I am hesitant to include a lot of emotion in my writing. It seems too personal and leaves me feeling exposed. Maybe I don’t trust that the writing will ring true or even more worrisome, that it will be silly or cheesy.
It’s not that I have a burning need to write something devastating or overly sentimental but the act of writing really is baring one’s soul. Most of us just want readers to find something to connect with in our shared human experience. Theoretically I understand that, if well written, the emotional experience will belong to the characters.
Just go deeper.
This often heard advice for writers can have different meanings to each of us but for me it is encouragement to risk giving characters deeper emotional reactions to what’s happening to them. And in order to do that, I need to trust what Justine Muskdescribes in her article ‘5 Ways to Put More Soul into Your Writing’“Manuscripts often go wrong when they do not go far enough in mining the author’s experience for what is distinctive and personal. Ignore yourself and your story will be weak.”
“Manuscripts often go wrong when they do not go far enough in mining the author’s experience for what is distinctive and personal. Ignore yourself and your story will be weak.”
Worrying less about the unknown – how my writing will be perceived or judged, and instead expressing what I want to say is really the goal moving forward. There are no right or wrong emotional responses, only what is true for you.
Do readers like overly emotional scenes?
It occurred to me that readers may not want minute details of a character’s feelings or emotions especially around a heavy issue such as cruelty.
Author Jami Gold, in a 2012 article wrote: “If we’re too explicit with emotionaldetails, we corner thereader. A cornered reader doesn’t have any room to form their own reactions to a story and may purposefully try not to feel what we’re sharing with them.”
“If we’re too explicit with emotionaldetails, we corner thereader. A cornered reader doesn’t have any room to form their own reactions to a story and may purposefully try not to feel what we’re sharing with them.”
Jami goes on to explain that it’s useful to use a less deep point of view for uncomfortably heavy scenes and gives an example of this from J.K. Rowling’s chapter 34 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
“Harry enters the forest with his ghostly parents and friends to turn himself over to Voldemort. As readers, we know what Harry’s decision means.We understand his reasons, we know this will result in his death, and we see his strength in carrying through anyway.”
“J.K. Rowling didn’t take the route of heavy-handed melodrama with ‘oh woe is me’ thoughts from Harry. She kept this chapter very distant, almost numb, with lines like, “Harry understood without having to think.” That is, she didn’t state what Harry’s thoughts about this journey were. This restraint in stating the obvious gives us, as readers, the ‘privacy’ to experience our emotions our own way.”
So, we must strive for balance in being emotional enough to engage readers while leaving space for them to feel their own reactions. This balance may be tricky to achieve but I came across a few ideas to keep in mind:
- Slow down emotional scenes. Relay the character’s every thought and show their actions.
- Trust that the reader wants to go on an emotional journey with your characters.
- Resist the urge to overshare as it can tell the reader how to feel.
- Don’t skip over writing tough emotional scenes. Emotional truth will resonate with readers.
- Limit the use of physical reactions such as sobbing, making a fist or having red cheeks. It’s better to get to the reasons for the behavior such as sadness, fear, etc.
- Use of punctuation can add emotion to your words. Imagine how less expressive this Oscar Wilde passage would be without the exclamation marks: “Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel!
- Vulnerability can draw people in and create connections.
Vulnerability can be uncomfortable in many areas of our lives but putting ourselves out there can have rewards as well. It just takes practice.
I want to write from the heart so it’s worth taking the risk!
