Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing Read Free Page B

series of novels may have what we call “ internal resonance, ” where parts of the story resonate with the writer ’ s own past work s .
     
    However, some types of books don’t adapt well to a series. With romances, once a couple falls in love, you can ’ t really re-tell their love story successfully . Having them break up and then get back together isn’t as fun as the original story.
     
    Shared Experience
    As I mentioned earlier , s ometimes the resonance in a novel comes from experiences that the author and purchaser have in common . Authors are often told to “Write what you know.”  If you’ve worked in the military, you can probably write well enough about it so that it will resonate with others who have shared your experiences . If you’ve gone through a divorce, you can touch other readers more easily, and so on.
     
    Nostalgic experiences can be almost magical. The movie A Christmas Story worked well because it played upon experiences that many of us have lived through. I remember wanting a Red Ryder BB gun when I was a kid, and as a toddler, I had to wear a coat that would never let me put my arms down.

Weaving it all Together
     
    Most of the time, in any given paragraph , you as an author load your work with so much resonance, touch so many strings of human experience , that it becomes difficult to untangle them all.
     
    You may be writing about a character similar to heroes from other novels and set the story in an England as viewed through your own experiences visiting five years ago. In writing about a war, you might draw upon conflicts found in famous battles and upon your own experience in losing a friend in a war . You might use language that feels appropriate to the time and place , seeking out imagery from famous painting for inspiration .
     
    The beauty of this is that you do it subconsciously . Your readers of course are almost always unaware of what you’re doing, but you create a comfortable tale for your reader and create confidence in your abilities as a writer, by resonating with the rest of literature and with life in general .

A Case Study in Using Resonance: Tolkien
     
    I’d like to show how one great writer wowed an audience using resonance. Let’s use J.R.R. Tolkien as an example. Books and movies based on his works are widely popular, so you ’ re probably familiar with them .
     
    But there is an other reason that I would like to use him as an example. A few years ago I was at a conference where a renowned writer dismissed Tolkien ’ s work as a “ literary trick. ” I ’ ve heard other critics occasionally take swipes at him, claiming that his work is juvenile and has little merit. Now, I ’ m not going to claim that he was the world ’ s greatest stylist, and I ca n certainly see weaknesses in his writing , but I believe that such comments are . . . uninformed .
     
    Often when we talk about a writer who is a great stylist, we say that he has “ fine literary sensibilities. ” In other words, he recognizes what sounds beautiful and what does not , and so he brings his story to life with grace and power .
     
    Of course by saying that, it suggests that few writers have fine sensibilities.
     
    But the truth is that most of us have fine sensibilities in one area or another . Orson Scott Card has a phenomenal ear for dialogue. Shannon Hale write s metaphors that leave me breathless. Brandon Sanderson has an unfailing sense of pacing. Steven King has been praised for being a modern Shakespeare when it comes to imitating the voice of the common man.
     
    So most well-known authors have a major strength. With Tolkien, when it comes to an understanding of and the use of resonance, he may have had few equals in all of literature. He not only used resonance in all of the ways that I spoke about above — he discovered new methods that no one else had ever considered. His personal sensibilities were acutely focused on how a work resonated.
     
    I read Lord of the Rings