Write well. Write often. Edit wisely.
I wrote an article on the importance of creating emotions in readers, but I’ve noticed that writers are looking for specifics on how to accomplish that. So, this article complements that first one, presents practical tips on how to stir the reader’s emotions.
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Readers like to be touched, moved, by story. They like to imagine themselves in worlds and situations that challenge them, that give them opportunity to do and be something other than what they do or are in their real lives.
Fiction, whether in book or film or games, allows people to not only step into other worlds, but to experience those worlds. To do what they can’t in the course of a normal day. To feel beyond their normal feelings.
Since readers want to immerse themselves in other worlds and other lives, what can writers do to make that experience authentic, to make the fictional world real for a few hours?
One technique the writer can make use of to create reality out of fiction is to induce emotion in readers, make them feel something of what the characters are experiencing. Writer and reader know the fictional events aren’t real, but the emotion can be. Readers can fear and feel joy and be excited and know grief. They can laugh and cry, shiver and rage. All from reading a story.
But how can a writer accomplish this? How does a writer make readers feel emotion?
1. Write in scenes, showing rather than telling. That is, don’t report that a character is afraid or giddy or grieving. Show the results of character emotions through the character’s actions. Show what fear or giddiness or grief does to him. Character action and response is a good place to focus.
This is a major key for rousing reader emotions. No one gets emotional over a report. They do get emotional when they can step into someone’s shoes and experience his or her feelings as if those feelings were churning inside them.
Delores was afraid to open the door to the basement steps. She stood at the far side of the kitchen, debating what to do.
vs.
Delores’s hand trembled as she reached for the locked doorknob. Tom had warned her not to open the basement door when he wasn’t around, but he was due home soon, so what could happen? She bit her lip and tightened her fingers around the cold knob. A shiver shook her. She inhaled only a shallow breath and then struggled for another.
And nearly shot through the ceiling when the microwave dinged, letting her know her tea was hot.
2. Make a character sympathetic, so the reader identifies with her.
If the reader can identify with a character—with her dreams or habits or choices—he can also identify with her emotions—pains and joys and sorrows. (Readers can also identify with the shared human condition, so sometimes a particular situation will resonate with readers even before the character becomes involved.)
Make sure the reader knows/understands/identifies with the character before trying to connect emotionally. The reader won’t be affected by a character’s deep emotions on page one, simply because he has no ties to the character. By chapter three, if you’ve put the reader in the character’s place in the story, what touches the character can touch the reader. By the novel’s climax, the reader should so identify with the lead character that the character’s pain becomes the reader’s pain, his triumphs, the reader’s triumphs. The reader may have a physical response—laughter or tears or shivers—as if whatever happened to the character had actually happened to the reader.
You know how this plays out in your own life. A death reported on the nightly news means one thing when it’s a stranger and something totally different when it’s someone you know or a relative of someone you know.
Help your readers know your characters.
Make your character believable and sympathetic so the reader wants to be that character, wants to go through everything he goes through for the length of the story.
3. Make a character unsympathetic, so the reader feels anger or repugnance toward him.
A character who is hated has already created an emotional response in your reader. I’m not talking caricature or stereotype here. I’m talking about creating a character who is soul ugly or evil or unfeeling, but one who belongs in one story and no other.
Your unsympathetic character might be no one of consequence in another book. But here, in this particular story, his actions/words are destructive to your protagonist or to someone close to him.
Cruel characters doing cruel things—cruel in the eyes of the protagonist or the reader—can affect the reader. If the character reacts to the cruelty, the reader can as well. Or, if the reader feels something because of what a cruel character does, you’ve already stirred his emotions.
If, however, your protagonist has no response to the cruel actions of another character, your readers may feel both bewildered and cheated. Show the reactions/response of characters to the actions of another character. Characters must do more than think about the evil of another character. They must have a response in terms of action and/or dialogue.
4. Don’t hold back. If you want to reach the reader’s emotions, you need to write emotion-evoking scenes. Killing or injuring a character’s child, pet, or loved one can touch the reader, if the reader has sufficient investment in the character.
If Sarah gets a phone call, with someone saying her son has died, readers won’t feel grief, even if you show Sarah grieving, unless you’ve created a tie between Sarah and the readers, unless you’ve prepared for the death ahead of time, showing Sarah’s love for her son, perhaps her fear for his life or her dreams for him.
