Contrast Creates Energy: Smack Dab In the Imagination by Dia Calhoun

Without the tension contrast creates, we have stasis. Contrast, which is a type of asymmetry, is generative. Symmetry is restful. When reading a novel, the energy comes with the plot twist, when reading a poem, with the turn. These create contrast with what has come before and catapult the story, and the reader’s interest, in new directions.

What, then, is the right combination of symmetry and asymmetry to create dynamic contrast in a creative work? In "Finitude and the Infinite", the final Sophia Lecture #3 in Iian McGilchrist’s (best known for The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) series, Wholeness, Imagination, and the Cosmos, McGilchrist uses the example of a Japanese kimono. The overall form or shape is symmetrical, but the design is asymmetrical. The combination creates a pleasing wholeness that is still dynamic and not static. This is the type of contrast I’d like to achieve in my writing.

Note: The photo above is not the actual kimono he referenced.