I’m calling my new, 2026 writing tool the “Heart Sync.”
I’ve spoken a lot about the “heart” of stories on this site. My definition has changed over time, I’m sure, but, these days, I have a really firm grasp on it:
“The personal angle that makes your story art.”
In other words, your impetus, unwitting or intentional, for writing a particular story. The experience you’ve had that informed it.
To me, it’s different from the theme (for example, in my mind, the experience of getting mugged IRL might be the heart of your vigilante story, but, “Poverty makes communities rip themselves apart,” might be its theme). And that distinction is important because, as a separate metric from theme, it can provide extra fuel for your story.
Another distinction: you have to choose a theme, but (unless you’re using AI) you always have a heart for your story. And it’s been there since the very beginning, because it’s the entire reason you’re writing your story to begin with.
The thing is, if you engage in the purely vibes-based discovery writing that I sometimes have with my novels, you might not realize what that heart is (and thus the direction your story should go) until it’s too late.
That’s the problem this tool is trying to solve–a weak theme or other story elements stemming from a disconnect between what you’re actually feeling and what you’re writing.
For example, one of the protagonists of a novel I wrote was struggling with survivor’s guilt. But I, Louis Santiago, have never experienced survivor’s guilt. The result was a theme that didn’t feel strong or focused, because what I actually wanted to write about was friendships falling apart.
Why didn’t I just write about then? Because I had no idea I wanted to. I had the emotion of, “It’s sad when friends go away,” and I mashed it with the extremely-Hollywood, evergreen idea of “lone survivor of a group of rebels, haunted by not being able to save them.”
If I had this tool, however, I could’ve sorted out that story’s themes before finishing it. Likewise, I probably could’ve written all of Aixa the Hexcaster ten years ago, instead of struggling to figure out what I wanted to explore with it.
If you don’t struggle with your storytelling motivations at all, more power to you; this tool probably won’t help you.
But if you could do with a bit of introspection that might help all of your stories hit harder and sync more completely with you as a person, allowing you to write-what-you-know more consistently, then let’s get started.
What a Heart Sync Looks Like
Honestly, it’s just a question–one that you can ask yourself for any story you’ve ever written:
“What personal experience is the progenitor of this story?”
Super simple, super quick. Additionally, “What feeling or personal event led me to the collection of characters I’ve created for this story?” “What real-life experience has already inspired the setting / plot / etc.?”
To be clear, we’re not asking, “What’s the eureka moment when you came up with your story?” That can be the heart, I guess, but people usually don’t get in a car crash and instantly think, “I’m wrrritin’ about this!”
In my case, the heart is a way, way older, very personal experience or series of experiences that has slots in after I come up with plot and characters. And, I say “slots” in because it has always fit like a puzzle piece for me; I create new group of characters, a setting, or a plot that gives off a particular vibe because of genre and my own mind cloud of ideas, and then I go, “Clearly, all of this comes from some experience I’ve had. What experience is that?” If I’m honest with myself, the heart fits like it was there the entire time, because it was.
Anyway, after you have your answer, all you have to do is…
Use It to Guide Story Elements
- Let it Reshape Characters:
Lean into the experience by making characters more like people you shared the experience with. Or take it further by exploring characters that handle said experience in a way that’s different/better/worse.
Example for a Main Character: Riffing off mysurvivor’s guilt➞ friendships falling apart example from earlier, if you had a huge falling out with a group of friends and you’ve already written a protagonist who’s an outcast, consider:
(A) Did I write this character because I feel like an outcast after losing contact? Would this character benefit from having an unspoken desire for connection, and should their arc satisfy that desire?
(B) Should I make it a dysfunctional thing for them instead? Should they, for example, have a problem maintaining complicated, interpersonal relationships because they refuse to trust anyone now?
(C) Should I make it just a quiet influence on their character, with them being playful and presenting as fine, but letting those complicated memories influence their actions in key plot moments?
(D) Should I make their backstory darker than my own, perhaps making the fallout more violent and/or bitter than it was IRL?
Probably needless to say, but you can do this for the entire cast, making them, for example, more confrontational in the eyes of a sensitive protagonist. Or all of them weighed down by similar complications within their own backstories. - Retool the Theme (if you need to):
If you’ve been writing a story about a badass space outlaw going on a journey through interstellar badlands and the theme is, “Freedom is an open road, even when it’s rough,” that’s fine if that’s exactly what you want to write. But if that theme feels off because the impetus to write the story was your frustration with your local government making it so impossible to live that you wish you could take off and never look back, I think you should use that emotion to rework the theme–if you want to write something heavy.