If he’s never been mentioned and we don’t know how much he means to Sarah, an announcement of his death will have no emotional impact on the reader.
If, however, Sarah had been worried for his safety or has been sitting at his hospital bedside, the reader is connected both to Sarah and her son, and his death can shake up the reader.
Don’t be afraid of killing off someone close to your main characters or of taking away something else dear to them. If they are crushed, the reader can be as well. This is fiction; you’re not really hurting someone if you write them into a car accident.
Death or injury aren’t the only ways to hurt your characters. Misunderstanding, betrayal, and forced choices that hurt their friends are all ways to agitate characters. And when characters are agitated, readers can be as well.
5. Tease the reader with hints of what’s to come. You see this in romantic comedies, the backward and forward dance between a couple just falling in love. The tease, the delay, the anticipation makes the payoff dramatic and satisfying.
In mysteries and suspense, anticipation increases tension and therefore increases the emotional impact. Fear drawn out to just the right degree gives a satisfying snap when hell breaks loose.
6. Recognize that word choice can greatly affect reader emotions. Some words are triggers in themselves and can be used to set off the reader.
Putting an especially nasty cuss word in the mouth of a character who doesn’t curse can jolt the reader. It’s a strong signal that something is very wrong.
Verbs or nouns that are socially loathed or that remind readers of hated people or abhorrent practices can be used to instantly rouse the reader. Of course, you can’t use this technique too often because the reader will feel manipulated and feel anger toward you, the writer, rather than with a character or the story on the page. You can manipulate readers; you shouldn’t let them feel the manipulation.
Some words convey lightness or humor or passion. Other words have little emotional shading. Choose your words with their impact potential in mind.
Even common actions can be influenced by word choice. Do characters cross a room or lope or shuffle? Do they race across town or merely make their way through traffic? Do they demand or ask for something? Do they heave or lift or haul or pick up an object?
Know the power of word choice in eliciting emotions. Use words throughout a scene to express your exact meaning so a scene is cohesive and the emotion consistent. Don’t mix light and fluffy words into a dark, heavy scene unless you’re doing so for effect. That is, be aware of your word choices and what they can do to the scene and the overall tone of the story—increase tension because you choose the right word combinations or diffuse tension because you’ve used ill-matched words.
Note—Even though you want the words to create a tight scene, one with cohesion and consistency, this doesn’t mean that all characters in the scene will have the same agenda and speak to the same end. That is, you may have a character quite at odds with the other characters and what’s happening. Your antagonist may not care that he’s caused negative events in the protagonist’s life. He might not feel remorse or pain at what’s happened. And therefore he may talk at cross purposes with other characters. This, of course, creates a tension all its own and can set the reader on edge.
7. Create a situation that’s important, vital, or life altering, if not life threatening. Make sure there’s something at stake for the character, make sure his actions reflect the importance of this something, and make sure he tries to do something to change this intolerable dilemma. Produce in the reader both the emotion from the situation and the hope that the character can triumph.
8. Put your characters under time constraints to increase tension, to cause them to make decisions they might not ordinarily make, to set them—and the reader—on edge.
9. Force your character into making a decision between a bad choice and a worse choice. This kind of situation pulls the reader in whether he knows the reason for those bad choices or not. The reader feels for the character, for him having to make bad decisions that both character and reader know will cause even more problems.
10. Move the story. Don’t dwell so long on an event that the reader loses interest or the urgency wanes.
11. Write realistic scenes with realistic problems, problems that are conceivable for the characters and world you’ve created. Events, characters, and setting must be logical for your world. Don’t give your reader a reason to doubt the truth and possibilities of your story and story events. Don’t give them a push out of your fictional world.
12. Surprise the reader by turning the story in an unexpected direction. Keep the reader off balance, unsuspecting, so he can be blindsided and thus feel more unsettling emotions.
13. Write conflict into every scene. Conflict can be character to character, character to himself, character to events, and character to setting. An agitated character can pass that agitation to the reader.
14. Adjust the pace for the emotion you want to create. Use short sentences and paragraphs to speed the pace, to encourage suspense and fear. (Readers read faster and feel the story is moving at a faster pace when there’s more white space on a page.) Use longer phrases and paragraphs to slow the momentum, to ease off the forward rush, to create a sense of relaxation or calm.
