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 sa***@***********al.org
27 comments on “The Soul of a Story and the Places It Hides”
Sally, I enjoyed the addition of a video. A story with soul has depth which resonates long after the last page is read. I also liked your analogy of a story's soul having an echo. Thanks for reminding me a character has wounds. Great post. Thank you.
Thank you, Diane. I wanted to share more information than a blog can. I appreciate you watching it!
I think that, in this crazy, ever-changing, and scary publishing world, we have options. One of them is to write from our heart. And soul.
I'm glad you found something that resonated with you.
Thank you, Ellen!
Yes, I believe that some of us are trying so hard to be seen, that we forget what we want to be seen for. When writers write only for money, most people can tell. That's why I'm not too worried about AI. If there's no soul, they may make money but is that what we really want?
The story is to its soul = a house is to a home or = the head is to the heart.
I have always had success (for myself, anyway) when I learned to listen to the story. It always tells me where it wants to go, and how it wants to get there. This listening is rarely easy or obvious, but by keeping my own soul's ears open, eventually I hear it.
I have a couple of sentences in my WIP that I think are its soul. They are spoken by a very minor character to another minor character in a very brief scene: “He’s human. People hurt each other. It’s in our nature.” Peter’s tone was matter-of-fact. He weaved around an eighteen-wheeler from the right. “The rest is religion. Fate this or God that, no one lives up to it.”
The character was on the chopping block until I realized no one else could say these sentences, no one else would say these sentences. Love, grief, faith, they are all right there.
Wow! That's so right! It often is a minor character who carries the soul of the story. And your recognition of the need for those couple of lines which sum up that story is brilliant.
Good job!
Thanks for the comment.
I've thought about your question - What's the soul of your story? - and my answer is that everything that happens goes to reinforcing a basic fact: who brings up a child matters.
A lot.
And in the case of my Pride's Children mainstream trilogy, it is not necessarily their biological parents.
Because, to rear those children will require a commitment from someone who thought she was far beyond the ability to make it.
There you go! Yes, that is exactly how I think it works. You pick something that makes your heart happy and write around it.
Good job! So glad for you!
Sally, I recently experienced a moment... I'd been stuck for way too long with a story, and considering removing one character from an ensemble cast because writing an ensemble can be overwhelming! But I kept getting stuck... and then during an analysis, my writing partner pointed out that this character held the heart of the entire series. Why hadn't I seen that sooner? It made me cry both with sorrow for the time lost and joy at how the subtlety had been there. Now... to just get time to write it!
YAY!! I'm so glad you trusted yourself enough to ask your writing partner before you deleted a character, especially the most "important" one. Good for you!
Yes, find some time. Writing is one of the ways I heal myself.
For my first novel, I was curious how real people would react to being isolated together and facing knowledge they'd been captured to be studied and recruited for a task they couldn't accept. How would they recognize, accept, and adapt being in an ostensibly hopeless and alien situation. It's not a particularly new concept, but usually I'd seen it explored with a broad mix of personalities–where there was always one or two who behaved foolishly and ruined solutions for the group. I've always disliked the idea of using idiots to manufacture drama and new obstacles. Loving the hard Sci-Fi genre, I made the captors aliens.
I originally thought no further ahead than the scene where my protagonists wake up and slowly piece together a concept of what's happened to them. Only once they've about figured it out do I actually introduce their captor, Khreseea, an alien eco-sociologist who's specialized in studying humanity as part of her world's 5000 year old expansionist program.
I had no theme in mind. The story initially proceeds as they're interviewed and courted by Khreseea, who wants them to cooperate and thus guarantee 'the best results for both worlds." But it evolves into a battle of wits between my protagonists, led by Maggie Kestler, and their K'ladian captors, led by Khreseea and General H'Saichat. Ultimately, Maggie and her crew find themselves examining their own beliefs, questioning what is most important to humanity, and deciding they must find a way to fight back.
The theme, likely long buried in my personal psyche, simply found its way onto the pages. Ultimately, it not only changed how they fought back against their captors, but also how to best save humanity from itself.
So, yes, where you start from (pantsing, at least) may bear no resemblance to where you take your ideas and story.
Honestly, I've found that planning a soul story isn't as easy as it sounds. It often turns into a "theme" story instead. Not that it's a bad thing when it does!
But letting the story unfold as it will often brings us to the main point of it as we go, and we discover the soul inside.
