January 22, 2010

While taking a writing break today, I read a short chapter in James Scott Bell’s new writing book called The Art of War for Writers. It was about writing with heart, with passion, with purpose.

I don’t know about you, but I find it really difficult to write something that my heart just isn’t in. It feels flat, and when my critique group gets hold of it, they say things like, “It’s really smooth, but I don’t feel any emotional connection to your main character.” They can’t connect with her heart. Ouch.

The Heart of the Matter

So how do you get this heart on the page? Bell has an intriguing formula for it. He says,

“Heart = passion + purpose.

Passion means heat. Strength of feeling.

Purpose means you know what you want the reader to feel when she gets to the end of your story.

Heart means directing passion so it serves your desired purpose.”

All Styles Need Heart

All writing styles can have heart. Light humorous styles. Darker serious styles. Breezy styles. It’s not about your style. I recently read two fantastic adult novels that both had tremendous heart. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was lighter, often humorous, reading. The Help (a first novel, by the way) was in a more serious vein, but the passion and purpose in both novels had me turning pages as fast as I could.

So how do you put “heart” into your writing? It isn’t just about passionate feeling. We’ve all read stories with tons of passion, but it meandered all over the place and then just stopped. No purpose. And we’ve all read books-or at least started them-where the purpose was bold as a billboard-but without passionate feeling, it wasn’t engaging.

Simple Exercise

Bell suggested a simple three-part exercise for discovering the heart for your next novel.

1. Make a list of things you feel very strongly about.
2. List your favorite books and movies, describing how each one made you feel at the end.
3. Choose one item from each list and brainstorm on how you might combine them in a story.

I haven’t tried this exercise yet, but I’m going to. With my current novel, I know the purpose. But somewhere along the way of several revisions, I lost touch with the passion part. I think I’ll take my main character for a long walk and get reacquainted with her-and see if I can’t get that passion back. It will be good for the book-and I’ll enjoy the writing a lot more!

6 Comments »

1. 

   Thanks, Kristi. I had not ever thought about purpose as being related to a readers’ emotions. I write mostly non-fiction, and heart is just as important there. At a writers’ conference, Marita Littauer once said that when she finishes a ms., she asks, “Where’s the love?” This has been a good guide for me. All facts and no heart makes for a very dry read.

   Comment by Jane Healy — January 22, 2010 @ 7:57 pm

2. 

   Great post, Kristi. Sounds like that’s a good book you’re reading. I like Bell’s passion + purpose formula. It sounds simple, but it’s not that easy. My husband just finished reading my latest book and said it has more heart than my last. Fingers crossed the beta readers will agree.

   Thanks for the post.

   Comment by Samantha Clark — January 22, 2010 @ 9:02 pm

3. 

   I’m so excited, reading this – I did this with my NaNo book! Not exactly listing things like you described, but I thought about it. There was something I felt strongly about, and I thought about some of my favourite books which didn’t do the subject justice. I love my story. It’s currently going through the revision guillotine, but I’m sure I won’t lose the passion, or the heart, in the story, since that’s where the story comes from. Wow, I feel giddy now! Thanks!

   Comment by Yvette — January 22, 2010 @ 10:05 pm

4. 

   I’ve never heard of heart being defined in such a concise and logical way, but I like it. I like Bell’s book on plot and structure, but this new book looks interesting. I’ve ordered it for our library. Will try this exercise in the meantime. Thank you.

   Comment by Vijaya — January 23, 2010 @ 1:10 am

5. 

   Yvette, I love your excitement!

   And thanks to all of you for your comments this weekend. I had not seen such a concise description of it before either, but it makes perfect sense to me and helped me pinpoint a problem I was having. I love simplicity!

   Comment by Kristi Holl — January 25, 2010 @ 8:36 am

6. 

   Great ideas in this post, Kristi.

   I’m glad you enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I loved it so much that I bought the audiobook for it as well as own a nice hardback.

   The readers in my opinion were all fantastic, it’s not often you hear an ensemble cast for audiobooks.

   I normally don’t get into stories involving war, but it was so warm and inviting that the harsher parts of the story never felt overly morbid and stifling.

   I know that one of the co-authors, Annie Barrows, also writes the Ivy and Bean series of chapter books. Have you ever read any of them?

   I haven’t got a chance yet.

   Comment by C.J. Rockwell — January 26, 2010 @ 12:01 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website