I've been thinking about stories lately. Not plots, exactly, and not character arcs or structure or any of the things writers tend to gather around and discuss with great seriousness. Those things matter. They help us build the house.
What I've been thinking about instead is the soul of a story. I realize that sounds like the sort of thing a person says before everybody quietly backs away from the conversation, but stay with me for a minute.
Because I think every story has a soul. Not a theme. Nor a moral. Not even the thing the author later says they meant to write about. I'm talking about something deeper than that. A pulse. A living center. The thing that keeps drawing us back long after we've forgotten most of the details.
You know how sometimes you'll finish a book and somebody asks what it was about? You can explain the plot, the characters, and maybe even the theme. Yet somehow none of those things fully explains why that particular story moved in and made itself at home inside you.
And the funny thing is, I don't think writers always know what that deeper thing is when they begin.
I certainly don't.
Usually I start with a confident idea of what I'm doing. I build outlines. I tell myself this story is about forgiveness or belonging or courage. Then somewhere along the way, after I've become thoroughly attached to my own brilliance, the story gently informs me that I've misunderstood the assignment.
I've revised outlines, rearranged scenes, and convinced myself the problem was pacing or structure. Then eventually, usually while washing dishes or driving somewhere completely unrelated, I realize the story isn't about the thing I thought it was about. The deeper thing has been sitting quietly in the corner the whole time, waiting for me to notice it.
Honestly, I find this mildly irritating.
I'd prefer stories to arrive with instructions.
Instead, they behave more like people. You think you're having one conversation and then discover there's another conversation happening underneath it. The real one.
Maybe that's why the soul of a story tends to hide in such ordinary places.
Not in the dramatic speech. Not in the chapter where everything explodes. The soul usually appears somewhere quieter. Two people making coffee. Someone looking out a window. A conversation in a parked car. A moment that doesn't seem important until suddenly it is.
I think that's because we work that way too.
Most of us don't change because of big speeches. We change because of conversations. Because somebody says one sentence at exactly the right moment.
I've had entire stories reveal themselves through a line of dialogue I almost deleted.
That's always humbling.
You spend months constructing a story only to discover that its heart was hiding in twelve words spoken by a secondary character while reaching for a coffee mug.
The older I get, the less writing feels like building and the more it feels like listening.
The soul leaves clues. A recurring image. The memory that won't go away. A scene that should be minor but somehow refuses to stay minor. You don't entirely understand why it matters, but you know enough not to rush past it.
And I don't think that's unique to storytelling.
Love works that way. Grief works that way. Faith certainly works that way. We live through things long before we understand them. A child knows she is loved long before she can define love. We fall in love before we understand why. We walk through grief long before we understand what it changed inside us.
Meaning is often the last thing to arrive.
Stories seem to follow the same path.
Readers are drawn to particular books.
Maybe that's why readers connect so deeply with certain books. They're not simply recognizing events. They're recognizing experiences they've lived themselves. A reader may never have traveled to Oz or flown away in a house carried by balloons, but they know longing and loss. They know hope. They know what it feels like to search for home or to love someone they can't keep.
I think the soul of a story connects to something deeper than our intellect. At least that's what it feels like to me. And maybe that's the closest I can come to describing what I'm talking about.
The soul of a story is the thing that remains after the plot has been explained. It's the part that follows you into ordinary life. The part that shows up while you're folding laundry, driving across town, or standing at the kitchen sink staring out the window.
Maybe try this the next time you're revising: make a list of the images, memories, conversations, and questions that appear more than once. Don't analyze them yet. Just look at them.
Sometimes the soul of a story becomes visible simply because you've finally gathered all the clues into one place.
Because the soul of a story rarely announces itself.
It waits.
And if you're willing to slow down long enough to listen, it usually reveals itself.
Just enough to keep you following.
For a free video with more information, click here.
What's the soul of your story?
Sarah (Sally) Hamer
Sarah (Sally) Hamer is a lover of books, a teacher of writers, and a believer in a good story. Most of all, she is eternally fascinated by people and how they 'tick'. She’s passionate about helping people tell their own stories, whether through fiction or through memoir. Writing in many genres - mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, medieval history, non-fiction – she has won awards at both local and national levels, including two RWA Golden Heart finals.
