and sound, but also triggers of memory and motivation perhaps focused thereupon, sentimentality after a prolonged absence, or to heighten or show any range of affect and motivation from tragic loss to pleasant anticipation.

Indeed, just as the saying goes, sex sells. And potent symbols are deployed in advertising media for consumers to manifest self-image and crucial personal development or progress via the ongoing acquisition of significant possessions. As ever, marketing often strives to confuse and inveigle the consumer in to compensation for genuine underserved needs, via the elicitation of positive associations and mystique, seldom actually substantiated in whatever goods or services.

Indeed, the symbolism of the Pathetic Fallacy brings to light the entirely subjective, either to character POV or authorial voice. -At least barring anthropomorphic prosopopoeia, or literal personification of Fairytale unpremeditated magical realism. Even if perhaps melodramatic and implausibly convenient, the Pathetic Fallacy is an aspect of writing style finding typical particular utilization most saliently pertaining to setting and even situation wherein descriptions are often intended to reveal moral or psychological aspects of character.

Because motivated characterization is shown by external description of physical appearance including physical characteristics often constituting symbolic elements along with meaningful names, Setting The scene and more, along with relationships and contrast between characters (foil), perhaps symbolic of any larger abstraction, with development or not, and any better hidden revelation and understanding gleaned from the reactions of others, dialogue and action; but also revelations of any character's own thoughts and feelings, via straight exposition or rhetorical discourse directly providing needed background information from the authorial POV, introspection of any character's private inner most thoughts and feelings from the POV of inner life, even interior monologue attempting to portray or convey, in words, the process of consciousness or thought as a means of narrating a story, even stream-of-consciousness of experience, the entire subjective Phenomena, as it passes by, often quite at random. All of which may be rife with personal symbolism and imagery.

A glove may represent the hand which wears it, or a portrait, no less obviously, the person depicted. Or a symbol may come to stand even quite distinctly, say, to equate for whatever the point however said symbol may come, one way or another, to show by demonstration, for example, as the practicality or impracticality, or any other function, priority or value, for example, of a possession for said quality likewise of the owner. Setting and even mood, likewise.

However, more generally, meaning arises less from however so precise correspondence or identification of sign to object of meaning signified, than at all adequate differences and distinction of one category from another. The multiple meanings symbols admit, (to reiterate) poetically, with ambiguity and abstraction out of memory association and personal constructs of social cognition built from successivered herrings and innate naturally flawed Epistemological Methodology, remain indeterminate, even ambiguous, and thereby, resonant in metaphor, theme, tone and subtext; POV all redolent in theme.

A. creative human intelligence ever strives for meaning by way of association, for interference of connection between aspects of experience that brings about comprehension in the mind. For Socrates such is the quest for truth, but for Protagoras, an Evolutionary Epistemology favoring adaptive fitness and better function in perception and understanding, not truth as such. Either way, the ineffable, even knowable, even transmissible, nevertheless defies explanation or description. And living knowledge (as opposed to poorly indexed knowledge impractical to retrieve at will, that is rightly called: inert), serving renewal and vitality, is growth, the experience of change put into practice, learned behaviors never immutable but ever subject to re-adaptation, emergent in collective interaction, tacit, highly charged and redolent, profoundly with the sensibility of drama, may even skirt the ineffable, often defying ready articulation let alone routine management via knowledge-driven Epistemology. As Popper observes, even the literal meaning of word or term, being at all intersubjective, can be inferred only Empirically from observation of usage.

Of course, to quote Jacques Monod in rejection of the Pathetic Fallacy: "The first scientific postulate is the objectivity of nature: nature does not have any intention or goal."  Indeed, in the immortal words of Protagoras "Man is the measure of all things"  because there is no intrinsic meaning in any sense; for meaning at all, let alone value, is an aspect of human experience and comprehension that the Zen mystics strive so quixotically to transcend as unjustified. Indeed, desirable values even as far as sheer necessities of life at all, let alone any further amenities or loftier concerns, are not logically reducible, but simply a matter of human nature, ultimately as innately biological and therefore arbitrary as survival instinct to begin with, let alone pleasure principle or meaningful engagement. But we are all still biological.

