The Soul of Great Writing (Ep. 2)

What makes some writing feel alive? And how can we bring that quality into our own work?

In this episode, I explore the “soul” of great writing, both descriptively—what that looks like on the page—and prescriptively—what writers can do to cultivate it.

We talk about the role of vulnerability, where writers go wrong in pursuit of authenticity, and how words can become a bridge to connection.

Plus, I share practical tips for tending to your writer soul and a sneak peek of what’s coming up next month!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Goodgoodgood.co and on Instagram
• Rebel Ridge
• What We Carry (there’s also a link to download a discussion guide, but careful—it contains spoilers!)

>>Sign up for Unearthing Beauty: Memoir Edition. Doors close April 2 or when all seats are filled! Have questions about the program? Shoot me an email at mara @ maraeller.com and I'll help you determine whether it's a good fit!

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Transcript

1:10

Welcome to the Soul and Science of Great Writing. I'm your host, Mara Eller, freelance editor, book coach, and writing teacher with over 16 years of experience. I'm obsessed with the transformative power of words and with understanding what makes writing truly exceptional, not just to help my clients, but to grow my own craft too. So what makes writing truly great? Is it the spark of inspiration, the unique voice the intangible soul that breathes life into words? Or is it the careful structure, repeatable strategies, and attention to detail that turn an idea into something readers can't put down. In truth, it's both. The soul and science of great writing brings creativity and craft together, dissecting and reveling in the power of language. Because great writing isn't just about technique. It's also about that human spark that can't be taught only nurtured. On this podcast, we explore the soul and the science with equal parts, awe and analysis. whether you're a writer honing your craft, or a language lover looking for fun and inspiration, you're in the right place. Before we dive in, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge that things in the world, the country might feel a little heavy right now. It's the last week of January, 2026 as I'm recording this, and recent events have been a lot. If you've been feeling weighed down, I hope you already know you're not alone. But I also want to offer one small suggestion, something that helps me when I'm feeling down about things that are largely out of my control. When the world feels heavy, I try to find a story that counterbalances that weight, not escapism or numbing out, just alternate input. Because often what drains us isn't just the events themselves, it's the story those events seem to be telling. Maybe it feels like a story of decline of things moving in the wrong direction. Maybe it feels like a story of hopelessness. to counterbalance that it can help to remind yourself that there are also stories of hope, of courage, of goodness, of people pushing back against injustice. Of small lights that flicker in the darkness and against all odds prevail. You can look for these stories in the news. Good, good, good. Co is a great source for that. I'll link to it in the show notes, but you can also find them in art, in literature, in films. One that came to mind for me is a movie, a listener recommended. Thank you. Nicole called Rebel Ridge. It is an action crime thriller with a touch of drama, and it features one of the most inspiring protagonists I've seen in a while. It's also just beautifully made fair warning. It's rated R and does contain violence, so it's not for kids. And watch at your own discretion but for me, it ended up being a surprisingly encouraging portrait of what one person can do in the face of prejudice. Exploitation and entrenched corruption. It's also a fantastic example of storytelling and character development with layered characters and a plot twist I genuinely didn't see coming. Plus, it's just plain fun. It is streaming on Netflix, and I'll link to its Rotten Tomatoes page in the show notes. Let me know if you watch it, and I'd love to hear if you have any other recommendations for Stories of Hope, Today we're talking about the soul of great writing. What does that mean and why does it matter? Great writing is often treated as either the result of magic, raw talent, divine inspiration, a stroke of genius, or reduced to the product of technical skill, correct grammar, story structure, productivity systems, the right way to do it. But neither of those gives us the full picture, I believe. And it's the premise undergirding this whole podcast, that great writing emerges from the intersection of those two approaches, the soul and the science. And that problems arise when we privilege one at the expense of the other. Now, the word soul can mean a lot of different things to different people. So what do I mean by the soul of writing? We can approach that in both a descriptive and a prescriptive way. The first is about the essence of a piece of writing the human spark at its core, something I explored a good bit in the previous episode. In this descriptive sense, we might talk about the idea that great writing has soul, or that truth and transformation form the soul of any great piece of writing. The idea that there's something ineffable, something transcendent at its core. In a more prescriptive sense, the soul of great writing is about what we as writers can do in order to cultivate that essence, or at least to leave room for it. The soulful practices that see inspiration as an essential part of the creative process. We'll talk about both on this podcast today and in the future because both matter and because they are intertwined. One of my favorite quotes since I was a kid is writing is the soul on the page. I don't think that's necessarily true of all writing, but I think it's definitely true of great writing. It's something we can sense on an instinctive level. The writing feels inhabited, like something of the author has been left on the page. But what does that actually mean in a more practical sense? It can feel like it's this magical quality, more the result of luck than anything else. And sure there's an element of it that does feel beyond our