A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online at both margielawson.com and nostresswriting.com and blogs for writersinthestormblog.com/ and thewriteconversation.blogspot.com. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach at Mind Potential, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors. Find her at sally@mindpotential.org
In my last few Writers in the Storm articles, I’ve shared several discoveries that completely changed the way I revise emotional scenes. First, I realized I was relying too much on visceral reactions. Then I over-corrected by leaning too heavily on interiority. After that came another discovery: readers don’t just want to witness emotion, they want to experience emotional movement. Most recently, I learned that what a character notices often reveals more than an additional paragraph explaining how they feel.
I thought I had finally found the balance.
Then I started another revision pass on my current work in process.
This time, I was simply trying to tighten scenes that felt slower than they should. Like many writers, my first instinct was to trim words. Surely shorter scenes would create better pacing.
Sometimes that helped.
Most of the time, it didn’t.
I eventually discovered that I had developed a habit many writers fall into when trying to deepen character emotion: I showed the emotion through a visceral reaction, reinforced it with body language, explained it through interiority, and sometimes confirmed it again through dialogue.
Instead of making the emotional scene stronger, I was often weakening it through repetition.
When Visceral Reactions, Body Language, and Interiority Say the Same Thing
In one of my scenes, the character’s stomach tightened. Then her hands shook as she rubbed the back of her neck and looked away. Then she thought: This was a terrible idea. I shouldn’t have come here. What if everything went wrong?
The visceral reaction, body language, and interiority are essentially delivering the same message: she’s afraid. Rather than deepening the emotion, I was translating the same emotion into three different languages.
Emotional repetition happens when visceral reactions, body language, interiority, dialogue, or narration communicate information the reader already understands instead of revealing something new about the character.
This doesn't mean an emotional moment should use only one technique. Different methods can work beautifully together. The problem begins when they are all doing the same job.
I started thinking about the difference as emotional repetition versus emotional layering. Emotional repetition tells readers the same thing through different techniques. Emotional layering uses those techniques to reveal varied aspects of the character's experience.
This is different from the emotional movement I discussed in an earlier article. Emotional movement is about how a character's emotional state changes across a scene. Emotional layering is about the different emotions and meanings that can exist within a single moment.
Movement gives the scene direction. Layering gives the moment depth.
So, I tried approaching the scene differently:
Her stomach tightened. Before he could notice her hands shaking, she shoved them into her pockets. She’d promised him she could handle this. She wasn’t about to prove him right.
Now each element reveals something new. The visceral reaction gives us fear. The body language shows concealment. The interiority takes us deeper, showing us her pride and her fear of being proven wrong.
I found the same problem in several scenes between Sam (short for Samantha) and Brad, the main characters in my current manuscript. Their relationship carries a lot of unresolved tension, which made it tempting for me to make absolutely certain readers understood what Sam was feeling.
Imagine Brad questioning whether Sam is ready to handle something dangerous:
Sam’s chest tightened. She crossed her arms and looked away. Why did Brad always have to question her? Anger flared through her. “I said I can handle it.”
There’s plenty of emotion on the page, but almost every signal points in the same direction. Sam is angry and defensive. And just in case readers missed it, I actually tell them anger flared through her.
But Sam’s feelings toward Brad are rarely that simple. Beneath the anger is something much more interesting: Brad’s doubt matters because Sam desperately wants to prove she can handle things, and his doubt touches her own fear that she isn’t as capable as she wants to believe.
So instead of adding more evidence of anger, I can let the different elements expose those layers:
Sam crossed her arms before Brad could see her hands shake. “I said I can handle it.”
His expression didn’t change. Somehow that was worse. He’d looked at her that way after the dragon too, as if he were waiting for her to break again.
Emotional Revelations of Body Language
Now, the body language isn't simply telling us Sam is angry. She's hiding vulnerability. Her dialogue reveals her defensiveness and need for control. And what she notices about Brad exposes the deeper wound beneath both: His expression may not actually mean he's waiting for her to break. That's what Sam notices, because she's afraid he sees the weakness she's desperately trying not to see in herself.
