Dear Reader,

Have you ever stood in a cave or inside a canyon and heard echoes grow louder rather than softer?

One aspect of creating meaning through language and art involves linking signifiers (words, sounds, images, materials) properly according to culturally accepted rules. Another aspect involves embedding and amplifying echoes of shared experience.

In this month’s issue of Inklings & Inspiration, we explore faith-informed techniques for creating resonance through imagery, language, and film.

And we are thrilled to introduce film director Josh Stolberg—no, not the writer of Piranha 3D—but a videographer and upcoming film writer in the Kansas City metro. I know you will enjoy his video essay on imagery in film. In less than ten minutes, he’ll give you new glasses to see movies in a rich, new dimension.

Learn how to layer imagery for maximum storytelling effect in Callie’s article on “Literary Tropes and Playing the Long Game.” And keep readers coming back for more of your nonfiction by learning the secrets in “Writing Techniques that Sing: Creating Resonance with Words.”

Thanks for joining us. If you have an article to share in a future issue, please feel free to query. And as always, we are a free resource. Please share with your friends.

Writing Techniques that Sing

Creating Resonance with Words

by Kelli Sallman

Have you ever had that sense that you were reading something truly powerful? Your heart rate goes up, you lean in closer to the text, and all the neurons in your brain start tingling. You comprehend what the author is saying in three- or four- or maybe even five-dimensional detail. Your e-book shows you that three thousand readers have underlined that particular paragraph or phrase; you do the same.

How do we learn to write nonfiction like that—so that our readers feel the impact of our words in their bodies and minds? What makes the difference between prose I forget and prose I remember and act on? How can we add a ponderous quality that readers will, well, ponder?

If you’ve attended a middle school science class in the past hundred years, you probably know that all matter is made of atoms. Because of their kinetic energy, unconfined gas atoms move about largely unrestricted, and even the atoms of solid matter vibrate. We know these facts yet probably few of us regularly visualize our world, including our bodies, at an atomic level.

But if this kinetic theory of atoms is true, then our bodies, though they move on a macro-level by employing muscle and tendons, and on a micro-level by converting glucose and oxygen, they also move on an atomic level through pulsing particles. When we say to someone, “We’re on the same wavelength,” meaning our ideas line up and we understand each other, we might actually be vibrating on some level at the same frequency. Our entire universe pulses with this connective energy.

Literary Tropes and Playing the Long Game

by Callie Johnson

When I hear the term literary tropes, I still have traumatic flashbacks to my freshman year of college. I distinctly remember being handed a list of terms (that all sounded unsettlingly like diseases) and being told to memorize them. “Zeugma, syllepsis... Who named these? I’m never going to need to know this stuff.” As it turns out, I was wrong.

Many of the writers who walk among us rely on the tried-and-true power of tropes for dynamic writing. Kate DiCamillo is a children’s book author (Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux) who uses tropes artfully. There is a precision and finesse to her words that we would often dub “resonance.” And it comes from her intentional, practical use of literary devices.

Imagery in Film

a video essay

by Joshua Stolberg

Josh Stolberg of Soulmark Studios explains the use of imagery in film and applies it to the art of storytelling.