Where Sime and Gen Meet, Creativity Happens
Workshop: Life Is Just a Bowl of "Berries"
by
Gail Gaymer Martin
A nostalgic moment or glowing memory from your life can become a motif or theme woven intricately through your novel, adding charm and continuity.
Presenting a workshop recently, I followed a theme through my inspirational romance, DESIRE OF HER HEART.
In this novel, a motif of picking wild raspberries comes from my own experience while camping on the family property in northern Michigan. Once a year over Labor Day, everyone gathered for the adventure, from the oldest to youngest, and trudged through the brambles to discover boughs of the wild fruit hidden in the underbrush. In this novel, the "raspberry" theme is used in characterization, mystery set-up, and as figures of speech: analogies and similes.
In the novel, after being pink-slipped from her teaching position, Sandy returns to her hometown to spend time with her ailing mother and to regroup. A hillside near her home serves as a place of solace and recurring nostalgia, recalling raspberry-picking as a child with her father. The berry-issue serves as humor, but also as a symbol of the romance.
This technique can be effective in creating your stories. Here's how it works in mine. Excerpt from an early chapter: She wandered to the bushes, smelling the fragrant growth and seeing the tiny nubs that would weigh the boughs with berries later in the summer. Memories made her smile. Carrying a sand bucket, she and her father would climb the hill in early September and pick the clusters of deep red raspberries. She ate more than she dropped in the bucket, and her father would tease her as they hurried down the hill, anticipating her mother's juicy pies.
And further in the novel, she envisions a new berry-picking experience: Two or three ripe berries hung from a bow, and she plucked them and popped them into her mouth. The sweet juices tantalized her tongue, and she searched among the brambles, but found only a few ripe berries. Another week or two and they would be ripe for picking.
As Sandy's life changes, the berries becomes a symbol: They were gone. A few newly ripened berries still hung on the bows, but most had been picked. She pulled a few from the limbs and dropped them into the bucket. The nubs rolled around on the bottom, and the empty sound made her feel empty. It wasn't the berries really. Everything seemed different.
Then a mysterious Haiku poem, referring to the berries, is handwritten in
her journal Sandy misplaced on the hill.Blossoming with love,
my heart like wild raspberries
is ripe for picking.
Throughout the novel, the reference is used in analogies and similes.Simile: Instead, she'd let her feelings grow, edging in her consciousness, then blossoming like the raspberries on the hill, until now her emotions were lush and bursting like succulent ripe berries.
Analogy: The hill was different, and she was different. No more moping. Take life for what it was - berries and brambles. If she wanted berries, she had to take a chance at getting pricked by the brambles. If she wanted to smell roses, she had to take a chance getting pricked by a thorn. That was it. Life was a blend of good and bad, joy and sorrow.
And in the final scene, the berries return as a culmination of Clay and Sandy's relationship and in a simile describing their kiss. Clay stepped toward her, his eyes drawing, pulling her like a magnet to metal filings. He didn't speak, but held the bright bucket out like a gift, an offering, filled with plump ripe raspberries. She ran, throwing herself into his arms. Her emotions rose, dancing, and she felt the rhythm of his heart beating against hers. He brushed her cheek, tracing the line of her eyes and mouth. His lips touched hers, soft and sweet as the berries.
Weaving a meaningful, well-developed motif through your fiction can add continuity, charm, and beauty to a compelling romance.
Gail Martin is a freelance writer and novelist for Barbour Heartsong
Presents
and Steeple Hill Love Inspired. Visit her web site at
http://www.gailmartin.com
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This article, Life is Just a Bowl of "Berries" is copyright © 2000 by Gail Gaymer Martin -- reprinted and presented here by permission of the author.
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