By howsoever suitable interaction, somehow adequately to associate and partake in anything oneself admires, esteems, howsoever values even exaltedly if not transcendently (never mind ever impressing anyone else, uplifting as it ever may be to share and express), thus is meaning even in the deeper sense no less, all the more created and discovered in the mind. And therein lies any prospect of communication and propagation, expression sharing such values and aspirations, but also the possibility of error and the opportunity for manipulative fraud.

The upward arc of dramatic structure applies to literary meaningful drama plumbing greater depth and substantive revelation, often via subplot, similarly as with the more transparent buildup of tension and rising action in any ripping yarn. And each must be formative in character development, growth or at least definition. Just as, beyond serving as pretext for whatever preceding action, the solution to a mystery must satisfy novelty, pathos and plausibility, and just as every story requires a dramatic apex, so too does even the most latent, trite, trivial or light weight, light hearted narrative still cry out for some surprising thought worthy meaningful and revealing apex of understated Literary depth and insightful subtext into character interaction, some clever pearl of micro-satori or: theme, however fleeting and tiny, anywhere at all along the way, again, often via subplot.

Hence, misdirection, whether error circumstantially and honestly, by deliberate manipulation or even hamartia and self-deception, is key in moving from promise to catastrophe. Frequently, the self conscious illusion of individual will is only the burden of responsibility in hindsight, an artifact of the personal narrative facilitating growth.

And beyond direct action, our influence upon others may often be even the more misguided and deluded. Life can only be lived forwards, but only understood or recognized in hindsight.

Existentially, what then is freedom, indeed for whom is freedom? The dramatic scene breaks down into Motivation-Reaction Units: Immediate reactions are often reflexive, but then conscious deliberation ensues upon what action to take next. Or does it? Life can only be lived forwards, but only understood or recognized in hindsight. Indeed, do we consider our options and consciously take action, or do our actions simply come upon us as we react to situation, and only then rationalize afterward? People often make their most important decisions with their heart but only then rationalize intellectually. Motivations and goals as ever set forth thereby, meaning as only created in the mind, interpretation, values, moral sympathies and empathies included, so often ambivalent, are not willfully intended in free agency but received and imprinted in receptivity as we discover ourselves subject all thereto. Most dramatically, relationship, the impression made by characters upon one another, often dawns upon the individual in emotional response to events unfolding. Only then is action undertaken, consistently with characterization, often giving rise to conflict and Setting The5 scene.

Hence, Problem Solving and Justification are reciprocal functions, and one must be shaped to rationalize the other, with integrity or else into hypocrisy.

No less than sound Epistemological Methodology, likewise the very dawn of comprehension, even the incipient discovery of meaning, all demand more than the mere Inductivist agglomeration of unparticular data.

Layers of subtext and ambiguity render the experience thereof that much richer and more thought provoking. Of course, all such subtexting does also run the risk of somewhat questionable free association and projection, actual creativity rather than wholly reliable deduction, perhaps occasionally somewhat far fetched, no matter the various different Factors Affecting/Effecting the Reading of Texts. For, one way or another, art usually strives at communication. And The Problem of Meaning in Literature begins with the age old conundrum of layered text, context and subtext, of whether meaning is simply recognition of authorial intention, text content , or even created by the reader in response either thereof, each and all along with the Pathetic Fallacy respectably rejected as THE 4 DEADLY FALLACIES in favor, instead, of an hypothesis of reciprocal creative misunderstanding from fecund ambiguity.

Q. What are Active Reading and Listening?

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”   — Simone Weil   

A. It's complicated: engaged Artfully Effective Active Listening and Active Reading strategies, no less than excellence in Miscommunication Competence so crucial towards Conversational Adequacy whereof Mistakes are the Essence, frequently exceed ever popular but somewhat misguided cretin philistine maxims and expectations of simple writing style. Reading comprehension involves active cognition and comprehension, actually reading with purpose: Conscious effort to hear, observe or read, then analyze, assign meaning to and react, even just individually and subjectively, to content of communication. For just as the mind is more than merely a passive receptacle of knowledge, likewise there is more to be gotten out of reading than most simply rendition of whatever text. Indeed, Active Reading or in a single word: literacy, particularly of Literature as distinguished, narrowly defined and signified by the much vaunted capital 'L', frequently demands that much more than simply decoding of the very words and then parsing of whatever phraseology and even composition, page by page, line by line, word by word. Indeed, motivation whatsoever, the passion persuasive at all of taking a focused interest, remains indeed ever crucial. And writing is rewriting, never a waste of time. And while, of course, difficulty does not automatically confer greatness, nevertheless often worthwhile content and fuller experience thereof, may indeed entail any greater effort also of the reader, and not only from authors ever striving to find, involve and engage their audiences rhetorically and dramatically. Active Reading and Listening strategies may even be thought of as those of most richly engaged partnership on the part of message recipient, with message sender. Reading or listening at a higher level, the happier and more capable for it.