15. Choose words with deliberation. Use harsh or sharp words for the harsher emotions, soft-sounding and soft-meaning words for gentle emotions. (Or, cross up your words and emotions to create confusion. But remember that you want the reader confused in the same way the characters are confused, not unable to follow what you’re saying.)
16. Reduce the use of unnecessary and unrelated detail to keep the focus on one emotion. Characters involved in chases don’t notice the flowers or the store fronts decorated for Christmas. Lovers in their first sex scene don’t notice every object in the room; they’re far more interested in one another.
Stay in the moment and only turn the reader’s attention to what’s important for this moment and this scene and the characters involved.
There are, of course, exceptions to this piece of advice. Yet, when you’re trying to build emotion, don’t dilute it or distract the reader with unrelated details. Use your details in other scenes, when it’s appropriate to introduce them.
Do use detail that will heighten emotion.
17. Use setting to influence the reader and deepen his emotional response. Paint your rooms, put sounds in your outdoor spaces, add smells to your attic. Imagine how these elements would influence your readers—dark rooms, dark colors, enclosed spaces, echoing spaces, wide-open fields, silence, the living room of a house where someone was murdered, the living room of the house owned by the lead character’s enemy, a courtroom, a boardroom, back stage during a concert, back stage three hours after the concert-goers have all gone home.
Play with setting so you put your characters in the best locale for each scene. Need to ramp up unease? Move the scene to a deserted office at night. Need something lighter than the bedside of a comatose patient? Take the scene to the hospital’s cafeteria. Or chapel. Or business office.
18. Use sense details to mire readers in the reality of the scene. What can the character hear and smell? What does a change in sound mean? What does the absence of sound mean for the character and the reader? When a character reaches into a dark hole and feels something brittle, does the reader break out in goose bumps? What if the character felt something soft and silky, something like springy curls? Does the reader’s pulse jump?
Play with all five senses to keep your readers involved, maybe off balance, but always interested in what’s coming next.
*******
Use each of these methods, not just one, to raise an emotional response in your reader. Touch the reader often, noting that each scene doesn’t have to register higher on the emotional meter than the scene before. (Though emotions do rise through the climax, the rate of the climb isn’t consistent and emotional impact can be variable; both character and readers need variations in intensity. Downs are as important as ups.)
Don’t hesitate to mix emotions. A heroine in a suspense thriller can’t be frightened all the time. Use humor or lust or exasperation or anger or joy to change the type of tension for her and for the reader. Take the reader up and down and then up again. Readers like ups and downs, not a flat line of no emotion, of zero affect. Keep the reader engaged by making her feel. Stir up your readers.
Tap into emotions to give your readers a read that satisfies on all levels.
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Tags: emotion, readers Posted in: Craft & Style, How to, Writing Tips
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The reader will focus on what stands out. Turn the reader's attention where you want it to go.
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Copyright © 2010-2018 E. A. Hill Visit Beth at A Novel Edit
Write well. Write often. Edit wisely.
thank you for this very useful piece 😀
Frida, I’m glad you found it useful. Thank you for letting me know.
I’m an aspiring writer (though only 14), and after reading this, it’s given me useful insight on how to develop emotions in my characters. This helped a lot since theres a lot of tragedy
Really, HJ?? Me too!…only 13 though…I’ve always had trouble with making readers feel emotion. One of my greatest weaknesses.
haha, looks like there’s a lot of us. I’m twelve.
same here.
14. I’m wanting to write a short story, problem is I don’t know what to write about.
I’m twelve also and an aspiring author. Thanks for the tips. In my book I am working towards killing the main character in an emotional way, and this is very helpful for it.
I’m almost 12! I’m currently 11 and I was struggling to write the perfect thing. I was bored one day so I found this one show on tv and it showed a person being dropped out of a window and it showed sweet flash backs of the main person with the person who went out the window. It was so heart breaking that it inspired me but I didn’t know how to write it. Now I do though!
15. I mostly write fanfics, and this is one of the most crucial part of a fic – making readers feel emotion. Thanks for putting this up.
*snarls* “Great, now there’s competition.”
(lol, jk, I’m 14 too)
me too, i’m fourteen too!
