Last week, I wrote about making things matter by showing how a simple nail file takes on a deep symbolic meaning as the book went on. But does that mean that everything has to come up over and over again to earn its place? Of course not.
Here’s an example of something from the same book that shows up once and only once, but earns its place by having four meanings at the same time. It’s the day before Eileen starts her first day as a freshman at her new performing arts boarding school and she’s alone with her nervousness, anticipation, and excitement:
I looked up every classroom I would have to go to. By the time I was done, I swear there had to be some ghost with a bad sense of humor in the computer that laid them out to be as far from one another as possible. I even had one pair that was right next to each other, but the class in between was in the building across the quad: 1st period, Miller 102; 2nd period, hike over to Bulfinch 303; 3rd period, back to Miller 103. This is why I hate computers.
I mapped them out and rehearsed walking to them all, just to be sure I could actually make it in the ten minutes allotted. I was surprised to see that it took less time than I thought it would. If I ever made a friend, we could even walk at a reasonable pace while we chatted about whatever it is girls my age chat about in school.
I retraced the route one more time just so I’d really look like I knew where I was going the next day (the big one, yay!), got lunch, then went back to the dorm. I downloaded the syllabi for all my classes, printed them out, and assigned them folders with colors of their own. (Naturally, that meant the next day I ended up with two copies of the syllabus in every folder because they were handed out at the beginning of each class. There are some things they don’t teach you in homeschool.) I then highlighted due dates in that class’s color, created a set of notecards for each week of the school year, and wrote the dates on the proper card. Then I marked it on my wall calendar that had pictures of horses on it. I think I was probably the only girl in class who was actually annoyed when an exam got pushed back because it was easier to take the test than to do the Army-strength paperwork involved in changing the date.
Before I laid down, I looked over the table of contents of all my textbooks, then went down the reading list of what we’d have to have read for the mid-term. I picked the one that stood out to me. About fifty pages in, I put the bookmark into Their Eyes Were Watching God and turned out the light. Even then, my smile still probably had a shadow.
This is the one and only time Their Eyes Were Watching God is mentioned in the book. According to what I wrote last week, can’t it just be left out? Nope. It did the work to belong here.
First, Their Eyes Were Watching God is on reading lists for most schools at about the 11th or 12th grade level. That it’s on her freshman required reading list subtly hints at the academic rigor of the school. We see that it’s not a dance school diploma mill, it’s an elite prep school that happens to teach dance and other performing arts.
Second, with how obviously dazzled she is to be there, she feels like she’s arrived in dance nerd heaven, her eyes looking at a place of gods.
Third, it’s a bit of foreshadowing. By the time she’s a junior, this same nervous, unsure, eager little girl becomes the young woman who is the head of the school’s ballet competition team—the only non-senior to ever lead the team—and that energy and curiosity carries her all the way to graduating as valedictorian. Before her high school life is over, others’ eyes will be watching her as a goddess on stage. Things like this are the little details that make a book even better the second time it’s read instead of being just a throwaway airport novel that’s churned through and then forgotten.
Fourth, it touches on a theme/deep subplot that spans the entire series, growing with each book. I can’t get into more because that would be a massive spoiler. It’s one of those things that if you read deeply enough and put together the hints, once you figure it out, you’re rewarded with something that makes you view everything about what you’ve read in an entirely different light. (A good one, I hope.)
With inflation, words doing double duty isn’t enough anymore. Make them do quadruple duty. Give your reader their money’s worth. More importantly, give them more than a minute’s worth of reading for every minute they spend reading your work.
I'd love to hear from you!