control, that is beyond our control that comes from outside of ourselves. You might think of it as a creative force, the muse or the Holy Spirit. It goes by many names. We've probably all had that experience at least once when it feels like the words are being downloaded into our brains and we're just transcribing them. For most of us, that's rare, but it happens. We've also probably had the experience of feeling utterly blocked as if there's something standing between us and that creative wellspring. In my experience, that block is almost always a form of fear, but that's a topic for another episode. The point is, however we conceive of it, I think we can agree there's an aspect of creativity and thus writing that is inherently creative in the sense that it forms something new that didn't exist before. There's an aspect of creativity that is mysterious, not entirely within our control, but after three decades of pursuing writing as a craft and almost two decades teaching it. I've learned that there is a lot more than we might think about this sole quality that we can control or at least influence. For me and for many of my clients, it helps to think about soul, which in this sense can be interchangeable with creativity or inspiration as something relational rather than magical. As someone who believes in a personal God, this has extra resonance for me. The source of all creativity is a person, so to engage in creativity is to engage in a relationship both with the creative force and with ourselves. Writing that has that soul quality we're discussing Feels that way, I believe because invisible yet perceptible traces of the author have been left on the page and perhaps traces of the Capital P person from whom all creativity flows as well. In that sense, it's more relational than ordinary writing is. We talked last week about great writing being true. Soul in writing is inseparable from truth, not just, or even necessarily factual truth, but emotional and spiritual honesty. When the writer has said the truest thing they can say, and the most authentic way they can say it, we feel it. That's why the prerequisite for soulful writing is vulnerability. This is most obvious when the topic is more personal, but even in prescriptive nonfiction, for example, you can communicate your ideas in a way that is more or less vulnerable. Same for fiction. Even if the story is fantastical, there's a deeper resonance when the author has invested something of themselves into the characters. To be vulnerable means to put yourself at risk of criticism, of rejection, and there are all kinds of subtle ways that our brains try to protect us from that risk. This self-censorship can come in regards to the topics we allow ourselves to address. Perhaps that's the most obvious way, but it can also sneak in to impact the ways we address certain issues, our choice of words, the level of detail, the tone. To produce writing with soul, we must be willing to risk criticism, not the least of which often comes from within. That's why it must always start with that inner excavation I mentioned last week, that process of diving deep into the subterranean of our own psyches to face whatever lies there, to look at it honestly, to get curious about what it has to teach us, and then to journey back to the surface with that truth in hand. I like to call it soul spelunking. If we skip that step, we'll almost always struggle with a fierce inner critic when we're trying to write, not that the inner critic disappears when we do our soul work, but it loses its power, or maybe it's that we arm ourselves or something far more powerful. That deep conviction of what is true and what matters most, which allows us to pat that inner critic on the head, gently push it out of our creative space and lock the door behind it while we write. Then we can write not only about what really matters, but also with our most authentic voice. Voice in writing can be defined as your personality on the page. A writer's voice is entirely unique. It can change slightly from piece to piece, depending on genre purpose or subject matter, but there's something constant, a juni quo that marks it as uniquely theirs. I am sure I'll do an episode all about voice at some point, but for today I'll just say that voice isn't something you manufacture, it's something you uncover. It's the way of communicating that is most fully you. Only It can be incredibly challenging to peel away the layers of shoulds that conceal our true voice from even ourselves. That's why it's such important work as writers to name those rules we have learned to live by both in our writing and in our lives more broadly, to identify the ways we're playing it safe, trying to protect ourselves from that risk of rejection. cause here's the thing, we can't ever fully succeed at that. To be alive is to be at risk. Pain, including relational pain comes for all of us at one time or another in one form or another. But wouldn't you rather suffer as a consequence for being your true self rather than suffer anyway for hiding it? That's yet another topic for another episode. But the main point about this for today is that the soul of great writing comes from showing up to the page as your fullest, truest, most courageous self. However to be great, that vulnerability has to be more than pure self expression. It goes back to relationship. The purpose of writing is to communicate. We talked about that last week. Apart from journaling, which is a way to communicate with ourselves, we write in order to communicate with a reader, to share something of ourselves, yes, but in order to help them transform. That's why great writing doesn't stop at self-expression. Its self-expression transmuted into insight, meaning, and connection. Okay, you might be asking, so how do we do that? It starts with intention. Our vulnerability can't come from a place of neediness or performance. In great writing. Vulnerability isn't a bid for reassurance, validation, or applause. It's not look at how honest I'm being, or tell me how brave this was When the writer reaches for validation, even subconsciously, the work ends up prioritizing the writer's need rather than the reader's transformation. Soulful writing in contrast offers truth as a gift, not as a performance. It is also not trauma dumping. It's easy to hear