Writing Stories with An Emotional Bang

Tears sell books.

It’s true. I don’t have any stats or evidence to prove this, but it’s just one of those fundamental truths. When we dive into a book, we want to explore the reality conveyed in that book, to become part of the story. This involves emotional involvement and without it, books get put down.

Creating emotional impact is arguably the single most important, and perhaps most difficult, aspect to writing fiction. Without it, the story is doomed from the start. I wanted to find what techniques I might employ to make my readers cry, scream, or even beam with pride.

Unsurprisingly, sprinkling emotion triggers throughout a story is a character driven process. Whether you’re writing a novel or a piece of flash fiction, the reader must be manipulated by the writer into caring for the character.

Your characters need to be normal everyday people going through some kind of relatable life event, just average people with flaws and weaknesses that make them vulnerable. You’ll want to make your good guys sympathetic and your bad guys unsympathetic. At the end of the story, your main character should have grown emotionally and have changed somehow by the overall experience.

Writing compelling characters, though, is a completely different (but critical!) topic. Instead, how do we take a compelling character and use it to evoke an emotional response in the reader? To get those tears, give these tips a shot:

Central Emotion

What is the major emotion you want to evoke from your reader? Once you’ve figured that out, you need to evoke that emotion within yourself. Is there a movie, documentary, poem, picture, object, etc. that makes you feel the way you want your readers to feel? Get into that emotional mindset before writing by using your trigger.

Now, dig deeper. What other emotions are you (and thus, your character) feeling? What secondary emotions are related to this central emotion? What tertiary emotions are related to those secondary emotions? For example, a scene where a scared protagonist shoots an intruder can lead to feelings of shame or perhaps pride. Focus on evoking the underlying emotions rather than the central emotion. This shows emotional depth and sometimes provides a source of internal conflict.

Perception

Mood reflects reality. If I’m in a good mood, I notice the good and beautiful around me and the opposite if I’m in a bad mood. By creating a scene that reflects the mood you wish to evoke, you set the emotion. When your character notices something in the scene, it should be something that someone experiencing that emotion would notice. I’m not going to notice how pretty someone’s flowerbed is when I’m being chased by a murderer.

Show Through Action and Response

Don’t tell the emotion, show it. By describing how the character is physically and mentally responding to an emotion you are conveying that emotion without explicitly defining it. If there are other characters in the scene, describe their reactions to the other character’s actions rather than telling us how they feel.

Anticipation

Drop hints of what the big, dramatic moment will be. Anticipation builds tension and tension is one tool to making a stronger emotional impact. We all know that A and B will end up together at the end, but tears flow when it happens thanks to anticipation.

Pace

Shorter paragraphs and sentences are fast-paced, great for action and thrills, and used to build intense emotions. Longer paragraphs and sentences should be used for calm, relaxed scenes and associated moods.

With these suggestions and plenty of practice, you should be writing emotionally impactful scenes in no time.

Happy writing!