Same! I am 15, and I have problems with dialogue. My characters tend to be distant. I am really trying to work on that, making my characters stand out in unique, memorable ways that will stick to the reader throughout their day.
\Im only 12 and I love writing. my first trilogy has actually been accepted by a publishing company. but this article was really helpful gives me a lot of insight
HJ, I wish you great success with your writing career. I hope it proves enjoyable and challenging and profitable. Something to help you achieve your goals is to write often and read more often.
I’m glad this article was helpful for you.
thank you so much…..this blog help me so much in my thesis…..i hope you will continue making such a useful info’s
Earl, I hope to continue with the blog for a long, long time. I’m glad you found info useful for your thesis.
I just found you and thanks, I was looking for exactly this advice.
Chuck, I’m glad you found the information you were looking for. You are most welcome.
I am also an aspiring writer at the age of 17, and I’m currently writing my first novel. I’ve attempted a few times before, but I lacked any engagement with my characters and there was certainly not a variation of emotion- all doom and gloom! However, I’ve found that with planning, reading and writing everyday, the quality of my work is really improving. (I’m well into Chapter 13).
I can’t thank you enough for this post- very helpful! Often, you find yourself wanting to say so much, but don’t quite know how to in order to ensure the reader’s empathy. I want the reader to really FEEL in the more tragic scenes. (One of which involves the main character losing her mother).
I will definitely be trying these tips! Thank you so much!
Abbey, I wish you success upon success as you continue to write. I can verify that yes, as you write and practice and write some more, the quality of your work will improve. You also obviously already know that there’s more to writing than simply doing it—if you’re looking at writing sites online, you know there are tools available to strengthen your skills. I’d say you’re off to a great start to your career.
I encourage you to write and study and live a full life.
You are most welcome for the tips.
Thanks so much! ^^ I’m fifteen, working on my first novel. It’s a dystopian, and I saw the Hunger Games today and wanted to play into my readers’ emotions like that movie did.
Kim, I wish you great success with your writing. There’s nothing better than putting that first manuscript together. Here’s hoping you have fun as you work it all out.
This has been the best advice for writing i have every found. Thank You!!!! I have a narrative writing due soon and whatever i write sounds like a report. I’ve read many books that have such strong emotion and have touched me but i just can’t write like that. This has really helped me write the conclusion for my narrative writing… now i need to come up with the beginning.. ^-^
Thanks again!!!
Chloe, I’m very glad you found something here to help. When chapters and events read like reports, it helps to step away from actions and move to feelings or thoughts.
Another trick that might help in the short-term is to write a handful of long, long sentences, sentences you might never use. Get out of the pattern of she did this, she did that that comes out rat-a-tat-tat in short sentences. Change the sentence flow. Change the focus of the moment.
I wish you great success with your writing.
I am an aspiring writer by the age of thirteen, I am most experienced at fantasy and has studied ancient and medieval history both at home and in school for the last three years which had greatly helped in my writing. I am currently writing the third draft of my first novel. Yes, before reading this article, I showed my drafts to some of my friends. I had them feel for my characters at some points, but I want the protagonist’s journey to be perilous and will leave him mortally wounded both inside and outside. How do I show that?
Mark, congratulations on not only completing a novel but on your dedication to strengthening it. You are well on your way as a writer. And you’ve asked a great question.
First, I’m going to ask if you truly mean mortally wounded. That would indicate the protagonist will die from his wounds. I’m guessing that instead you merely mean severely wounded both physically and emotionally. (If he really does die from either the physical or emotional wounds, most of what I include here will still apply.)
For the outside, you could show him recovering from the injury—taking medicine, going through physical therapy, having other characters react to the damage and even to the scars as he heals.
For the inside, you could show a change in personality, whether that means being uncaring toward anyone and anything or, conversely, being more caring and tender toward a particular group (such as victims of crimes or burn victims). You can show him shutting down when before he was outgoing. You could have him unable to sleep, maybe repeatedly pulling an object out of his pocket, something that speaks to his emotional wound. Such an object could be the ribbon of a girl he failed to save or a pebble he picked up on the beach that reminds him of his loss.
He could lock himself up inside his home or head off alone, without his best buddies. He could visit a cemetery but be unable to cry over the grave of someone he lost. Or maybe the cemetery’s the only place he can cry.
