Paper Umbrellas and Objects

Maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “Objective correlative”? It’s a fancy term sometimes used in writing workshops or literature classes. All it means is that as writers we can use an object or group of objects to represent feelings in our work. We can use objects to “correlate” with what a character is feeling. If we do this well, then that object comes to hold, carry, represent or symbolize certain feelings for that character in our story. It’s not as fundamental an aspect of writing as story or plot but it’s like an accessory in our wardrobe. Not a suit but a great tie!

Here is a small collection of paper cocktail umbrellas, shot in Thailand by Yan Pritzker. Notice that they are in a bit of a jumble, and behind them are the umbrellas still bound by those thin paper bands.

Let’s say at an outdoor bar on some beach, the bartender asks your niece to pick the paper umbrella she wants for her Shirley Temple. Instead of picking one, she opens all of them. The bartender doesn’t care. He’s delighted. Your niece keeps the yellow one and plays with it on the plane home. Sitting next to her for the flight, the umbrella reminds you of that day together, the shallow waves, the coconut smell of sunscreen. Or it reminds you of the first girlfriend you ever had. You were eight years old. You sat under a bright canvas umbrella in her backyard for some reason, and it was raining. You think it was raining. All you can recall for sure is your charged and lovely sensation of being attracted in a romantic way for the very first time.

To begin…

Objects can, in this way, carry sense information and memories. Some of us are more sensitive to this than others in our real lives. But in our writing, we can all learn to use this ability objects have to convey meaning. This can be very useful.

First, we want to find an object that might correlate to an emotion in the life of one of our characters. Once we establish a correlation between a feeling our character has and a certain object (it can be anything) we can write that scene. By doing this, we give that object a tiny role in our story.

But we can also let the object re-appear. We can even give the object its own plot line, its own development. To do this we don’t just repeat ourselves.  The object doesn’t simple re-appear. We do this by having the emotions that the character associates with the object change over the course of the story. This can be very powerful in our work and very beautiful.

The character looks at the object and feels one emotion at the start of the story and looking at the same object, has a different feeling at the end.

This is a way of showing change in the character. We don’t tell the reader about the change. We show it. And we show it by having the character interact with the object over time, and the object arousing new feelings at the end that were not present at the outset.

Exercises

#1. (you may consult the complete image on “photo credits” page)

Locate an object that you treasure. It can be a mountain bike, a hair clip, a well-designed can opener, a photograph.

-Write the story of this object. How did it come into your life? What is it doing in your life now? How do you see it operating, or not, in your future?

-Now list all the feelings you have as you hold or look at this object.

-Take what you can from this exercise and give it to one of your characters. You can have it arouse the same feelings you have, or different ones. Just work the object into your story.

#2.

Locate an object that is already in your novel, memoir, essay, poem.

-How does it first appear?

-Can it re-appear in later scenes? In the last lines of your poem?

-Why or why not?

#3.

Take an object from your work or your life and put it into the work. Give the object a plot line.

-Drop the object in a few places in your rough draft. Have the character react differently to it as it appears on p. 1 then p. 57, then p. 350. Write each of these small scenes.

-Write the final scene of your story. While this is not necessary, have the last appearance of the object also be this last scene, or the last line of your poem. And let this final appearance be its most meaningful.

#4.

An object can also mirror a relationship in your text, whether prose or very. It can mirror the changing emotions in that relationship.

The object can be iconic, like a crucifix, a high school diploma, wedding ring, or it can be really ordinary, like a dog leash. Say it’s the leash for the dog who lives next door to your character. The dog who drives your character nuts because it barks all night. Even if this has nothing to do with your current writing, just for practice, write out these moments:

-How does your character feel, seeing the leash left on his front porch by mistake in the first scene of your story?

-How does your character feel, seeing the same leash at the end of the story when, as a rather minor plot line, the neighbor has meanwhile put the dog down because it had an incurable disease and your character sees it in the neighbor’s trash at the end of the story? How many different and perhaps conflicting feelings might this arouse in your character now?

#5.

Taking the above example of the neighbor, the dog, the leash and letting it mirror a relationship:

-How might the feelings of loss, guilt, relief, etc. at seeing the leash in the neighbor’s trash at the end of the story mirror the cluster of feelings your character has toward his/her employer? Write an initial scene with the employer that might be like the scene of seeing the leash left by mistake on the porch. Maybe the feelings are annoyance, impatience, futility.

-Now write a scene that would mirror the more complex feelings your character had seeing the leash of the now dead dog in the neighbor’s trash. Do that kind of thing with your character and the employer. Imagine a scene like the leash in the trash can scene.  Imagine a cause that  might lead to the employer’s demise. Write that scene.

-Now you have two scenes. The dog leash in the trash scene and the demise of the employer. You can have these mirror each other.  Your character sees the leash of the dead dog and has feelings that are the same as the feelings of the demise of his/her employer.  You have to be careful not to make this too heavy-handed.  But it can work.  And it’s interesting.  And sometimes life is really like this! So it is believable if done well. You can have these two scenes–leash in trash and employer demise–appear next to each other or on the same page, etc. Or, and less risky for corniness and feeling contrived, you can put one of them on page 85 and the other on page 300.  Or one in the first line of a long lyric poem, and the other at the mid-way point.  The reader will feel the resonance. You find this out by experimenting.

-To make this all more real to your own project, run through the exercises using something from the world of your own work. The object comes from your created world. Lay out the relationship of one of your characters to this object.

-Then lay out a larger relationship which this one will mirror.

-Finally, sit with your entire manuscript, or all of your unfinished, unordered fragments, and have fun placing these among what you already have. See what happens. See if it feels right and natural. See if you like doing this. Experiment.

If you just started writing last week and, of course, are nowhere near having a draft, just do the exercises and make a note to yourself about this correlation.  Save all that you’ve done. You’ll figure it all out later, when the time comes.

#6.

You can tell your entire story through the lens of a single object. Say it is a set of car keys. They were given to a teenager, then removed from his crashed car, then placed in the suit pocket of the black suit worn by his father at his son’s funeral. Here, the keys correlate to grief, maybe anger, remorse, maybe guilt, maybe memory of the early optimism the day he and his wife gave the keys to their son.

But let’s say twenty-eight years later the same father is marking the quite unforeseeable fact that his grief did not destroy him or his marriage, busby some force he has no name for, his grief has finally become something else. Something good, strong, new and promising. He almost calls it joy.

-Pretend this is your story. Write the scenes. Write them without telling the reader the feelings the father has. By using the small object, just show.

-Then celebrate this nice fact that very small things can carry great meaning!

© Mary Rakow, 2019 Please do not reproduce without written permission from the author.