I consider myself both a plotter AND a pantster, simply because I like to know where I'm going while allowing the story to evolve and surprise me too. So, I rarely worry about the soul showing up. It will. When it's good and ready.
Thanks, Jerold!
As a science fiction writer, I’ve written stories that involve big events playing out across the stars, but I find the soul of the story shines out in the small moments. Like in one, two characters (who have just traveled into space for the first time from a primitive planet) who are just sitting and watching the spaceships taking off and feeling the sense of awe.
Or in another novel where two immortal characters are having dinner with friends on another world and casually reminiscing about events that happened centuries ago before they left Earth.
These are little scenes that don’t really move the plot and are usually breathers before or after big action scenes. But they stay with me because what they evoke, the wonder of traveling to another world in the first example and the magnitude of time in the second.
What a wonderful way to say how finding the soul of a story works. The soul is NOT the big event. It's the underpinning, the human-ness, and, I believe, the part that changes the world.
Thanks, Andrew.
Oh, I needed to read this now. My editor has given me much to think about as I do final edits/revisions, and I trust her judgement. Yet, neither of us caught what the work is really about. Thankyou.
I loved this, the post and all the discussion in the comments. I'm not sure I have fully grasped it, but getting there. My three teen protagonists cross into a country very like Afghanistan in search of their kidnapped father. I would say the theme is, what would you do to save your brother? But maybe the soul is in the words of a young local man who offers his help. (Farid speaks in the local language, and the POV character translates for his brothers.)
"‘Why’s he doing this?’ Kai asked.
I asked Farid. He thought, his eyes not focused in the room, but seeing events we couldn’t see. ‘I was with the rebels, fighting the government. I did some bad things. Now I don’t believe in the rebel leaders. I don’t believe in the government, either. Now I think we must just do the good we can. You helped me in the clinic. The clinic helps thousands of my people. This is what God asks of us. To do good.’"
Sally, I enjoyed the addition of a video. A story with soul has depth which resonates long after the last page is read. I also liked your analogy of a story's soul having an echo. Thanks for reminding me a character has wounds. Great post. Thank you.
Thank you, Diane. I wanted to share more information than a blog can. I appreciate you watching it!
I think that, in this crazy, ever-changing, and scary publishing world, we have options. One of them is to write from our heart. And soul.
I'm glad you found something that resonated with you.
I’m starting a new book and will listen for its soul! Thanks for this post.
Thank you, Carol! I'm sure you'll find the soul of your story. It's there if you know how to look.
Appreciate you!
I never thought about a literary soul. This makes a lot of sense.
Thank you, Sally!
Thank you, Ellen!
Yes, I believe that some of us are trying so hard to be seen, that we forget what we want to be seen for. When writers write only for money, most people can tell. That's why I'm not too worried about AI. If there's no soul, they may make money but is that what we really want?
Loved this...Thank you!
Thank you, Judith. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
The story is to its soul = a house is to a home or = the head is to the heart.
I have always had success (for myself, anyway) when I learned to listen to the story. It always tells me where it wants to go, and how it wants to get there. This listening is rarely easy or obvious, but by keeping my own soul's ears open, eventually I hear it.
Yes!!! What a good, concise way to put it!
And, I agree that if we listen to our own heart, we'll find the answer we seek.
Thanks, Sally
Sally, thank you for this: "The older I get, the less writing feels like building and the more it feels like listening." Profound. True. For me.
I love that sentence too -- it is SO true!
Glad you found value, Jennifer. Thanks for the comment!
Gorgeously written.
I have a couple of sentences in my WIP that I think are its soul. They are spoken by a very minor character to another minor character in a very brief scene: “He’s human. People hurt each other. It’s in our nature.” Peter’s tone was matter-of-fact. He weaved around an eighteen-wheeler from the right. “The rest is religion. Fate this or God that, no one lives up to it.”
The character was on the chopping block until I realized no one else could say these sentences, no one else would say these sentences. Love, grief, faith, they are all right there.
Wow! That's so right! It often is a minor character who carries the soul of the story. And your recognition of the need for those couple of lines which sum up that story is brilliant.
Good job!
Thanks for the comment.
I've thought about your question - What's the soul of your story? - and my answer is that everything that happens goes to reinforcing a basic fact: who brings up a child matters.
A lot.
And in the case of my Pride's Children mainstream trilogy, it is not necessarily their biological parents.
Because, to rear those children will require a commitment from someone who thought she was far beyond the ability to make it.
