By Andrea Lewis //
As usual, the topic sparked my interest during a meeting of The Lake Forest Writers’ Roundtable. While we discussed some good practices in evoking emotions, some of the sources mentioned below were quoted. A quick search not only revealed an abundance of material, but it also brought forward the main factors to consider when evoking emotions: the character’s transformational journey through a story, and the reader’s interest for the character’s transformation. I tried to focus on them in the article below.
I. Everyone has a goal
Every writer’s goal is that their novel or story keeps readers’ attention engaged from beginning to end. Every reader’s goal is to satisfy a need while reading a book–obtaining information, entertainment, or “to have an emotional experience,” according to authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi in The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s guide to Character Expression. The two authors emphasize the one thing that “all successful novels, no matter the genre, have […] in common is emotion.” Emotion is at the core of the character’s decisions, actions, words—the elements that “drive the story.” (Ackerman & Puglisi)
II. WHY evoke emotion in writing?
Answering readers’ need. The key element in “why,” is the reader as writers strive to answer the need for that emotional experience. Therefore, writers aim to give life to the story through the characters’ journey and emotional transformation.
The unique emotional journey. In The Emotional Craft of Fiction, writer and literary agent Donald Maass, sees readers as unique individuals, with unique backgrounds, who will interpret and experience the same story differently. Therefore, Maass advises that writers redirect their focus from How can I get across what characters are going through? to How can I get readers to go on an emotional journey of their own? Instead of getting readers to feel what the characters feel or what the author wants them to feel, a text should “induce a unique emotional journey” for each reader.
III. HOW to evoke emotions in writing?
The key element in “how” to evoke emotions is the character. Plot events should affect the character. “Without emotion, the character’s personal journey is pointless,” write Ackerman & Puglisi in The Emotion Thesaurus.
a. Prep work: know the character
Building the backstory. Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi recommend that writers spend time building the backstory of each character, uncovering details that will help design the emotional reactions through the book. “The backstory is for the writer, not for the reader.” This tool will allow a writer to know the character’s life before the start of the story. Characters will feel more true-to-life since “actions, choices, and decisions […] align with who they are.”
Areas to explore in the backstory
- People in the character’s life that shaped their views on emotion (functional or dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors passed on)
- Impactful experiences that stayed with them
- Baseline reactions: behavior in everyday situations will help maintain consistency throughout the story
- The character’s emotional range (demonstrative or reserved)
- Comfort zones: the character’s level of confidence (openness in private vs. in public)
- Stimulus vs. response: interests, fears, beliefs that trigger emotions.
Understanding emotional sensitiveness and insecurities of the character, will help writers:
- Give their readers clues of past emotional wounds that still affect the character
- Create opportunities for powerful reactions of fight, flight, or freeze.
b. Techniques to render emotion
“Twin journeys” – the inner and outer elements
Donald Maass identifies the outer and the inner elements of the “twin journeys” of the protagonist. The outer element is the plot that, according to Maass, “holds up the novel’s structure, like columns hold up a skyscraper.” The inner element, however, “lends the novel a feeling of depth, perspective, and movement across space.”
During the character’s transformational journey, the two elements intertwine like a DNA structure where inner moments give meaning to outer (plot) events. The range of emotions that a character exhibits throughout a story, results from the intersections of the two elements.
Mirroring the character’s transformation
1. Careful word choice
- Avoid cliché. Phrases like “heart skipped a beat” or “guts twisted in fear” don’t provoke emotions in the reader and are easily overlooked. Instead, the editors at Masterclass encourage writers to use precise descriptions for feelings or sensations.
- The right words. In an article on The Editors Blog, fiction editor Beth Hill advises on consistency between the characters’ words and their backstory. However, in challenging situations, the character can break their regular speech pattern and/or use a different vocabulary. Such changes will signal the character’s shift in emotion.
- Sound is important. “Use harsh or sharp words for the harsher emotions, soft-sounding and soft-meaning words for gentle emotions,” advises Hill.
2. Show don’t tell
- “Let actions and spoken words do the work.” (Donald Maass)
- Write in scenes. Show the characters’ emotions through their actions, facial expressions, body language, and words, suggests Beth Hill.
- Show the nonverbal. To Ackerman and Puglisi, “by definition, nonverbal emotion can’t be told, it has to be shown.” Writers can use thoughts, sensory details, similes, specific verbs, and body cues that correspond with the featured emotion to reveal not only how the character feels during a challenging event, but to also reveal personality traits and backstory.
