Break the shell from the inside
The square has a center. Where there’s a center, moving inward toward it or outward away from it is the default dynamic. Orpheus goes down to Hades and ascends, Oedipus wanders the world and returns home. The inside and the outside, and the border between them, where egress and regress are not the same, is bedrock level consciousness.
I can establish a pattern, a motif that repeats as it proceeds around the core until I can either close it off, or keep it going for another round and then make the same choice again. That decision makes the difference between ending up with something that resolves simply and easily, static and forgettable, like a manfactured doily, or attempts a more complex resolution, like that of a hatching egg.