That was the distinction I had been missing. The question wasn’t whether I should use a visceral reaction, body language, or interiority. It was whether each one gave the reader something the others hadn’t already provided.
That led to the question I now return to whenever I revise an emotional scene:
What new information does this give the reader?
Why Deep POV Can Lead to Emotional Repetition
This kind of repetition can be easy to miss in deep POV because we're constantly looking for ways to keep readers inside the character's experience. The temptation is to add another thought, another physical reaction, or another piece of body language. But deep POV isn't created by giving readers more evidence of emotion. It's created by giving them meaningful access to the character's experience.
When each layer contributes something different, the scene unfolds. Readers move beyond simply understanding what the character feels. They begin to understand why the emotion matters and how it influences the next decision.
Trusting the Reader Creates Stronger Emotional Scenes
This discovery reminded me of something I learned years ago in martial arts.
Beginners often believe that throwing the same technique harder or faster makes it more effective. One of the lessons I learned along the way is the value of economy of movement. Power rarely comes from adding more motion. It stems from eliminating every unnecessary movement until only the essential action remains.
I realized I needed the same economy in my emotional scenes. Tightening an emotional scene doesn't necessarily mean making it shorter. It means removing repetition so the details that remain carry more weight.
The goal isn’t to use fewer emotional tools, but to make each one earn its place.
If a character’s hand hesitates over a doorknob before knocking, readers already sense her uncertainty. If the next paragraph explains that the character is nervous, and the paragraph after that describes a racing heartbeat, we may simply be confirming something the readers already understand.
And it’s only delaying the story.
How Do You Know If You're Over-explaining Character Emotion?
I've started looking for places where I can underline several consecutive sentences and write the same emotion beside each one.
Fear, Fear, Fear.
Or
Anger, Anger, Anger.
When I can do that, I know it's time to look more closely. Which detail carries the most weight? Do the others deepen the moment, or are they simply confirming what readers already know?
Why Cutting Emotional Repetition Can Make a Scene Stronger
As I continued revising, something unexpected happened. I wasn't removing emotion from these scenes. Many times, they felt more emotional after I cut the repeated explanations.
That surprised me. I'd assumed more emotional detail created a deeper emotional impact. Instead, the details I'd removed had been competing with the one that mattered most. This also helped increase the pacing rather than the repetition slowing it down.
Give readers enough evidence to experience the emotion, then use the next sentence to take them somewhere new.
That's what trusting the reader finally came to mean for me.
A Question for You
What’s one scene in your manuscript where removing an explanation actually made the emotion stronger?
* * * * * *
About Susan
Under the pen name Michelle Allums, Susan Watts has authored a young adult urban fantasy titled, The Jade Amulet and is currently writing the sequel. Her short stories are also included in the anthologies Christmas Roses and Forever and Always.
Susan has dedicated over four decades to training in multiple martial arts styles and holds the impressive title of a five-time US Karate Alliance world black belt fighting grand champion. Through her karate school, she is able to impart martial arts and life skills. Susan also incorporates her martial arts knowledge into her writing.
An avid triathlete, she keeps in shape by running, biking, and swimming. She lives in the country with her husband, where they raise animals and enjoy being outdoors. Susan also has three grown children and numerous grandchildren. In addition, she is a CPA and VP of finance for a company in her hometown.
Several years ago, I wrote about finding your inner Creative Badass. I still fully believe in her, but…oh man, is she tired. She’d like a spa day and a nap, and maybe even a pet plushie.
For all of you who don’t want to click on that old post, here’s the “channel that inner badass” mantra we closed it with:
You want to be a writer. It’s all you’ve EVER wanted to be.
It’s what you spend all this time on, training and practicing your craft.
Get off your a$$ and write your page and QUIT CRYING ABOUT IT.
I know, I know. It was a tough love mantra…which might be why—
My Creative Badass is kinda tired and cranky.
Because somewhere along the way, creativity acquired a to-do list that resembles the KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) on a corporate performance review.
How wrong is that?
I wrote that original post during the pandemic lock-downs. I had a lot to do during that time, including tending to my then 4th grader, but my writing life was still bubble-wrapped in joy.
And then…somewhere along the way, writing inherited quite a few additional items.