You can also show both wounds through the eyes and words of others. They can say they’re worried about him or point out the odd behavior. They can try to devise ways of bringing him back into the regular world, ways that backfire when he turns on them, people who were always his friends.
He can give away a fortune or something dear to him, something that shows his priorities have shifted.
Such wounds, if they do change someone inside, often change behavior. And they make what used to be important unimportant. Look for ways to have him act in ways contrary to what used to be normal behavior.
You can also make him non-communicative until he just can’t stand the encouragement of others and then have him blow up, going crazy on his friends. Again, think of behaviors contrary to what he would have done before being wounded.
Many people turn to drink or drugs when catastrophes overwhelm them. I don’t know what age you’re writing for or if such a thing would be appropriate for your story, but he could always think he’d like to drown his sorrows, even if he didn’t know where to score drugs and had no access to alcohol. If he couldn’t find drugs or alcohol, or if he did try them but they weren’t successful in making him forget what had happened, he could see that as another failure, another way he wasn’t like the rest of the world.
You’ve got lots of options. See if some of these suggestions don’t get you started. If not, let me know and we’ll see what else might work.
I am 71 and I am starting to write a novel. Your tips are very useful for me.
I laugh and cry by reading novels. I want to write a novel which should touch the hearts of others.
As I read through this, I read it as a mental checklist for my first draft of my drama/suspense story (written as a sort of skeleton for a graphic novel). Plot wise, I’m feeling proud of myself for knowing exactly where and how often I used these, but this post will definitely help me out with editing and better dialogue! Thanks!
Cay, I’m glad the article was helpful. I love that you know where you’ve included these kinds of items in your manuscript—you know your story well.
Good luck to you as you continue to write.
I am only sixteen years old, yet I want to become a writer or novelist! We have learnt a few of these techniques in English, and I recently got an A* in my creative writing piece! However I’m not sure I have the dedication to finish a novel the whole way through would hate the idea of me giving up on it unfinished, wondering if you have any tips? 🙂
A true writer would ask themself “If I a tossing is the storyline good?” If you answer no, consider changing the plot or adding in a couple of characters to stir the maim character. If you answered yes, then keep working at it and good luck 🙂 😉
James, I’m sorry. I must have missed this comment.
I would say to keep writing. Quitting is easy, especially when it’s time to rewrite and work through problems. But the only way to get through the problems is to work them out.
i started my novel when i was twelve, finished, when i was fourteen, realized it lacked emotion when i was fifteen, started rewriting it when i was sixteen, and here i am seventeen, practically finished the entire thing, and my readers think it really good. i recently passed my sixth anniversary of starting my novel.
so just keep writing. the better you get, the more dedicated and invested you become and the more likely you are to finish the work itself. and chances are if you’ve got an A in creative writing, you’re pretty good already and don’t need to undergo the arduous process i went through. and if you think its good, don’t be afraid to show it to friends, get them interested and get them to push you to finish. peer pressure works.
good luck.
Thank you for sharing these tips! I’m in the beginning stages of writing a novel and though only 13, I strive to be a pro! Inducing the emotion is what sells a good book, so I’m happy that I got some good tips to connect the readers to my story. I will definitely try these and see how it goes. Thanks again!
Amazing article. I’m only 13, turning 14 soon, and have just read this article. I am currently writing a book and was struggling to write a sad and emotional scene, but this article has changed my whole perspective of the view to come from.
Steph, I’m glad to have been of help. Sometimes we just need that nudge toward a different way of looking at something and then it all clicks. I wish you great success.
Thanks for posting this — many solid examples and methods. I’m looking forward to reading more on your blog.
Glad to have you here, Glenn. And I’m glad you found something useful.
Hi there. I’m a single mom soon to be 33. I take time when I can to write but mostly for fun so I’ve never published. I have a story idea that started simple but keeps evolving in different ways & has nearly become consuming to the point that my thoughts get carried away when I sleep. I just found your bogs today & wish I’d found it years ago. My story has multiple important characters since it involves a sizable family of I guess you could say paranormals. One character in particular is a comlplicated puzzle, I`m having trouble portraying him in a way that is mysterious, emotionless, serious, & quite difficult for others to understand or figure out, without making him seem boring or less important in comparison to other characters. Do you have any advice?