vulnerability and think raw emotion. Writing from real pain can be powerful, but unfiltered. Emotional release does not make great writing. If the page is a place to unload, hurt, without reflection and insight, it stays personal therapy, not literature. The difference is meaning making. Soulful writing doesn't just discharge pain, it transforms pain into purpose. The soulful writer tells the truth about their experiences, but from a place of reflection, not just reaction. They take the time and do the work to wrestle with their experience and unearth the deeper meaning it reveals. Then the reader isn't dropped into chaos. They're guided into insight. It's not about pretending to have all the answers or presenting a perfectly polished persona. It's about actively discovering something through the process of writing, of being open to that unfolding. When the writer does that, the work carries the energy of real inquiry of someone thinking, feeling, and becoming in real time. Truly soulful writing doesn't just recount what happened and how it felt, or lecture us about what it should teach us. It wrestles with why it matters. I am often asking my memoir, students, how did you feel here? Can you show us how this affected you? That's because emotions are the glue that connect us to one another. But emotional intensity alone doesn't create impact. Big feelings on the page don't automatically move a reader. On its own, authenticity in the form of emotional intensity can read as messy, not moving. That's equally true for the texture of the writing. Authenticity doesn't equal messy or unpolished prose, though it can mean breaking some of the rules. but it's important not to mistake laziness for true self revelation. Authenticity isn't a vibe you perform and it isn't a lack of editing. Rather, it's the result of real inner reckoning shared with honesty and care. In other words, authentic, soulful writing can and should still be deliberately crafted. That's where the science part comes in. Without craft structure and attention to the reader experience, we risk overwhelming the reader adding to their inner turmoil instead of offering them a way through. A really great soulful writing begins with vulnerability, but it is shaped by intention to serve the reader and refined by the fire of revision until it glows like burnished gold. The details are personal, concrete in particular, but the story points beyond the self,. Somehow through the specificity of one life, the reader glimpses their own. By showing up fully, reflecting deeply and shaping carefully, we can write pieces that matter that transform both ourselves and the readers we hope to reach, words that become a bridge to connect two souls, drawing one another into a deeper, fuller reality. Ultimately when I talk about soul in great writing, I am referring to writing that goes beyond technical brilliance and says something profoundly true that carries that undefinable human spark, the essence of the author, and that invites the reader into powerful transformation. This kind of soulfulness cannot be manufactured or produced, only revealed, invited and protected. It starts with acknowledging that we are not machines churning at words onto a page. We are human beings with souls, and those souls need tending. Future episodes, we'll talk about different ways writers can tend to their souls. But for now, start by approaching yourself gently listening to what your body and your emotions might be telling you, and trying to work with your curiosity. Instead of forcing yourself down a predefined path. Then give yourself permission to show up as your fullest, truest self, both in your writing and in life. You might have to start small, but see if you can pay attention to the ways you censor yourself and ask gentle questions about where those ideas come from and who they serve. Challenge yourself to write the boldest, truest thing you can write. This is no easy task if you've spent most of your life trying to fit into a mold of what a good person or writer is supposed to be, but this is some of the most important work you can do. It's the key to unlocking your unique writing voice. And as I was reminded just this week with a client, the key to discovering what it is that you really want to write about. As long as you're playing it safe, your best writing will remain trapped. And that is a huge loss, not just for you and your writing dreams, but for all of us. The world needs your story, your voice. We don't need another Dickens or Hemingway, another Annie Dillard or Maya Angelou. As much as I love them. We need you and your words, your story. To peel back the layers of shame and doubt to dive deep into the dark corners of your soul and bring forth the treasures of truth you find there, illuminated by the essential work of reflection is the invitation and responsibility of being a writer. That is your sacred calling and I'm here to help, whether that's through this podcast or social media posts. Or something more hands-on. I'm here to support you in this brave, important work. You can find me on Instagram at mara dot Eller or send me an email at Let me know where you are in this journey so I can encourage you more personally. That's it for today's episode. Next week I'll be unpacking what I mean by the science of great writing. What carries that soul intact from one mind to another, what makes words work? Then we will be starting a series on my favorite genre memoir, and as part of that I'll be doing a close reading of a fantastic memoir you've probably never heard of called What We Carry by Maya SBA Lang. If you ever wanted to write memoir or just to read like a writer, this is for you. Grab a copy now so you can be ready when we kick things off in a couple weeks. The links in the show notes. That wraps up today's episode of the Soul and Science of Great Writing. If you found this helpful, be sure to check out the links in the show notes and to follow or subscribe in your favorite podcast app. could you do me a favor? If you enjoyed this episode, take an extra minute to rate and review the show. This will help others find it and will also make my day. I will be back next Wednesday, taking you deeper into the transformative power of writing. Until then, remember, words are more than ink on a page. There are path to wholeness.