Free Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing by David Farland

Introduction
     
    A few years ago, I was asked to speak at a writing conference. The conference had been running for twenty years, and the administrator said , “We’ve covered just about every topic that I can think of over the p ast twenty years. Is there anything that you can think of that we haven’t discussed ?”
     
    Immediately I suggested, “Well, of course one of the most important skills for a writer to master i s the proper use of resonance. ”
     
    The administrator was taken aback and asked, “What is resonance?”
     
    Then it struck me. I had never heard any writer discuss resonance in writing at any conference. I’d never read a book or article on the topic. I’d never had one of my writing instructors discuss it. As far as I could tell, they were completely in the dark.
     
    Instead of learning about resonance in one grand discourse, I picked up on the topic in bits and pieces. I’d read a brief mention about it in an article written by a master editor. An agent once spoke about it directly. I overheard a New York Times bestselling author try to explain the concept to a new writer, and T.S. Eliot touched upon it as he struggled to write works that were woven into the tapestry of literature as a whole.  Mostly I had learned about it in Hollywood while working with directors.
     
    But I’ve never heard novelists or writing instructors even mention the topic.
     
    W hen I went to that writing conference years ago , perhaps forty writers attended my class . Many of them had studied the craft for decades. So I asked, “ H ow many of you know what resonance is?” I was met by blank stares. Only one author had even heard the term, and she couldn’t tell me what it meant.
     
    All successful writers use res onance to enhance their stories by drawing power from stories that came before, b y resonating with their readers’ experiences, and by resonating within their own works.
     
    In this book, you’ ll learn exactly what resonance is and how to use it to make your stories more powerful.  You'll see how it is used in literature and other art forms, and how one writer, J. R. R. Tolkien, mastered it in his work.

What is Resonance?
     
    In the field of music, a musical refrain is said to “resonate” when it “draws power by repeating that which has come before.” Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is a masterpiece of resonance, and it is so well known that you may be able to listen to it in your head from memory:
     
    Da, da, da, dum .
    Da, da, da, dum . . . .
     
    In case you can’t play it in your head, here is a link to the symp hony.
     
    As you listen to the symphony, you’ll hear how Beethoven starts with a simple theme, repeating the same four notes twice, and then he has a change-up and expands upon that theme. He does this dozens of times, coming up with variation after variation, eventually seeming to abandon the theme altogether.
     
    Indeed, a few minutes into the symphony there is a shocking moment where we realize that we have come full circle. Beethoven returns to the original theme, playing louder and more boldly than before. In music, when a refrain gains power by repeating something that has gone before, we say that it resonates .
     
    But the same thing happens in literature. We feel powerful emotions when we read a book that somehow resembles other works that we love. For example, you may read a new author and discover that the author’s world is similar to one that you’ve visited in literature and loved before. If you’re a fan of the pirating world in Treasure Island, you might find that you really like Tim Powers’s On Stranger Tides. You’ll almost instantly feel a great affinity for Tim’s work.
     
    In a similar way, a tale may also resonate when it evokes powerful emotions by drawing upon the reader’s own past experience. For example, a woman who has been divorced may read a passage in a novel and realize, “Wow, this author has really been through it, too. We