There you go! Yes, that is exactly how I think it works. You pick something that makes your heart happy and write around it.
Good job! So glad for you!
Sally, I recently experienced a moment... I'd been stuck for way too long with a story, and considering removing one character from an ensemble cast because writing an ensemble can be overwhelming! But I kept getting stuck... and then during an analysis, my writing partner pointed out that this character held the heart of the entire series. Why hadn't I seen that sooner? It made me cry both with sorrow for the time lost and joy at how the subtlety had been there. Now... to just get time to write it!
YAY!! I'm so glad you trusted yourself enough to ask your writing partner before you deleted a character, especially the most "important" one. Good for you!
Yes, find some time. Writing is one of the ways I heal myself.
Thanks, Lisa!
Oh, so well put. Thank you.
Thank you, Moya.
For my first novel, I was curious how real people would react to being isolated together and facing knowledge they'd been captured to be studied and recruited for a task they couldn't accept. How would they recognize, accept, and adapt being in an ostensibly hopeless and alien situation. It's not a particularly new concept, but usually I'd seen it explored with a broad mix of personalities–where there was always one or two who behaved foolishly and ruined solutions for the group. I've always disliked the idea of using idiots to manufacture drama and new obstacles. Loving the hard Sci-Fi genre, I made the captors aliens.
I originally thought no further ahead than the scene where my protagonists wake up and slowly piece together a concept of what's happened to them. Only once they've about figured it out do I actually introduce their captor, Khreseea, an alien eco-sociologist who's specialized in studying humanity as part of her world's 5000 year old expansionist program.
I had no theme in mind. The story initially proceeds as they're interviewed and courted by Khreseea, who wants them to cooperate and thus guarantee 'the best results for both worlds." But it evolves into a battle of wits between my protagonists, led by Maggie Kestler, and their K'ladian captors, led by Khreseea and General H'Saichat. Ultimately, Maggie and her crew find themselves examining their own beliefs, questioning what is most important to humanity, and deciding they must find a way to fight back.
The theme, likely long buried in my personal psyche, simply found its way onto the pages. Ultimately, it not only changed how they fought back against their captors, but also how to best save humanity from itself.
So, yes, where you start from (pantsing, at least) may bear no resemblance to where you take your ideas and story.
Honestly, I've found that planning a soul story isn't as easy as it sounds. It often turns into a "theme" story instead. Not that it's a bad thing when it does!
But letting the story unfold as it will often brings us to the main point of it as we go, and we discover the soul inside.
I consider myself both a plotter AND a pantster, simply because I like to know where I'm going while allowing the story to evolve and surprise me too. So, I rarely worry about the soul showing up. It will. When it's good and ready.
Thanks, Jerold!
As a science fiction writer, I’ve written stories that involve big events playing out across the stars, but I find the soul of the story shines out in the small moments. Like in one, two characters (who have just traveled into space for the first time from a primitive planet) who are just sitting and watching the spaceships taking off and feeling the sense of awe.
Or in another novel where two immortal characters are having dinner with friends on another world and casually reminiscing about events that happened centuries ago before they left Earth.
These are little scenes that don’t really move the plot and are usually breathers before or after big action scenes. But they stay with me because what they evoke, the wonder of traveling to another world in the first example and the magnitude of time in the second.
What a wonderful way to say how finding the soul of a story works. The soul is NOT the big event. It's the underpinning, the human-ness, and, I believe, the part that changes the world.
Thanks, Andrew.
Oh, I needed to read this now. My editor has given me much to think about as I do final edits/revisions, and I trust her judgement. Yet, neither of us caught what the work is really about. Thankyou.
So glad to help, Rosemary. Thank you.
I loved this, the post and all the discussion in the comments. I'm not sure I have fully grasped it, but getting there. My three teen protagonists cross into a country very like Afghanistan in search of their kidnapped father. I would say the theme is, what would you do to save your brother? But maybe the soul is in the words of a young local man who offers his help. (Farid speaks in the local language, and the POV character translates for his brothers.)
"‘Why’s he doing this?’ Kai asked.
I asked Farid. He thought, his eyes not focused in the room, but seeing events we couldn’t see. ‘I was with the rebels, fighting the government. I did some bad things. Now I don’t believe in the rebel leaders. I don’t believe in the government, either. Now I think we must just do the good we can. You helped me in the clinic. The clinic helps thousands of my people. This is what God asks of us. To do good.’"
Am I getting the idea? And, thank you,Sally.