Tina, what about the character would be fascinating to other characters or the readers? Can you tease at that? What interesting events happened in his past that make him interesting? What about him would have readers wanting to know more?
You have to hint and tease so that readers need to know more. Teasing about a character keeps readers interested, and it keeps them thinking about the character.
If you don’t know this particular character’s back story, that’s where you should start. Figure out who he is and what he wants and how he plans to get it. Then use that information to make him an integral part of the story.
Who can he make alliances with? Who does he oppose?
You don’t want everything to be too obvious, but you will want to fold some of his life into the story. Everything that happened in his past affects his present and future. You’ve just got to create something interesting for his past that makes him interesting in the present.
I hope that gives you a place to start.
I had been concerned that using his actions to define him would not be enough since his siblings are defined by more than actions. I was concerned but your advice has given me better confidence in the way I’ve been writing. Thank you.
Thank you a very helpful article, I was aware of some of the points but had forgotten about the power of using simple everyday words. Also I hope my characters become more realistic after reading your post, as I have started to create cv’s of past life events for my characters.
I just wrote one of my characters having a terrible headache and now I have a headache(not that bad, but it’s kind of annoying). I also just want it to be dark since the light is making my character’s headache worsen.
If it affects me like that, is it good?(it’s the only reason why I don’t write my characters in extreme pain in first person)
Thank you so much for this advice! I’m researching this topic for a school project and it was hard to find sources about what I was looking for and when I did they all came to the same point. Your article was very helpful with different ways to communicate to the reader!
That was an amazing piece! Some of these techniques are new to me and they are surely improving my writing. I write stuff ever since I was nine and even though I’ve never finished one nevel (though I’ve started more than twenty) I feel like writing is what I like to do best. Besides, writing is a challenge to me because even though I’m from Brazil, I preter to write in English as I find it easier to express myself.
Thank you for this informative and helpful article. In such a short and apt manner, you have described what is most material in a successful script. It has contributed greatly in widening my perspective. Thanks again for imparting this great learning.
Incredible article! Thank you very much, great resource of information.
Great article.
Thank you!
Your tips is really good. Write in scenes, showing rather than telling, make a character sympathetic and move the story is important tips. Write from your happy place and write everyday is also important.
Thank you very much. This is very helpful ^^b
I’m applying these tips as best I can. How is this:
While he wrapped Merryn a second time in the chains, her eyes snapped open, and she stumbled down on the ground. She backed a way and managed to kicked Maxwell in the crotch. Her anger boiled to surface, she pushed her self away, and rolled her shoulder trying to move the chains. The vines begin creeping upwards, itching to break free.
“Do you honestly think that—”
Recovering quickly, he slapped her on the face hard, stunning her.
“Think? I know. I know everything about your kind. I know every weakness and fear. I’ve been after you for far to long now not to. You will suffer for killing my son.”
Maxwell wrapped the chains a few more times on her legs for good measure, and locked them. He picked her up, laid her on her stomach on top of the horses saddle. Jumping on the horse, he took off with his solders following him.
The guilt and sorrow of that day come back like a blast of light. Of the city melting to the ground .. an image that was blocked out snapped forward. A young boy of black ringlets, clutching his mother near the city entrance, their mouths opened.
They screamed.
She vomited inside the sack.
oops a typo. meant to say kick
Could you delete that first posting? I needed to revise it a bit. Thanks.
Try number two:
While he wrapped Merryn a second time in the chains, her eyes snapped open, and she stumbled down on the ground. She backed a way and managed to kick Maxwell in the crotch. Her anger boiled to surface, she pushed her self away, and rolled her shoulder trying to move the chains. The vines begin creeping upwards, itching to break free.
“Do you honestly think that—”
Recovering quickly, he slapped her on the face hard, stunning her.
“Think? I know. I know everything about your kind. I know every weakness and fear. I’ve been after you for far to long now not to. You will suffer for killing my son.”
Maxwell wrapped the chains a few more times on her legs for good measure, and locked them. He picked her up, while Jason held the large sack open. Maxwell tied the top. The enclosed space filled her with panic, and she squirmed. He laid her on her stomach on top of the horses saddle. Jumping on the horse, he took off with his solders following him.
