How to Write About Emotion


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How to Write About Emotion

Rob Parnell

An esteemed subscriber asked me a question in an email this week.

She asked, "How do I write about emotion?"

To be honest, I hadn't given the subject much individual thought until she asked. But I did think it would make a great topic for an article. So here goes.

Emotions fall under the category of 'show, don't tell.' Therefore it's unwise to merely state 'he was sad' or 'she was happy' etc because these are fairly nebulous concepts that don't tell the reader much about your characters. Indeed, they sound like more of authorial opinion than a credible description of character.

Far better, in the context of a story, would it be to analyze the reasons for your character's emotions, what triggered them and what they mean to the character, and then try to visualize the physical and mental effects of those emotions on the character - and describe that instead.

For example, take 'he is sad'.

What are you actually saying? What exactly is he sad about? It could be a lost love or lost opportunity. If so, how would that make him feel? What physical reactions would he experience?

You might say that tears filled his eyes or that he felt a numb sensation in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps he tries to concentrate on some trivial task, like making tea, and he can't stop thinking about his problem.

Then you might use internal dialogue to examine his sadness:

He couldn't get the picture of her smile out of his mind. She was somewhere out there, laughing, enjoying her freedom, while he fed his resentment with bitter tears. Why had she fallen out of love with him? What had he done wrong? He didn't know, couldn't place a time when he might have noticed she was thinking about leaving him.

Okay, it's wordy - but that's almost the point. Instead of merely stating an emotion, you should try to pull the reader into a more personal experience of that emotion. They will hopefully recognize your description as being true to 'how it really feels' to lose a love, or hate themselves for missing an opportunity.

Get inside your characters as much as possible. Feel what they feel. 'She was happy' is not as strong as,

She felt light-headed and her heart seemed to have grown in her chest. Occaisonally she began to giggle for no reason. The sight of a flower made her marvel at Nature - and the sun's rays filled her mind with hope for a brighter future.

Showing emotion and its effects on the body and mind of a character is much more powerful and results in pulling in a reader to your story. Merely telling your reader about your character's emotions is not particularly engaging - and is more likely to inspire an ambivalent response.

The point of a story is to transfer some insight about humanity from an author's mind into the mind of a reader. And the best way to do this is to engage a reader with your plot and its characters. Engagement is achieved by the writer presenting a series of emotional 'triggers' that the reader accepts as real and powerful. When the reader responds to an emotional 'trigger', they are then identifying with the characters and are compelled to read on.

How you do this yourself is up to you. Your take on what an emotional trigger might be is what makes you unique. But bear in mind that there are pre-agreed emotions out there that appeal to a wide variety of people.

Emotions like love, fear, anger, frustration and joy are common to all of us. They're part of the human condition. A good writer should then aim to use these fundamental emotional states to enhance his or her writing - to appeal to as many readers as possible.

Writers who understand how to manipulate story scenes to trigger emotional responses are those, I would argue, that are the most likely to succeed.

Emotions are what make us uniquely human. Without them our lives would be bland and meaningless. Because it's not always what happens to us that makes the difference. It is the way we react to events and people and the things they say that defines our experience of the world.

There's some evidence to suggest that the brain is much better at remembering emotions than mere facts. This is why an emotionally charged experience is so much more powerful. An emotionally charged experience can change our lives, our entire outlook and the decisions we make.

This is why you, the writer, should use believable emotional states to enhance your writing. The key word here is believable. There's no point in presenting a character that overreacts to a situation or indeed, under-reacts. In order for a character to be sympathetic, the reader must believe that their reactions are appropriate - given the situation.

Our emotional reactions define who we are as people. It should be that way for your characters too.

Listen to your characters and care about them.

Let them tell your stories - and guide you through them.

If you don't, and let your plots dictate how you think your characters should react, then you'll end up losing your reader's sympathy.

Use your character's emotions to lead you from one story event to the next - and you'll end up with a story that, as the cliche goes, your readers can't put down!

If you want to know more about how to use emotion effectively when constructing story lines, you should check out my much acclaimed new course, The Art of Story.

Till next time,

Keep Writing!

rob@easywaytowrite.com
Your Success is My Concern
The Easy Way to Write