In truth, Active Reading and due diligence, the wherewithal to digest, filter and ponder for oneself on the fly, anything more substantive, indeed even a densely informative and involved website the likes of FoolQuest.com, must surely remain the very least of requisite fully engaged research capability and enthusiasm in deliberation together towards any true and heady collaboration among equals, the prime objective of FoolQuest.com, the ever subversive website of substantive communication towards purposeful interaction and innovation rather than ubiquitous and interminably banal small talk. 

In an experiment with the formatting of text, it has been discovered that some prefer shorter line length facilitating “faster” reading, easier because it requires less eye movement, while those preferring longer line length appreciate having more information readily available on a page all at once.

And in all likelihood, the same principle applies even to sentence structure: Short sentences in succession may seem more readily digestible, but longer compound sentences help relate more ideas at a glance. Indeed, one common impediment to speed reading, either skimming quickly for an overview or scanning briefly for specific information, is sub vocalization while another is the tendency for the eye to scan every word. And remedies include actually passing ones finger over a line of text faster than one can sound out the words. Also try looking slightly above the line in order to focus upon grammatical clusters of words. With practice one can accustom oneself to see and understand phrases simply even by glancing over them. But that requires practice and may find only somewhat limited application to complex materials. Instead, deciding what seems useful or not, "Key Ideas" to ferret out include causal connection, as in plot, but also theme.

For every Artful Strategies of and  Active Reading no less than engaged Effective Active Listening, is reading such as involves active cognition and comprehension, indeed, reading with purpose. -Conscious effort to hear, observe or read, then analyze, assign meaning to and respond, as applicable, to what is being communicated. Just as the mind is more than a passive receptacle of knowledge, likewise there is more to be gotten out of reading than simply decoding written text.

 

The memplex of taboo, first and foremost, recursively prohibits by behavioral conditioning, all explicit expression of of taboo. Hence, vagueness may be the instinctual danger signal of taboo, awkward questions and worse answers. Indeed, lip service notwithstanding, that after all, we only learn from our mistakes, formal education systematically rewards right answers and punishes mistakes. The resultant taboo upon question towards clarification of whatever may not be fully understood, relegates conversation to the comfortably familiar, ruling out novelty any Dialectic of conversational adequacy in cooperative miscommunication detection and repair, even active reading and listening at all. This amounts to an effective taboo upon reason itself and honesty as well.

 

Tip: We all understand how fluent literacy entrails ability to read without sounding out the words. Indeed speed reading requires not even hearing the words mentally, because that takes more time and slows reading down. It is my hypothesis that Active Reading, particularly may run afoul of a similar and seemingly common sensible bad habit: that of reading sentences into short term memory before parsing them. This may accrue needless difficulty with longer sentences and expressions, regardless of grammatical correctness and sound composition, let alone additionally any possible errors or ambiguities. The solution is simple: Do not try to read whole sentences and expressions into short tern memory before parsing them. Instead, better mastery of the written language, entails a significantly different process of better concentration in active reading, even quite unawares and by second nature: that of scanning the text, eyes darting back and forth over the text, continually, either until the message resolves and the meaning is decoded, or until whatever errors or ambiguities are detected and identified. In this manner, instead of over burdening short term memory resources and raising needles anxiety, the text itself is used like extended RAM, to reduce the burden upon short term memory and amplifying processing power for active reading, comprehension and intelligent response. Moreover, whatever problems become more intelligible for the dialectic process of Miscommunication Competence, detection and correction of errors and clarification of ambiguities.

 

Ironically, this very ability is the very opposite of the sort of thing they usually test for in diagnosing learning disabilities predicated upon weakness of short term memory "like writing on water". The better solution is not in seeking metaphorically to freeze the proverbial water to make it a better cognitive scratch pad, but instead to make full use of the external memory device that is the written language. By this method, texts that really should not be so difficult, no longer will be. You might say: The eyes have it!