The guilt and sorrow of that day come back like a blast of light. Of the city melting to the ground .. an image that was blocked out snapped forward. A young boy of black ringlets, clutching his mother near the city entrance, their mouths opened.
They screamed.
She vomited inside the sack.
I have two characters who have pushed and shoved and played all sorts of passive aggressive one-upmanship relationship junk on each other. I have rewritten the resolution so many times I was ready to go Hollywood. Her cracked ribs heal, they kiss in the moonlight, cue soundtrack. After this article I see that even though it is ratcheted up to the point of no return they can still hammer it out, if I can write it effectively, even if she ends up throwing a loaded tray of ketchup covered French fries at him in his restored ’64 Impala. Great post. Thank you.
Phil, I don’t know which would be worse—messing up the Impala or losing the chance to eat the fries.
Sounds like you’ve got your story in hand.
This is just what I was looking for to add depth to my characters and to help provide “The Hook” I want in the opening chapter.
I’m glad you found something useful here, Peter. Getting readers on board right away is a must.
This is pure gold. Back on to this post over and over again, still get new insight from it.
Adi, I’m glad to hear that the article is good for a second read. I hope it proves useful.
thanyou so much i have so many tests at the moment ,i have always wanted to be an author and this wil help me on my tests thanyou so much x
Greetings Beth,
What a valuable find! Your insight, guidance, and experience, is proving most helpful
and hopeful for fledgling authors. Thank you!
Very informative and helpful! I have a creative writing final due in a few days and was in need of some tips on how to provoke more emotion in my writing. This blog was explained and broken down very well, Thanks a lot.
Hi I have a book I am writing and I want my female character Clara to be hated by the reader now but I want the reader to feel sympathetic to her later in the book and hate the male character James which the reader will be sympathetic to in the beginning of the book.
What is a good way to do this?
Nathan, since all characters should have strengths and weaknesses, you just need to make sure you introduce both strengths and weaknesses, positives and negatives, for both characters early in the story.
Show Clara doing something horrible, without explaining why she does it. Maybe later in the story you can show that she was forced into the action in some way. Or later in the story you show her regretting what she did. But you also need to show something positive about her near the beginning of the story. Yet tilt the balance toward the negative.
You do the opposite with James, tilting the balance in the beginning toward his positive attributes while still giving him a hint of a negative.
You give both characters positives and negatives so that it’s believable when they change at some point in the story.
Characters can change suddenly, when they see the error of their ways. But a main character usually changes over time, not instantly. Thus the character arc of the protagonist shows the character changing over time and shows how and why the character changes—because of the events that he or she goes through.
You’ll have to play with different personality traits and behaviors and even thoughts so that you get readers feeling what you want them to feel, but don’t hesitate to give them the traits they’ll need at the end. Or at least a trace of that trait. Even killers love certain other people or love their country or support a cause—they might give blood or donate to a cancer charity.
You’d handle the details a little differently if one or both of your characters are hiding their true selves and only let their inner selves be seen near the end. So they aren’t what they seem to be at the beginning, they’re just playing a part. Readers will want to know they could’ve guessed that a character was pretending to be something he wasn’t based on clues you include. But you’ll want to go very light handed with those clues because you don’t want to give away the pretense too soon.
Plan for places throughout the story where you can purposely show both characters being themselves and being who they aren’t. As the story nears the end, start your shift. Show the characters doing or saying or thinking the way you need them to be at the end.
Change the words you use to describe them. Change the words they use when speaking to others. Use short and cutting sentences for the character you want readers not to like. Have the unlikable character interrupt the speech of others or be rude in other ways. Have him or her be selfish.
Does that help? There’s a lot you can do, but this shifting of the balance should give you a few more ideas.
I’m also writing a book; however it’s a non-fiction story, an authorized biography. I can see that many of these techniques would be useful in creating emotion for the person I’m writing about. Do you have additional, specific advice for non-fiction writing? It’s vital that readers be able to emotionally identify with with this person; otherwise, the book is pointless, and this is a story that has the potential to save lives. It needs to be shared. This is not my normal style of writing, so I really need help connecting the reader emotionally to my subject.
Hi friends,
I am a beginner. just started writing couple of paragraph for a fiction novel idea i had been having for a while. please review and suggest improvements.