3. Help readers identify with the protagonist
- Relatability. The editors at Masterclass advise that the characters be “relatable and sympathetic,” so that readers can relate to them or their experience.
- Avoid emotion dump. Beth Hill notes that readers need time to get acquainted with the characters, their dreams, challenges, personalities, before a connection is established. Instead of including deep emotions on page one, allow “readers [to] know [the] characters.”
- The unsympathetic. Making a character unsympathetic, will cause readers to feel “anger or repugnance toward him” suggests Hill. A hated character “produces an emotional response in the reader.”
- “Show reactions/response of characters to the actions of another character,” writes Hill. Response should come in the form of “actions and dialogue,” and less as thoughts.
4. Build up to intense emotions for greater impact
Readers are more likely to react to, and remember, “strong and passionate feelings,” since “deep emotions are more memorable than shallow emotions,” conclude the editors at Masterclass.
Beth Hill proposes a few techniques for writers to build intense emotions:
- Create something at stake for the character in an important, or life altering situation.
- Time constraints increase tension and will cause characters to make decisions they would not normally make.
- Tough choices. Force the character to choose between something bad and something worse.
- Move the story. Avoid dwelling on an event for longer than necessary, or the reader will lose interest.
- Write realistic scenes. Events, setting, character, and problems must be logical for the world of the book.
- An unexpected turn of the story will surprise the readers and will keep them interested.
- Adjust the pace. Short sentences and paragraphs will speed up the pace, encourage suspense and fear.
- Setting matters. A sensorial approach, with colors, sounds, smells will deepen the emotional response of the reader.
- Mixing emotions. Some humor where it is least expected, e.g., in suspense moments, keeps readers engaged. Donald Maass writes that “when characters struggle with their feelings, readers must referee,” and thus “feel involved into seeking to solve the character’s inner conflicts.” They may even wonder about their own feelings if they were facing a similar challenge.
5. Dialogue. Ackerman and Puglisi award special attention to dialogue, as the main vehicle of showing emotion through communication among characters. Ideas, thoughts, beliefs, needs are driven by emotional state and articulated through dialogue. Non-verbal elements that convey emotions in conjunction with dialogue earn a special focus, also:
- Vocal cues provide hints and reveal the emotional state of characters through change of tone, pitch, or rhythm.
- Body language betrays moments of emotion: the stronger the feeling, the stronger the outwardly response.
- Convey the mental process that corresponds to an emotional experience through thoughts. “A character’s internal monologue is not always rational and can skip from topic to topic with incredible speed.”
- Visceral reactions are the most powerful form of non-verbal communication. However, relying on them too much, may create melodrama and can slip into “clichéd phrasings.”
Techniques to use along with dialogue:
- The backstory will help establish the characters’ emotional responses to various circumstances.
- Combine the verbal and non-verbal elements. Show characters through the actions they perform during a dialogue (shift positions, interact with objects) to add dimension to the scene and reveal feelings about the words that they are saying.
- Dialogue tags caution. Use expressive or descriptive tags sparingly to avoid distracting the readers. Instead, use simple tags like “said.”
- Make your dialogue work harder. Use dialogue to reveal information either to the reader or to another character, without dumping information.
c. Ways to research ideas on showing emotion in writing
-Donald Maass encourages writers to discover the “third-level emotions” by:
- asking questions (“what else do you feel?”)
- making a moral judgement (“is it good or bad to feel that way?”)
- creating an alternative (“what would a different person feel instead?”)
- justifying the specific feeling (“it is the only possible thing to feel at this moment, because…”)
- Ackerman and Puglisi advise writers to “mine [their] memories” and notice:
- Ways their body reacts when experiencing a certain emotion
- Thoughts they had in the past in an experience similar to the characters’
- Words they may have said
-People watch:
- In overheard conversations: notice cues, speech patterns)
- Observe body language
-Use screen time wisely:
- Observe characters on screen for the same details as in real life, take notes to use in writing scenes.
Closing remarks
These are just some of the ways to evoke emotions in writing. I hope they offer ideas. Have you used some of them successfully? Have you come across or used other ways to show emotions in your writing? Share them here to help our writers master mirroring feelings into their words and actions.
ANDREA LEWIS lives and writes in Huntington Beach. She was born in Romania and moved to the United States at the age of 34, after meeting and marrying her husband. She writes memoir and personal essays, with a recent attempt at freeform poetry. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times.