In 2005, I was privileged to attend the Odyssey Writing Workshop at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. My particular class (not that I’m biased or anything) had this amazing synergy together, and one of my fellow writers was Scott H. Andrews. Scott, ever the champion of literary adventure fantasy, went on to create Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which just won the World Fantasy Special Award for Non-Professionals. Don’t let that particular category fool you: Scott is nothing but professional, and he joins us to today to talk about how you — yes, YOU — can make your stories stand out from the slush pile with emotional authenticity. Hear what Scott has to say, and if that resonates, check out the workshop itself, so you too can attend this awesome masterclass on the writing craft.
As Editor-in-Chief of Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine, I read the opening of every short story that comes in our submissions. That’s 75 stories a week; over 300 a month.
You might think the vast majority of those stories would be terrible; so amateur in the writing or story elements that they’re leagues away from publishable quality. But that’s not the case. Surprisingly few of them are at that level, only 5-10%.
The vast majority of the stories I see are “competent.” They’re designed with a good character and setting. They’re composed and developed. They’re written by writers who know writing techniques and principles. These stories are good or fine, but they’re not great.
They do things a story needs to do, but they don’t do anything more than that. They don’t leap off the page or add up to something greater than the sum of their parts. They’re merely competent.
They don’t have Spark.
What’s “Spark”? It’s difficult to describe what distinguishes a good story from a great one. You know when you see it. It’s what makes some books feel ‘ehh’ and you put them down to stream a show, but other books you stay up all night reading. It’s what makes some movies seem OK, but others so captivating that if you flip past them on TV, you stop and watch even though you know what happens.
I call that thing “Spark” — that ineffable thing that great stories, and books and movies, have but merely good or competent ones don’t. It’s a bit subjective, because every story works differently for different readers. But it’s also more objective than you might expect.
In seeing so many stories — over 35,000 in the eleven years I’ve been publishing BCS — I’ve noticed common traits in stories that for me have Spark. Sometimes it’s the story’s voice, like engaging prose, or sometimes the ideas or concept, like a setting idea that’s so cool you wish you’d thought of it yourself. Often it’s the character and the emotional resonance — a story that not only shows you the character’s emotions but makes you feel them yourself.
In the online course I teach for the Odyssey Writing Workshop, “Standing Out,” I talk about achieving Spark through voice and concept, and for me one of the most powerful ways to get Spark into a story: emotional resonance. It seems simple — presenting characters’ emotions — but it’s much more difficult to do on the page than most writers realize.
The most important factor I see in achieving emotional resonance is authenticity. To the emotion itself — what that emotion really feels like — and to human experience — how real humans manifest that emotion.
For the emotion itself, we writers often flinch away from what it really feels like. To get emotional resonance in the prose, you need to dig deep into what it’s really like to be a human experiencing that emotion.
That’s a tough thing to do. It can be extremely personal; raw, revealing. But it’s the only way to understand how your characters should feel when they’re experiencing that emotion.
Then you need to have the character manifest that emotion on the page in a way that makes the reader feel it too. In this, I think the old adage “Show Don’t Tell” harms rather than helps. I see writers trying to “show” emotion through poetic metaphor, or bodily sensations the character experiences (“fear seized her stomach”), or by characters over-acting like Al Pacino chewing the scenery, but none of those approaches make me feel the emotion myself.
In this manifesting too, authenticity is key. How do real humans act when experiencing that emotion? How does it color their behavior? Most importantly to me, what do real humans say when experiencing that emotion? To other characters, or to themselves. And how do they articulate it? Real people rarely talk in complex or poetic prose, especially about intense and heartfelt things. Their speech is often simple and forthright.
Take a look at poignant or moving moments in your favorite books or movies, like, for me, the opening to “The Hedge Knight” by George R.R. Martin or the ending of The Shawshank Redemption. In those two, you’ll find writers who’ve accessed what grief and hope really feel like, and characters who’re acting and articulating in ways authentic to real humans experiencing those emotions. That’s emotional resonance, and learning to command it can give your stories great Spark.
The Odyssey Writing Workshop is currently accepting applications for their 2020 workshop. You can learn more by clicking here. If online classes are more your speed, then don’t miss out: Odyssey is offering three different classes starting in January. Director Jeanne Cavelos will discuss the Three-Act Structure in Fantastic Fiction; Odyssey alum and published author Barbara Ashford will discuss “The Heart of the Matter: Bringing Emotional Resonance to Your Storytelling;” and lastly, if you want to learn more about this elusive Spark, why not sign up for Scott H. Andrews class, “Standing Out: Creating Short Stories with That Crucial Spark”? You can learn more about these classes here.
Scott H. Andrews lives in Virginia with his wife, two cats, thirteen guitars, a dozen overflowing bookcases, and hundreds of beer bottles from all over the world. He writes, teaches college chemistry, and is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of the seven-time Hugo Award finalist online fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Scott is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop; his literary short fiction has won a $1000 prize from the Briar Cliff Review, and his genre short fiction has appeared in Space & Time, Crossed Genres, and Ann VanderMeer’s Weird Tales.
He has lectured on short fiction, secondary-world fantasy, editing, magazine publishing, audio podcasting, beer, and heavy metal on dozens of convention panels at multiple Worldcons, World Fantasy conventions, and regional conventions in the Northeast and Midwest, and he has taught fiction writing for Clarion West, The Cat Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, Houston Writefest, and at Odyssey. He is a seven-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award, and he celebrates International Stout Day at least once a year.
Author photo by Al Bogdan
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