Why do warriors have to suffer their pain silently?
Is it unbecoming of a warrior to cry even when one is in extreme pain?
Mara did not know what will happen to him once he gets inside the cave. He was sitting on the muddy ground at the right side of the cave waiting for his turn. There was no moon and the winter night was pitch-black. The fluttering flame of torch which was behind his back will soon be out. The swaying of trees, the rustling of leaves and the howling of wind were trying to subdue the all-encompassing silence. One of the “brothers of secret oath” Kuttuvan who had just come out of the cave was sitting next to him.
[Describe how he looks] Even in dim light Mara noticed that Kuttuvan was shivering. His clothes were wet. He was wearing wrap around cloth above his loincloth. His upper body was covered in cloak. He was also wearing turban. He was gasping heavily. His mother was sobbing and rubbing his back. She was blowing into his wounded palm to relieve the pain. The nauseating smell of burnt flesh meant that the wound was deep. His hands were shivering and his legs were shaking.
Mara and other “brothers of sacred oath” wear clothes similar to kuttuvan. Generally they carried bow, short sword and catapult, as weapons. Today they were stripped of them.
Thanks,
Akil
Thank you for this article! For the last four years now (from age 13 to 17, and I’m sure it will eventually be beyond that) I have been working on a fantasy novel. When I was 13 I started writing out a 19-chapter story that was all over the place, and I stopped writing it around 14.
When I realized how underdeveloped my plot really was, and what caused me to feel lost in the events of the story, like nothing was really happening, I fleshed out the characters more and got to know them better and why they feel the things that they feel, and I began to tediously whittle down a very vast and vague idea to a narrowed, more cohesive plot that I feel will work better than other not-so-cohesive plot lines that I initially came up with.
At this point in time, I think I’m getting somewhere with a more thought-out plot, and I think that I truly understand my characters now; their motives, their opinions of each other, and their feelings, and I have begun writing a new version of the story that I am pleased with. I have cared about my characters during all this time; I can’t seem to let them go! 🙂 (And I won’t, I don’t think, ever).
I think that I’ll return to this post again eventually to help me with the story as it progresses, because my characters are so rich and fleshed out in my mind that I want to do them justice when I articulate them and their experiences, and really connect them with the reader. Again, thank you!
most readers would find a story more interesting if they can feel moved by what they’re reading
An article that begins with I is deemed to never reaches the audience understanding, a more courteous approach by targeting how to benefit would be better aphrehended, as a hint never begin an article using the (first) pronoun
composed of one letter,
you can start by writing an article and then editing it to make a more beneficial version of the same article
a sister in humanity from a humble corner of the globe
WOW just what I was searching for. Came here by searching for emotion in fiction
These tips are so good! I’m currently writing a fanfiction of IU (Lee Ji Eun) on asianfanfics. I’m only 14 and totally not into kpop, IU being an exception.
IU’s music is one of a kind! She is a brilliant artist, lyricist, producer, actress, vocalist and the sweetest and cutest human being on the earth. Me being a Uaena and star candy (what IU calls her female fans) totally enjoyed reading this guide.
Thank you so much for your effort and putting oout there things like these which help people ^.^ I hope the best for you 🙂
If you have time, I suggest that you listen to IU’s albums, her dramas: Moon Lovers Scarlet Heart Ryeo, Dream High (her first ever drama where she starred in as a second lead) and My Mister.
You will totally not regret this decision ^^ IU is an angel
Check her out!
And again thank you for your effort. My story goes by the name of ‘The Mystery Of Love’ on aff (it’s still in works though)
Hi , so i’m 17 and my first language isn’t English but i will try to make my first novel which will probably involve lots of dukes, commoners and a young prince who is heir to an endangered kingdom
so i had probably no idea on how to actually write the scenes but after reading this i’m starting to understand how to do it properly
so , Thank you for everything !
Hello, I just want you to know that your article is very useful, for sure this can help me in my next writing project. Thank you for sharing.
This is one of the useful articles that will help to improve my writing skills. Thank you so much for sharing your information.
I really appreciate how inspire me by sharing this article with me. It will improve my writing skills in near future as I am trying to write non-fiction novel.
Thanks a lot for this piece. Any ideas on how to start the opening paragraph of my romance novel?