Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing Read Free

thousands of publishers from around the world congregated . In many countries, I found that books from Western cultures simply “didn’t translate.”  Want to know how well Twilight has done in Oman, or the Ukraine, or Indonesia?  The chances are that it hasn’t been translated at all . The entire lifestyle is so alien to people in those countries, that most of our literature just doesn’t translate easily.
     
    But there are other ways to resonate with life besides just the age of the protagonist or by choosing the setting. Years ago, I was asked by the chief editor at Scholastic to help choose the “next big book” for the year, the one that they would put all of their advertising muscle behind. I chose an unknown book called Harry Potter. The editor said that her marketing department didn’t share my enthusiasm for the book: it was too long for a middle-grade audience . But I pointed out that it had several things going for it. One powerful draw was that every child in most of the world has to go to school. Adults feel that universal conflicts revolve around death, taxes, and love. But for children, the universals are bullies, inscrutable teachers, and being chained to a desk.
     
    In short, almost every child in the world would find that Harry’s experiences at Hogwarts resonated with their own life.
     
    Resonance with Emotional Needs
    W e often choose the genre of fiction that we do because we are seeking to create a positive emotional experience.
     
    The primary emotional draw of a book is so powerful that bookstores and libraries tend to arrange their shelves according to the emotion that the book arouses. Stores typically have shelves for “ Romance, ” “ Drama, ” “Mystery , ” “Horror,” “Adventure,” “Humor” and so on .
     
    We could do a better job of arranging the books if we carried the practice further. One wise editor in the 1950s struggled to get fantasy and science fiction categorized as “wonder” literature in bookstores and libraries, since both genres promise to fulfill the same emotio nal need of wonder for readers.

Communicating Resonance to an Audience
     
    When I worked in Hollywood, directors would often seek to have their works resonate with the monumental works in their field. They might say, “For this scene, I want a cool castle—sort of like Disney’s palace, but not quite the same.” They wanted the viewer to feel a connection, but not recognize that too consciously.
     
    There are dozens of ways to create resonance. Let’s go over just a few.
     
    Cover art.
    One of the first things that draws a reader into a story is the cover. If you pick up a romance novel, you want a picture that suggests romance—perhaps a man and woman hugging. If you want horror, something dark and sinister might be more apropos.
     
    My own fantasy novels have covers by Da rrell Sweet and look like other fantasy novels—with medieval characters on the cover, along with a few monsters. Sweet of course is famous for painting book covers for Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan, two of our best-sellers of all time.
     
    So when readers look at my novels, they are immediately reminded of books by those authors. Now, do I write like either of them ? Not much. I write epic fantasy in a medieval setting, but I don ’ t have a lot of the Tokienesque trappings that Brooks and Jordan have. Still, readers who like the work of these bestselling authors are likely to pick u p my books based upon the style of the cover art .
     
    Once, I heard Darrell Sweet mention that one of his books, Ogre, Ogre, had outsold all others. So when writing my novel Wizardborn , I put in a scene that would resonate with a part of Ogre, Ogre. Sweet picked up on it and created the exact scene that I wanted—and the book quickly became a bestseller.
     
    Story Title
    Resonance in titles is so important, that at one time it was considered “a must” for a mainstream writer to try to find something that would resonate