Ever finished a story and wondered whether that rainstorm actually meant something?
Maybe it did. Maybe the writer just needed everyone to get wet.
Learning to differentiate between those two things is one of the hardest lessons in storytelling. And new writers fail at it all the time.
Here’s the problem:
Audiences have a higher threshold for being impressed these days. Just 37.6% of American adults read a work of fiction in 2022. That’s the lowest percentage that survey has found. Attention is hard won these days.
Especially when you DO get a reader, everything on that page has to justify itself.
The good news? This is a learnable skill.
Here’s what’s coming up:
- Why Writers Mix These Two Up
- What Symbolism Actually Is
- Why Coincidence Is A Different Animal=
- Using Both Without Breaking The Story
Why Writers Mix These Two Up
Symbolism is typically covered for about ten minutes in high school English class. Then it’s gone FOREVER.
That’s a shame because its a skill. Not a gift you are born with.
Lots of free writing courses get this right. A solid collection of free creative writing classes will take you through symbolism, story structure and character work in logical progression rather than making you guess. Free writing courses also teach most writers this simple truth about symbols: A symbol only works if your reader never notices it working.
That’s the whole game.
What Symbolism Actually Is
Symbol is something which represents itself and something else other than what it appears to be.
The rain hasn’t changed. It still watersloggs the man’s coat. But it also brings other things now. Sadness. New Beginnings. An incessant mess.
Symbolism does three jobs:
- It says something without a character saying it out loud
- It connects two moments that sit far apart in the story
- It gives the reader a feeling before they work out why
Read this. Take notice of this. Symbolism. A symbol is placed intentionally. The author selected it, duplicated it, and allowed space for it to breathe.
Imagine a cracked mug sitting on a kitchen counter. Individually it is simply a mug. However if that mug appears the day a marriage begins, again during a terrible fight, and finally in an empty house…that is no longer a mug.
Pretty simple, right?
Why Coincidence Is A Different Animal
A coincidence is two things happening at the same time for no particular reason.
Rain on the day of a funeral. November. Running into an old friend at the airport. Real life is packed full of this kind of stuff, and that’s why it reads naturally on the page.
But here’s the thing…
Coincidence has a job too. It’s just a smaller one.
Coincidence creates situations. Symbolism creates meaning.
Used properly, a coincidence sets a story rolling on page one. Used improperly, it fixes everything on the last page and leaves the reader cheated.
Tape this rule to your desk: Never have coincidence rescue your character from trouble. Only sink them deeper.
How To Tell Them Apart In Everyday Stories
Very little storytelling is fiction, after all. It’s a work presentation. It’s a wedding speech. It’s a note about having had a hard week.
The same rules apply. Here’s a quick test that works on any detail:
- Does it repeat? Symbols come back. Coincidences happen once.
- Does it change? Symbols shift meaning as the story moves along.
- Would cutting it hurt? You can cut away coincidence, and nothing crumbles. Cut away symbol, and the ending falls flat.
- Did you mean to include it? If it happened to show up and you left it because it sounded good, then it’s likely unintentional.
Run these four questions against your last writing project. Many “deep” details are just furniture.
Two Everyday Examples Worth Copying
The quickest way to get better at these is by seeing them out in the wild. Here are two instances of the same story.
The Watch Story
Someone wears their dad’s watch for their first big interview. Then it appears again on their promotion day. Then once more on their quit day.
That’s symbolism. The watch is doing emotional work across years of story.
The Traffic Story
Someone was stuck in traffic and missed the interview completely.
That’s coincidence. It’s a problem generator, and a very good one.
Feel the difference? One tells a story that travels through time. The other produces one moment and steps aside.
Why Readers Notice The Difference
Readers almost never verbalize what they didn’t like. They’ll just say a story “felt cheap” or “felt real.”
Nine out of ten times, that gut feeling is the difference between these two ideas. Stacked coincidences lead to randomness. There’s nothing that links the parts of the story together. Repeated symbols lead to design. The pieces echo each other.
Plus when a symbol connects you feel a little high because you figured it out yourself.
That is the moment people come back for.
Using Both Without Breaking The Story
Now for the practical part. These habits keep both tools honest.
Plant It Three Times
One coincidence is happenstance. Two coincidence is suspicion. Three coincidences = the reader believes.
Space them out. Beginning, middle and end works nicely.
Never Explain It
The fastest way to kill a symbol is to point straight at it.
If your character says something like, “The storm raged outside, just as it was raging inside me,” delete. Allow the reader to infer. That’s what they like to do.
Keep Coincidence At The Front
Load up front. A chance encounter in chapter one means the beginning of a story. In the last chapter? It’s a writer out of ideas.
Choose Objects Over Weather
Weather icons have become cliché. Rain = sadness, sun = happiness, storms = war. Writers have employed every trope.
Objects work better because they belong to one specific person:
- A tool
- A piece of clothing
- A family recipe
- One room in a house
These feel earned instead of borrowed.
Read More Than You Write
Unexciting advice, but effective. The number of Americans who read daily for pleasure has fallen more than 40% in two decades. That means a lot of writers are learning their craft from way too few books.
You cannot recognize a pattern that you’ve never witnessed. Reading widely is still the best value training available, even alongside free writing courses and practice.
Tying It All Together
Symbolism and coincidence are both useful. They are just not interchangeable.
Quick recap:
- Symbolism is chosen, repeated, and carries a second meaning
- Coincidence is unplanned, happens once, and creates a situation
- Coincidence should start problems, not solve them
- A symbol that needs explaining isn’t working yet
Begin with one item. Choose something as the focus of your next piece. Let it show up three times. Do not utter one syllable about its significance.
Then watch how much bigger that story feels.
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