Tip: More intuitively, in case of incomplete comprehension, Improv, actually pretend, play-act understanding and then explain, either to another or to yourself, out loud, silently in your own mind or most productively, in writing.

 

Often we understand more than we think! Note what does and what else does not make sense. Subtext clues: Consider context and background. Articulate questions as to whatever remains unclear. And whenever you find yourself still really getting stuck, just mark or note the section and take a much needed breather.

 

The very opposite of engaged Effective Active Listening (or Active Reading) might be Constructivist Listening, a process of passively allowing a person to talk without being interrupted, because people are simply held to be capable of solving their own problems by thinking aloud. Thus,  Constructivist Listening, like Zen, if anything, actually rejects and condemns communication at all, as largely irrelevant. Indeed, bearing in my mind that listening is to be for whatever the other's benefit, in Constructivist Listening one simply does not ask questions for one's own information at all, nor need much care. Constructivist listening, then, seeks the benefit of expression but without valuing communication. An applied Narcissistic Solipsistic Zen paradox of taboo and the intimately impersonalized. And as much as genial good listeners may be pleasant to be acquainted with in real life, nevertheless, in dramatic writing, naturally all such characters must be poisonously dull.

 

“A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternatively absorbs and expresses ideas.”   — Repplier, Agnes

 

Relevant living knowledge (as opposed to knowledge that is rightly called: inert), serving renewal and vitality, is growth, the experience of change put into practice, learned behaviors never immutable but ever subject to re-adaptation, emergent in collective interaction, tacit, highly charged and redolent, profoundly with the sensibility of drama, may even skirt the ineffable, often defying ready articulation let alone routine management via knowledge-driven Epistemology.

Fully reading, no less than really listening, is hard work, the effort of sustained engagement born of concern and involvement, which takes a lot of time.   

One way or another, literary writing tends to invite attention to the message itself.

Mainstream Literature (as distinguished, narrowly defined and signified by the much vaunted capital 'L') strives for the depth and meaning of psychological realism, even amid life at it's most prosaic and private. But Modern Literature, with however much sympathy and sensitivity, may, instead, seek to confront the deep failure of meaning. 

 

Indeed, Literature (as distinguished, narrowly defined and signified by the much vaunted capital "L"), especially anti-drama, may actually fail or even violate the needs of drama, let alone action-adventure, taking a more introverited POV or Point Of View so that study of growth along the Character Arc and the human condition dominates, even if the situation remains somewhat stagnant and unresolved and consequently the plot goes nowhere, indeed, as all too often in real life. 

six core polemically purposeful

and dramatic motivations for written

expression or dialogue

• Understanding the rhetorical situation[ism]
• The Art of Reading

• poetry  

   

Q. What uniquely profound level of conflict is most intrinsically Literate?

“A good education teaches us to hold contradictions reflectively rather than reactively.” — Parker Palmer, ‘Healing the Heart of Democracy’

For: Whereas, in dramatizing controversy, POV facilitating levels of inner motivated conflict and dramatic dialogue makes it hard to tell who is right and who is wrong. "In a good play, everyone is right."  But how far would they go? Or will they change and grow? For in the words of Albert Bandura: “People's level of motivation, affective states, and actions are based more on what they believe than on what is objectively the case.” 

Beyond and aside from dramatic vehicle for dialectic, Literature as distinguished, narrowly defined and signified by the much vaunted capital "L," opens further sophisticated repertoire of tension, that of sublime ambiguity of symbolism in expanding usage, subtext against TEXT and CONTEXT, even howsoever of POV, subjectivity, reflection and Representation of   consciousness, problems explored in theme under guidance of premise, even Existential Anti-Structure of Anti-drama, even seeming contradiction in reality itself, with symbolism, abstract rather than concrete, even as to encompass both thesis and antithesis as in the dualistic opposition of Yin and Yang.

Layers of subtext and ambiguity render the experience thereof that much richer and more thought provoking. Of course, all such subtexting does also run the risk of somewhat questionable free association and projection, actual creativity rather than wholly reliable deduction, perhaps occasionally somewhat far fetched, no matter the various different Factors Affecting/Effecting the Reading of Texts. For, one way or another, art usually strives at communication. And The Problem of Meaning in Literature begins with the age old conundrum of layered text, context and subtext, of whether meaning is simply recognition of authorial intention, text content , or even created by the reader in response either thereof, each and all along with the Pathetic Fallacy respectably rejected as THE 4 DEADLY FALLACIES in favor, instead, of an hypothesis of reciprocal creative misunderstanding from fecund ambiguity.

