The Redefinitions Technique takes a single word or phrase at the centre of a passage and reopens it – setting down, side by side, a range of distinct interpretations of the same term. Each interpretation is a fresh starting point, and the spread of them loosens the fixed assumptions that quietly govern how a word is used.
A word we reach for instinctively often carries far more than the single meaning we have settled on. By deliberately redefining it from several angles – literal, metaphorical, emotional, historical and more – the technique converts one familiar term into a fan of new creative possibilities, any of which can be carried forward into the prose.
How does ‘Redefinitions’ work?
An outline of the section of work is first established in the usual way, by describing the Specific Ideas it contains. From that outline a single element is chosen for redefinition.
Choose a word that feels important, stubborn, or not yet fully understood – something you reach for by instinct but have never examined closely. The more central and unexamined the word, the more the technique has to give.
That word is then redefined from a series of different angles to produce a set of General Creative Ideas. Aim for around ten interpretations, each approaching the word from a genuinely different direction so that no two overlap. These become a menu of possibilities from which the prose can be developed – some used at once, others held in reserve.
A dictionary, an etymological reference, an online thesaurus, or a word-association tool can all be of help in pushing past the first, most obvious meaning.
The angles of redefinition
To keep the interpretations genuinely varied rather than ten shades of the same idea, it helps to work through a set of distinct angles. A useful minimum is:
- Literal – the plain dictionary sense.
- Etymological – the word’s root and original meaning.
- Metaphorical – what the word stands for beyond itself.
- Emotional – the feeling the word carries or provokes.
- Sensory – how the thing looks, sounds, smells or feels.
- Cultural or historical – its inherited or period associations.
- Ironic or subversive – the meaning that undercuts the obvious one.
- Genre- or world-specific – what it means inside the particular world of your story.
Illustration: Redefining ‘A Tailor’
The word chosen from the outline of The Tailor is the title word itself: a tailor. Below are ten redefinitions, each from a different angle, and each opening a possibility for the narrative. The Etymological, Metaphorical, Designer and Aspirational redefinitions are those that surfaced directly in the passage that follows.
A maker and mender of cloth – Literal
The Redefinition: One who cuts, fits and stitches cloth to the body – the plain trade of needle, shears and thread.
The Possibility: Grounds the story in the concrete craft: the fitting room, the workbench, the unforgiving sewing and pressing machines.
The one who cuts – Etymological
The Redefinition: From the Old French tailler, ‘to cut’. At root, the tailor is simply the one who makes the first incision.
The Possibility: Cutting becomes the founding act – later carried into the metaphor ‘the cut of her ambition’.
A shaper of the formless – Metaphorical
The Redefinition: One who takes shapeless material and fits it to a purpose – and so a shaper of anything: a plan, an argument, a life.
The Possibility: Lets tailoring stand for self-fashioning, so that a garment and an ambition can be described in the same breath.
The keeper of the measure – Emotional
The Redefinition: A confidant who takes your measure – who knows the body you conceal and dresses you to be seen as you wish to be.
The Possibility: Opens the intimacy and trust of the consulting room, and the tailor as a reader of people as much as cloth.
Chalk, shears and warm iron – Sensory
The Redefinition: Pins held between the lips, the rasp of shears through worsted, chalk dust settling on dark cloth, the warm press of the iron.
The Possibility: Supplies the tactile texture of the workshop – the ‘circus of texture, colour, and sound and feel’.
Inheritor of a guild craft – Historical
The Redefinition: A bearer of skill handed down through generations, belonging to a long lineage of the needle and the loom.
The Possibility: Anchors the family’s five generations of tailors and the weight of tradition Anjali both inherits and strains against.
A servant of vanity – Ironic
The Redefinition: One who profits from our insecurity, selling the quiet promise that the right garment will make us whole.
The Possibility: Seeds the novella’s persuasion theme – sewing ‘a little doubt into the tightest seam of confidence’.
A couturier, not a mender – Designer
The Redefinition: One who conceives a garment whole, from the opening design to the final stitch, rather than repairing what already exists.
The Possibility: Drives Anjali’s central distinction between origination and mere alteration – ‘the art of the couturier’.
A calling, not a trade – Aspirational
The Redefinition: Not an occupation but a sense of purpose – a vocation stitched through the whole length of a life.
The Possibility: Becomes the ‘pleat of determination’ running right through her, and the ‘cut of her ambition’.
An outsider bringing colour – World-specific
The Redefinition: In Wetledale, a stranger’s craft in a valley owned by the Cabinet Makers – the one who carries colour into a grey town.
The Possibility: Frames the tailor as an agent of change within the world of the novella, set against its established order.
Narrative Development Summary
Ten redefinitions yield far more than a single passage can hold, and that is the point: the technique produces a reserve of possibility. The short passage below draws on four of them, while the remaining six wait to be used elsewhere in the work.
- The Etymological and Metaphorical redefinitions – the tailor as ‘the one who cuts’ and as a shaper of the formless – converge in the phrase ‘the cut of her ambition’.
- The Designer redefinition – couturier rather than mender – supplies ‘the art of the couturier’ and the arc ‘from the opening design to the final stitch’.
- The Aspirational redefinition – a calling rather than a trade – becomes the ‘pleat of determination’ running through her.
- The remaining angles – sensory, historical, ironic, world-specific – are held in reserve, ready to shape later scenes of the workshop, the family lineage, and the business of persuasion.
Illustration: Narrative Outcome
The redefinitions of ‘a tailor’ developed into the following passage from The Tailor:
As Anjali grew, her desire for her own style of tailoring grew with her. She wanted fully to fashion garments, to perform the art of the couturier from the opening design to the final stitch. This was the cut of her ambition. It was a pleat of determination that ran right through her.