We’re supposed to:
Write more.
Publish more.
Build our platforms.
Grow our audiences.
Learn all the cool tools.
Understand the algorithms.
Relearn the next iteration of software.
Post consistently.
Improve our craft.
And (naturally!) protect our precious creative time.
Ain’t nobody got time for all that!
And we writers wonder why we’re tired? Why sometimes our inner Creative Badasses want to crawl under the desk and refuse to come out...Why our muse deserts us, or why we get writer’s block.
I know a few writers who have thrown in the towel over the last few years, because those never-ending to-do lists just sucked the joy out of their writing life.
Creativity wasn’t always this much work
Remember way back when…when you wrote because you had a story you couldn’t stop thinking about?
When you scribbled scenes on napkins?
When you stayed up until all hours because two characters were arguing in your head and you had to find out who won?
There was joy in it. And curiosity. And PLAY. You just wanted to see what happened next. Nobody—probably not even you—was measuring your word count or asking whether the scene had sufficient narrative tension.
And then you got serious.
Which isn't necessarily bad. Learning craft is wonderful. Finishing things is wonderful. Publishing things is really wonderful.
But there’s a sneaky little danger in becoming serious about your creativity: Everything starts to count.
Every writing session starts needing an outcome.
Your hours must be productive.
Each idea needs a purpose.
Your reading begins to feel like a “have to,” instead of a “want or can’t-wait-to.”
Sweet Mother of All Fiction Writers, it made me tired just to type that bulleted list!
Your Creative Badass might not need more discipline.
(This is a mildly terrifying thought for those of us who have spent years trying to become more disciplined writers.)
What if the answer isn’t always to push harder?
Sometimes it is. Sometimes your Creative Badass needs you to stop whining, sit your butt in the chair, and write the damn scene. (Hence the mantra above.)
But other times? You’re hollowed-out. Uninspired and exhausted.
The trick is knowing whether you're avoiding the work or running on empty.
Your Creative Badass isn’t “just lazy.” Sometimes she’s depleted. And you cannot productivity-hack your way out of depletion.
You can certainly try. Creatives are nothing if not inventive.
New planner!
New writing app!
New goal!
Sample goal: THIS time I shall wake at 5:00 am, meditate, journal, write 2,000 words, exercise, drink water, and become a New York Times bestseller by the end of the month!
Or...maybe you just need to go outside. Or nap or craft or clean. Do whatever renews YOU.
Rest is not the enemy of creativity
This one is difficult for me. I am very good at doing, but I am less accomplished at not doing.
Often, when I’m technically resting, some part of my brain is wandering around trying to work out solutions to problems, like maybe that would make the resting more productive.
But creativity needs empty spaces. Or at least empty brain spaces.
It needs walks, and conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with your work. It needs staring out windows, and reading books. Terrible television and cult-favorite movies. It needs quiet gardens and grand museums. It needs experiences that hold surprises.
To put it simply: our Creative Badasses will revolt if we keep pulling things out of the creative well without putting anything back in.
Make some time to play.
My husband asked me a question: When was the last time you wrote something you had absolutely no intention of sharing or publishing?
That one stopped me, because I couldn’t remember!
Don’t get me wrong. There are seasons for pushing toward a deadline, and the rewarding relief of knowing you made it.
But there are also seasons when the most useful thing you can do for your creativity is to stop demanding that it perform.
Go somewhere, and just notice things. Laugh with a friend. Read something delicious. Maybe you just need to allow yourself to get bored enough that your imagination starts looking around for something interesting to do.
I’m going to make a bet with you.
I’m betting your Creative Badass hasn't disappeared, any more than mine has. That it’s not broken. It’s just sitting in the corner, having a little tantrum, because you've turned everything it loves into homework.
Give that inner badass a little space, and something interesting to look at. Maybe a snack. Try something playful, unstructured, or ridiculous.
Maybe do something JUST BECAUSE IT DELIGHTS YOU, and see what happens.
I dare you.
Are you feeling revved or depleted in your writing life these days? When was the last time you created something purely because it sounded like fun? I’d love to hear your stories down in the comments!
About Jenny
By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for small businesses. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.