Q. Plot, what plot?

'Insight into Bohm Dialogue' begins it's adventure into meaning and futility, from canny observation of common real life conversation and even what often passes for argument, in all of it's empty, cagey and insecure banalities safe from all the social dangers of candor, what it actually reveals and where it all breaks down and fails. 

 

But, not unlike Edward de Bono, instead of aspiring however to the emotional growth and to brush up on the Socratic Method and to welcome conflict only so long as such be important or meaningful controversy, they seemingly abandon hope for all deadlocked argument along with mere dreary small talk, the metaphorical baby out with the proverbial bathwater; embracing in it's stead, cornball Zen cliché, and worse, blithely flirting with Wittgensteinean paralysis. But, then, just such pompous silliness is also a telling part of real life conversation, and often most amusingly captured in fictional or fictionalized dialogue among typical schooled fools.

 

Bohmian Dialogue demystified

 

Bohmian Dialogue or Bohm Dialogue or, simply "dialogue" to it's adherents, seeks to provide an antidote to our Existential situation of real life drama, the destructive consequences of living in a monological world, a world in which downright irrational people talk without listening to each other or even to themselves.

Standard explanations of Bohmian Dialogue actually highlight the very problem confronted by Bohmian Dialogue to begin with, because just such standard explanations of Bohmian Dialogue that begin with the ego tend thereby to be confusing because the intended problem or implication of just such standard explanations of Bohmian Dialogue is not exactly Zen preoccupation with escape from self consciousness, but only and more specifically of self reflection and the ego as filter, of how preconception which provides context for intelligibility at all, is also often prone to error, or, more specifically, of misunderstanding and distortion, however gross or subtle.

All variance, in it's probabilistic approximation, which David Bohm actually compared, metaphorically, to quantum indeterminacy. Indeed, Bohmian Dialogue often initially requires uncomfortably long tolerance of awkward self-conscious ambiguity.

Indeed, even more precisely, the challenge undertaken by Bohmian Dialogue is to resolve the variance in meaning, shades of misunderstanding and common misapprehension in verbal communication between different people. And the technique is one of free association and added comment until a more complete shared meaning or: intersubjectivity is achieved and reinforced.

 

Excellence in Miscommunication Competence and repair for extreme Conversational Adequacy is actually striven for in Bohmian Dialogue only by heroic effort to meet the impossibly high standards of Zen Epistemology for fidelity to oneness and totality of being, all via comprehensive holistic polysemy. And such impossible dependency upon veritable completeness of data sampled, smacks, rather, of Inductivism. -Still, just perhaps all better than utter capitulation to Wittgensteinean paralysis, one must suppose! 

Bohmian Dialogue, pressing the encounter group to an extreme, thus strives to circumvent the inadequacy of conceptualization as according to the Zen, specifically as applicable in the effort at dialogue, only by protracted and arduous efforts of reciprocal Zenning of one another.

For beyond all or any of the above, in Bohmian Dialogue the attempt is made at "radical honesty," lowering barriers even to the point of painstaking reflection upon self observation of intonation and bodily speech nuance, even like unto one's own onboard polygraph or voice stress analysis, in order thereby to expand polysemic meaning, all that which is signified, into every branch of the six core motivations and intentions for any dialogue, to unearth unconscious blithe assumption and thereby improve self awareness and candor as well as listening skills.

Hence, Bohmian Dialogue may eschew the advancing conflict metaphor on any level, of progressively consolidated persuasion even including mere rational argument, in order more candidly to relate to others by effective listening, attending upon subtext, verbal and nonverbal via better and more meticulous awareness and understanding of one's own emotional reactions provoking one's own subtle physical responses, word by word and step by step. Indeed, in Bohmian Dialogue anger, tension and conflict are to be welcomed, neither avoided or suppressed, but only for the opportunity of sociological observation thereof, not for resolution nor any other constructive purpose of adversarial process of controversy and Evolutionary Epistemology in the crucible of truth.

