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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Theme and Symbolism Thesaurus

Published: October 11, 2010 by ANGELA ACKERMAN

Below are samples of our popular Theme and Symbolism (formerly, Symbolism and Motif) Thesaurus. For the completely developed and enhanced thesaurus, please visit One Stop For Writers, where it has a permanent place within our vast Descriptive Thesaurus Database.

What is a Theme and Symbolism Thesaurus?
The Relationship between Themes & Symbols
Using Thematic Statements to Explore Theme
Exploring Multiple Themes in One Story

  • A Fall From Grace
  • A Quest for Knowledge
  • Alienation
  • Beauty
  • Bondage/Enslavement
  • Borders and Barriers
  • Coming of Age
  • Crossroads & Choices
  • Danger
  • Depression
  • Death
  • Deception
  • Doomsday
  • Evil
  • Family
  • Freedom
  • Friendship/Camaraderie
  • Health
  • Hope
  • Illness
  • Instability & Turmoil
  • Isolation
  • Knowledge
  • Loss
  • Love/Affection
  • Mystery
  • Ordered/Organization
  • Passage of Time
  • Peace/Harmony
  • Perseverance
  • Pride
  • Purity
  • Religion
  • Sacrifice
  • Safety or Refuge
  • Suffering
  • Superstition: Bad Luck
  • Superstition: Good Luck
  • Teamwork
  • Transformation & Change
  • Unity
  • Violence
  • Vulnerability
  • Wealth

There are THIRTY additional entries available at One Stop For Writers, including Beginnings, Betrayals, Disorder, Endings, Greed, Inflexibility, Innocence, Journeys, Obstacles, Rebellion, Recognition, Rite of Passage, Stagnation, and Vanity

View our other Descriptive Thesaurus Collections HERE.

ANGELA ACKERMAN
ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

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Related

Filed Under: *, Symbolism

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. A.K. Leigh says

    January 16, 2015 at 10:44 pm

    Brilliant, as always.

    • ANGELA ACKERMAN says

      January 17, 2015 at 1:02 pm

      Thanks so much!

Trackbacks

  1. Symbolism in Fiction – DuCentillion says:
    November 19, 2018 at 1:06 pm

    […] Symbolism and Motif Thesaurus ~ WRITERS HELPING WRITERS® […]

  2. Emotion-Charged Settings - Writer.ly Community : Writer.ly Community says:
    March 7, 2014 at 1:39 pm

    […] Symbols hold power. They can foreshadow what is to come and trigger an emotional reaction from characters. If your hero grew up on his grandparents’ farm, he may feel a surge of lightness at noticing a symbol from that time, like an old tractor tire converted to a flower rockery in someone’s backyard.  Common symbols will also have an emotional effect on your reader. If your character passes a graveyard on the way home from work, it brings about the feeling of death. The reader on some level will be ill at ease and may expect that something bad will happen. (For a list of symbols to use in writing, check out the Symbolism Thesaurus.) […]

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NO AI TRAINING: Any use of this content to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The legal copyright holder, Writers Helping Writers®, reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models. WRITERS HELPING WRITERS® · Copyright © 2025 · WEBSITE DESIGN BY LAUGH EAT LEARN

 

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