Unbeknownst to me, my wife of 13 years went through my writing files and read a bunch of my stories. She made little notes at the end of some of the pieces — the kind of notes that non-writers tend to make like: “This is good hon, you should keep going” and “I’m not sure I like this one,” and my personal favorite “Do better with this one. Maybe start over?”

As much as we love it when people read our fiction, general feedback like that has little value outside of encouragement (or, in my case, discouragement). So I thought I would talk to her to get a better understanding of what she thought of my writing overall. 

The main takeaway she had for me was that my writing was very “soulless.”

Soulless.

I can’t think of anything that can gut-punch, cut to the core, donkey kick to the back of the head, a writer any harder than telling them their writing is “soulless.”

I recall I felt like crying. I don’t remember if I did but even writing about it now makes me tear up a little so, yeah, I probably did.

I have a philosophy that when you get feedback from a reader, no matter how much you disagree with what they say — every reader is right from their own point of view.

That makes sense, right? Your perspective is colored by your own personal experience, so the stories you read will be colored that way as well. It’s actually kind of a fun and useful thought: every story is unique to each reader.

But soulless… really, hon?

I had to accept what she was saying to stay true to my philosophy. I had to look at my writing through her eyes and see what she was seeing. And scariest of all, I even had to peer inward.

Eventually I came to understand what she was getting at. My stories lacked both stakes and characters the reader cares about. Those two things are related by the way.

The inward part came later, when I finally understood why I was writing that way. It came down to me not being comfortable putting my characters into really difficult situations — which is kind of silly when you think about it. That’s what conflict is: the difficulty engine that drives a story. Conflict raises the stakes and makes you care about what happens to the characters. The bigger the challenge, the better the payoff.

I did see a slight bump in my acceptance rate after I put my main characters in tighter spots, but more importantly, the stories felt more alive and real.

I learned that acceptance letters may feed my need for validation, but loving what I write feeds my soul.

What do you do to add soul to your writing?

-James