The problem remains, however, just as in the underhanded and dishonest abuse of brainstorming, that any suspension of argument is so easily co-opted into consensus manipulation by the concealment of controversy, even antirational rejection of reason and reality, exactly defeating every intended constructive and uplifting purpose of honesty, candor and the quest for truth even as via Bohmian Dialogue. Hence the enduring value of the Socratic Dialectic, however adversarial, and of disambiguation via Empiricism and truth which is correspondence to external reality regardless how often and unsportsmanlike impugned will be the motive of mere egotistical gratification derived from "scoring" good points. 

Q. What is subtext?

Writing Subtext — The Secret to Writing What's Under the Surface

A. Subtext is so obvious, that's why we never even mention it.

In the end, it can't look like acting. "Writing on the nose"  is an old Hollywood pejorative expression denoting dialogue lacking the subtlety of subtext, unsubtle as a punch in the nose. After all, in real life, people rarely just come out and say what they really think. Subtext is emphasized by interpretive performance or presentation. Therefore, motivated characters shouldn't either. Interesting dialogue is often oblique with tacit meaning. In real life, we often fail to express ourselves fully, and even choose our words somewhat poorly, with a sense of awkwardness and distance. Often cagey and confused, subtext ambivalently struggles both at expression and obfuscation In all that is spoken and unspoken, without being blatant, so that context comes to light in the way that people talk to others consistently with how they take measure and relate to whomever they are talking to, including nonverbal body language, thus revealing as to how they feel about that person and perhaps as well, whatever the topic of conversation. Because the dramatic efficacy of revealing and motivated subtext is in frustrated desire, giving rise to need and ingenuity.

Indeed, Transactional Analysis deals with the subtext of Ulterior Transactioms or: headgames.

• Ulterior agenda
•  redeeming social hypocrisy - when we find ourselves more tolerant than we pretend to be...

Layers of subtext and ambiguity render the experience thereof that much richer and more thought provoking. Of course, all such subtexting does also run the risk of somewhat questionable free association and projection, actual creativity rather than wholly reliable deduction, perhaps occasionally somewhat far fetched, no matter the various different Factors Affecting/Effecting the Reading of Texts. For, one way or another, art usually strives at communication. And The Problem of Meaning in Literature begins with the age old conundrum of layered text, context and subtext, of whether meaning is simply recognition of authorial intention, text content , or even created by the reader in response either thereof, each and all along with the Pathetic Fallacy respectably rejected as THE 4 DEADLY FALLACIES in favor, instead, of an hypothesis of reciprocal creative misunderstanding from fecund ambiguity.

• Listen Long: Principles for Effective Listening.
• Active Listening
• Body language
• Representation of consciousness

Indeed, is bypassing, exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings or even purpose, intention or point at all between the participants, all there really is, as according to the Zen?

For as Eve Tushnet points out in Eros and Education, even so integral and elemental a vital impulse as sex, so often redolent in subtext, remains meaningful expression of Eros. Indeed, more than the quest for completion and transformation, the oft frustrated desire for connection, liberating union with alien difference inevitably first demanding resolution at levels of conflict arising from any dread of the vulnerability entailed.

“People's level of motivation, affective states, and actions are based more on what they believe than on what is objectively the case.”  —  Albert Bandura

In drama, the conflict inherent to situation, there are four elements of thirteen possible motivations:

What do characters want, goals ever put forth, and why, what motivates them? And what aids or hinders whatever their quest? In dramatizing controversy, good motivated and dramatic dialogue makes it hard to tell who is right and who is wrong. "In a good play, everyone is right." But how far would they go? Or will they change and grow?

Just such levels of conflict, subtext even beneath the surface TEXT and CONTEXT may, nevertheless, emerge through subtext, as spoken and unspoken, What Lurks Beneath, shown by way of each of the senses in setting, action and atmospheric tone along with the Subtle and Delicate Art of Doublespeak dialogue, may either harmonize with text, or in true Method subtext, even disagree with text, subtly, so as to draw attention into a  deeper vein or level of conflict by being subtly wrong, key to show or evoke characterization, wherein motivation should be apparent, even through thoughts, however expository.

So, navigate the various possible paths and dead ends and to find stories always dig deeper for insight into difficult struggle.

•  The Wonderful World of Subtext

•   poetry: Zen context and conversation

“The world is his, who can see through it's pretension.”  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Q. What is sex appeal? 

