Writing a Story with Heart

           Any good story will illicit an emotional response, it’s the reason writers do what they do. No criticism will ever sting you as deeply as indifference.  Stories can be sad, or funny, thrilling or thought provoking, but not every story that creates an emotional response in the reader, can be said to have heart.  What is heart? Why do some movies leave you with a warm glow inside and a feeling of hope for the future, when others that try to tell a similar story whiff terribly?  I find that the stories that resonate most deeply with an audience are the ones that take us home.  Heart is a grubby little boy in patched overalls and a gap-toothed grin offering to let Charles Foster Kane ride his sled because he looks sad and no one can feel bad when they’re sledding down a big hill.

                Life has a way of breaking you down over time. You start to lose yourself a piece at a time.  There was a time you believed in true love. And then the ugly breakup happened. There was a time you were going to play for the NFL, and then your knee went out.  There was a time you planned to do something really meaningful with your life, like join the Peace Corps and build schools in Africa, and then your student loans came due and you had to take a job, and when you looked up ten years had passed.  That’s just how life goes, and after a while you get used to that piece of yourself that used to be so important being gone.  The pain, when you feel it, is the phantom ache of a lost limb. Something to feel melancholy about on a rainy afternoon.

                Now imagine someone walked into a pawn shop with a briefcase full of money.  Pawnshops, the elephant graveyards where forsaken dreams go to die.  There, on the walls and on the shelves, amongst the dvd players and the waffle irons, are the treasures that someone used to love gathering dust.  So he cleans them out.  He buys the Fender Stratocaster and the engagement ring, he buys the 21 speed Schwinn and the Japanese Cooking knives.  Then he goes looking for the original owners.  “Mrs Johnson” he says, I think you might have lost this ring somewhere.  I get the feeling you’re going to need it really soon, .  And then he’s off to the next house, and it’s “Dude! We’re getting the band back together.  “and You and me buddy, Tour de France 2013.”  This is what writing a story with heart is about. It’s finding the misplaced part of your reader’s soul where the hope, and the happiness and the self respect used to live and bringing it home to them.  It’s showing the jaded divorcee that sometimes the ugly breakup is what brings you to the place you need to be to meet the love of your life.  It’s showing the “could’ve been great” college footballer that the NFL dream didn’t happen because he was always meant to be a professional surfer.  Sometimes people do stand up for what’s right. Sometimes teachers do make a difference.  Sometimes love does last a lifetime.

We read your stories, and for a while, we remember who we were meant to be.  We realize that maybe that person didn’t die. Maybe they just got lost for a while. And sometimes, if we’re very lucky, we do something about it.