If the heart brings you to something like, “Corrupt authority will find you anywhere; fight it everywhere,” cool. That sounds kinda like First Blood, and First Blood was fucking awesome.
If it brings you to something like, “We should fight/leave/avoid institutions that make us feel helpless,” that’s going to be a far more interesting and unique north star that will feel infinitely more you than Hollywood. - Use It to Guide the Plot:
If you’re writing an extremely cozy Fantasy story with a protagonist who cares for fantastical creatures in the wild… Well, first, what’s the title? Lol When does that come out? I wanna read it. Becky Chambers fan here, if you couldn’t tell.
Seriously though, if you’re writing that story and it comes from your own love of real life animals, is there a route for the plot that accentuates that love? For example, if it currently focuses on one big animal, might it be better to make it into a road trip where the protagonist tours the wild, giving attention to a range of Fantasy creatures inspired by all of your favorite real-life animals?
Or does it perhaps center around a household pet? A really sweet, loving plot that starts out as a world-trekking journey with your cat, Cocoa Bread. But then, in the end, CB gets sick helping you somehow. You drop everything and narrowly manage to find a magical cure for them (of course by using all of the research you’ve gathered throughout the plot to find a final, reclusive mythical creature), and it reaffirms that your pet was the best, most fantastical creature of them all. - Let It Influence the Little Things:
As long as it works with the theme, the heart of a story can and should help guide smaller decisions too.
For example, “What should I make the monster in this Horror story look like?” Well, if the experience that led to the story was getting attacked by a wild muskrat, and led to a theme of, “Wild animals can kill you, even if you think they can’t.” Cool. But that doesn’t necessarily direct the creation of a scary monster. But the heart–that wild animal attack–can. Use that fuel; make that monster small, but maybe hairless, with claws and something like a naked mole rat face so it burrows into people before they can stop it.
You don’t need to do it that way–you can purely rely on theme, of course–but I’ll finish out by adding that the heart is a good metric for making smaller elements a little less on-the-nose and a little more raw. Particularly when they influence, say, the clothing a side character wears, or the way an abandoned apartment looks.
Sure, these smaller details might be lost on the audience, but as long as you don’t sideline the plot to mention them, I don’t think you have to worry about that. And, even if you don’t mention them, just keeping those details in mind might help you stay in the moment and really feel a scene. Does it matter that the audience sees your villain’s red shirt and realizes it’s a reference to your abuser’s favorite red shirt? No, but it will keep you in the right headspace to write a horrible, piece of shit villain.
If the end result feels a little too personal, I understand you might not want to go with it and that’s fine. I think that once you’re aware of them, the heart of a story can be flexible, but only if you shift theme and other elements to work with the new heart.
On top of that, again, I definitely don’t think every story needs to have a heart. Not everything is incredibly heavy and emotionally complicated, obviously, and rule of cool, genre standards, market trends, etc. might come first for your WIP, which I think is totally okay. No shade on my writing brethren who focus on popular markets or just want to have fun and escape whatever they’ve been through.
For those of us who do want to go heavy though, I’ll leave you with a reminder: at this point, with the flat nothingness of AI writing constantly vying for purchase in our space, remember that your personal experiences are what make your writing human. They make it powerful, they make it intriguing, and they make it something a machine can never replicate. Because, seriously, if a true AI writer does ever come online, the first thing they’d say is, “I can’t write about the human experience; I can only write about my own.”
If you’ve never done something like a Heart Sync for a WIP you can’t quite get a grip on, give it a shot. I hope it helps.
And, if it does–or if you have any thoughts about it–let me know below.
Thanks for reading. And next time, I’ll talk about the revolution in productivity that’s sent my process into overdrive.
I’ve been Louis Santiago and, as always, please feel free to use any of my tools on the Resources Page for your own writing. They’re all free and they always will be (I will be adding this one soon for easy reference). If you want to talk about any of my tools on your own platform, cool, but please provide props and links back to this site; I’m still not asking for money on here, but I am trying to build my platform as best I can while helping other writers.
If you’d like to learn about any of my published work, check out my Publication Timeline.
You can also check me out on Bluesky, where I mostly post fun stuff, including the less-occasional-than-they-should-be links to my writing playlist.
Also check me out on Reddit, where I mostly share writing advice. I actually shared this very tool the other day, just as an example. And then I got 100 updoots on my sarcastic comment on a shitpost. So, ya know, Reddit stuff.
That’s all for now. As always, thanks for reading.
And, until next time, eat your fiber.
Inktrap 
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