-Or, Was it Good for You Too? 

“A dirty mind is a joy forever.” — Oscar Wilde

 

   A. Click HERE! You know you want to! 

Because: yes, of course, subtext often refers to submerged sexuality and innuendo.

 

Discover why sex really is quite possibly the most important thing!

A. Plot must intertwine three principle threads, any or all unfolding and in doubt, of revelation, the outcome of suspenseful drama, the many levels of conflict inherent to situation, action, excitement, spectacle, the whys and wherefores of character growth and pathos, but all together with the meaning of some memorable theme.

Drama requires characters each with whatever their own motivating stake in the issues, decisions, dire yet at all free choices to make and the looming consequences thereof. And, to build tension and maintain interest and exploit every Technique of Suspense plotting, all attempts to back out must deteriorate and fail, but without such glaring plot holes as blithely overlooked or ignored obvious opportunities.

People understand and relate to plot logic, the linear causality of stories, even though events in the real world unfold as the confluence of all manner of even dharmic and karmic cofactors in the outcomes of complex systems, perhaps even amenable to some common theme, similarity or generality, if not any other serviceable narrative.

-Theme being whatever central question or inquiry, must correlate with some dramatic issue that must be compelling, credible and untenable conflict of values escalating naturally through increasingly high-stakes of any problematic situation.

Many a classic theme is reducible to proverb.

Character and setting INTERACTIONS include the Phenomena of POV, Point Of View,  situation of Epistemological "Given Circumstances" of information ever available to any given character, plus filtered perceptions superficial or deep Viewpoint with ambiguity and often value loaded abstraction out of memory association and personal constructs of social cognition built from successive red herrings innate naturally flawed Epistemological Methodology and elements of narrative even including Pathetic Fallacy, all redolent in theme, perhaps even sublimely hinted at by isotopy.

To be relationally bullied, manipulated, confused, invalidated, isolated from connection, and robbed of ones voice, is estrangement from the world, Peripeteia crushing unto despair. Whereas an author finding ones own voice, even identity and POV, Point Of View, beyond tone, syntax and structure alone, that is the moment, finally, of the lucid and vivid articulation of theme, gaining momentum and central clarity from whence all else unfolds smoothly and powerfully.

The insight gained, the understanding essential to the theme, essential understanding or recurring concept often conveyed via some symbolic Objective Correlative motif or topos, similarity or affinity, larger Philosophical problem or Existential dilemma, is whatever unifying idea that is a recurrent element, the thought-provoking pivotal idea filtering through, what matters deeply, the foremost penetrating integrative principle or dominant question or exploration -perhaps of the querant, the central unifying element of the story which ties together all of the other elements in a literary or artistic work, driving the story, or more properly a general hypothesis in answer to or larger Philosophical problem or Existential dilemma that is actually the theme, exploration or question, however well or poorly stated.

In rhetorical plot logic, theme is knowledge-driven Epistemology.

Retrospective elements are those which incorporate previous events into the action. But a story that returns again and again to theme but heavy handedly, and even with little or no regard for plot logic, is ponderous and trite. Nevertheless, fiction that finds no controlling idea or theme probably isn't very good, either. Indeed, generic hack, in it's banality, may not bother to develop serious themes at all. For a story to best serve as vehicle for whatever vital core content, to build a story around a theme, stage only those events which advance or illustrate said theme.

• What was it that was trying to be said through whichever work of narrative in question?
• Was it said? 
• Was it well said?
• Was it worth saying?

A story's setting, action, characterization with POV, and use of imagery can all be used to bring forward whatever theme(s), essential understanding or recurring concept, often conveyed via some symbolic Objective Correlative motif or topos. Theme should come through to emerge in the readers consciousness, without blatant exposition thereof.

                Theme in Literary Fiction

             Standard dramatic themes  

             Many a classic theme is reducible to proverb.

             Who Controls the Media and their Meanings?

A story premise, however, is either conventional initial causation or else more Teleologically akin to Aristotelian final cause or intentional purposeful outcome: Either what if? or so what? Creative provocation in quest of either problems and opportunities to motivate plot or else plot as however polemically contrived to support an intended implicit assertion, point, message or even a moral to the story.

