Stories are powerful, immensely so. I don’t need to tell you that.
How many of us in the US were rocked by Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb?” How many times have you seen The Handmaid’s Tale referenced this week alone, or heard the word Orwellian these past several years?
By proxy, we writers are powerful, and you may feel moved right now to exercise your power. The question is, how can you do this effectively?
Get Clear on What You Want to Say
You cannot prevent someone taking your words out of context, or interpreting with bad faith. You can, however, lessen the chance of this happening by taking the time to plan out your stay or poem’s central message.
If you have a lot on your mind, it might be worth it to journal or free-write about what you want to come across for as long as you’re comfortable. Then, when you’ve captured all the emotion on the page, go back through and highlight what you like, then rewrite what you think could be phrased better. By cutting and filtering what you’ve written, you’ll eventually land on some phrasing that makes crystal clear what your message is.
Plan Before You Write
Given you know what you want to communicate with your reader, how do you say it? You can’t just insert one juicy line of dialogue and go about your day.
As I’ve posted about before, the arcs of protagonists and antagonists alike are some of your best storytelling tools. By weaving the lesson to be learned into the fabric of the story—that is, by crafting the circumstances of the plot in such a way that the character is forced to learn and embody this lesson or suffer the consequences—you can sidestep the preachiness we all so desperately want to avoid.
Another way to work a statement into your piece—particularly for poets—is symbolism. Now, if you use the same symbols that we’ve all read about, you might find that it sounds inauthentic. I recommend filling out these personal symbolism worksheets from Eva Deverell to jumpstart the process of developing your own symbols.
Revise and Edit Ruthlessly
Read what you write, then read it again. Change the font to something you rarely use (you’ve no doubt seen that the Internet loves to recommend Comic Sans for this), print it out, and read it yet again. Leave no proverbial stone unturned. Twist your brain into different perspectives and read your story as though you were someone else entirely.
Once you’ve done all you can, send it to your critique group, or seek out critique partners in the wild or in our private network. Do you want to be a sure if you can let your message is crystal clear without inducing eye rolls, particularly when what you want to say could be controversial.
Publish Your Work
This is easier said than done, of course. But if you believe in what you’ve written, and if you’ve put an appropriate amount of time into crafting your piece, you deserve to be heard. As our fearless leader Racquel Henry says, “you can make a difference, but you must use your voice.”
The following list assumes what you’ve written is a short story or poem.
- Post the piece on a blogging platform like Medium (or Tumblr, if you’re looking to reach a younger audience)
- Publish on your own website’s blog
- If you know other writers who are working on similar pieces, collect them and publish in an anthology
- Submit your piece to literary magazines
- Black Fox opens for submissions again September 1
- Our patrons get a monthly list of publishing opportunities as part of membership