Storycraft: IDEAS into PLOT as in Science Fiction, is concerned with putting imagination and premise, extrapolation and problem solving, into the practice of plot development.

Indeed, there are different basic types of premise. As in Science Fiction, the premise may be speculative, even scientific conjecture, whatever point of departure, both chronological and conjectural, raising questions of whatever ramifications or consequences. The premise may be how the plot turns upon any of the thirteen plot motivators or whatever inciting incident in Act One at or shortly after the opening, or even in the teaser, particularly as in high concept, or at some prior time frame or occasion, in "Act Zero."

The "mini-crisis" is the setup at the beginning of the story  in which the dilemma is established, comes to pass or is discovered by the protagonist or just the audience, if it turns out the protagonist knows all along. Also the characters' reactions thereto.  

The very premise must tantalize from the opening line, or: hook.

And it was James Blish who suggested that the best way to derive plot from premise begins by determining: who gets hurt? -as a consequence of whichever sort of premise, creating all important conflict on many levels, pathos, tension, Technique of Suspense plotting, anticipation or doubt, even discomfort and aversion. Indeed, to that end, a good story may also incorporate an opposing or contradictory Counter Premise or Antithesis. For better and more dramatic and engaging conflict on many levels in fiction, even diametrically opposing views and tendencies, indeed if not represented in the agenda of an antagonist or villain outright, may even be embodied by the foil and related character for story to effectively frame or stage any sort of more engaging debate, than just a one sided lecture or or object lesson with no tension, suspense, or doubt to resolve. After all, In drama, the conflict on many levels inherent to situation, there are four elements of motivation:

What do characters want, goals ever put forth, and why, what motivates them? And what aids or hinders whatever their quest? In dramatizing controversy, good motivated and dramatic dialogue makes it hard to tell who is right and who is wrong. "In a good play, everyone is right." But how far would they go? Or will they change and grow?

“People's level of motivation, affective states, and actions are based more on what they believe than on what is objectively the case.”  - Albert Bandura

Q. What is meant by thematic premise?

A. If denotation of the word premise will be restricted to the literal sense of initial hypothesis defining whatever aspect of initial situation, inciting incident and back-story, or circumstances and plot points, and usage of the word theme is likewise fully dilated to mean the scope of subject and exploration in narrative works, essential understanding or recurring concept, often conveyed via some symbolic Objective Correlative motif or topos, then by intent, the hybrid term thematic premise has entered usage to signify any implicit broader dramatic concept, but less specifically, as regarding concrete initial situation or circumstances, than any broad systematic or Philosophical assertion or observation addressing some broader underlying karma, all the indefinable and classifications of plot logic and causality, ever best achieving "unity of action," Sequence and Logic, and human nature or values and morality, though perhaps nevertheless broader and more sophisticated than any pat cautionary.

In brief, then, thematic premise has come to denote specifically, any initial premise of situation (as opposed to premise in the sense of argumentative point or conclusion, telos, ultimate end or final cause), that remains, nevertheless, at all thematic, indeed a situation but not a probable or metaphor, exploring any problem or articulating some insight.

  Overview / brainstorming.

•  The FICTION BRAINSTORMING Toolkit

Q. What are The Fundamentals of Fiction Writing ?

A. Click the links to return to the the fundamentals of fiction writing, from conflict to drama and plot, then:

Motivated characterization

Q. What is the speculative element crucial and unique defining Science Fiction that may even challenge or even violate, outright, so many of the writing values, maxims and priorities traditionally central fiction writing?

A.  

Q. Is there any recommended linked resource offering pointers on good Science Fiction writing technique?  

Q. What are the different options and their pitfalls, in various approaches to fiction writing and collaboration?  And what better alternatives are there?

A. Here is an Overview as to why, quite frankly, we'd all be best off brainstorming.

A. There is nothing wrong with 'Star Trek' except bad writing, and seldom ever anything right with 'Star Trek' that does not begin with good writing. Same as with anything else... 

Q. But what if I ever hope to be published?

Q. Why the title? 

A. The Ship of Fools, sacred fools, is a classical allegory of the human condition, blind and impulsive in hopes of salvation. And Star Trek: The Ship of Fools is a tale of encounter with the unknown from Rashuman-like multiple perspective, and corresponding dramatic conflict on many levels from clashing motivation. 

Hieronymus Bosch • Annotated • schooled fools • yellowdog