How do you arouse emotion?

[Rich.]

Hi folks,

Emotion! [note the emotional punctuation – I'm swooning as I write this] How do you create it in your readers?

Today's BrainPick is brought to you courtesy of my four-year-old.

A child's observation to be applied to writing technique

There's a much quoted story about Ernest Hemingway's approach to writing to provoke an emotional response. He said you should always identify the concrete thing that caused the emotion, and then write about that. He talked about seeing a bullfight in which the matador was gored by the bull. Hemingway was understandably moved by this, and he wrote about it but wasn't happy with the words coming out until he remembered the bone sticking out of the matador's leg – the clean white bone. That, specifically, he decided, was what had affected him so, and that was what he wrote about.

Recently my kids and I watched Return of the Jedi. Afterwards my youngest said to me, "The Emperor is a bit scary."
"What's scary about him?" I asked.
"The bit around his eyes, the red bit just here" – points at the ridges under his eye sockets.

I think Hemingway was onto something...

What do you reckon? What, in your opinion, makes words stir emotions? Do you have a strategy for this? Is it something you've thought about?

 

[CageSage]

The specific ticket that punches the reader's empathic nerve. I've been there, felt that, know what it is. It can bring a reader to tears to see two words if it hits them in the right memory.

The words can be simple, the sentences plain, but the specific item that brings the memory of the reader to that moment of the story. Most people have suffered a broken bone, and some have seen a break where the bone breaks through the skin -- they can feel it.
The scary people are big and dark and speak loud (to a kid), but what's scary about the emperor to me? His extreme age and autocratic entitlement -- the world doesn't need that style of leadership, and we've probably all seen someone who could become that monster.

Well, that's my opinion.

 

[KateESal]

Yes, in relation to what @CageSage said, emotion is subjective...what touches one reader's heart may leave another unmoved.

That said, there are some safe bets in terms of events that have the potential to give rise to an emotional response. Deaths, especially of a loved one. The disgust response has a lot of tried and tested triggers.

Personally, I like to produce positive emotions in my writing if I can...and that can actually be harder to achieve. Humour is a favourite area, but it's not just about laughs.

My husband surprised me by shedding tears when he was beta-reading the YA novel I wrote because he was so moved by a moment when the frightened and desperate protagonist finally found an ally. This came from the cumulative effect of the story arc, I guess.

So, a genuine emotional response is often something that comes from vivid characterisation and a believable, absorbing narrative. As a reader, once you invest in the characters and what's happening to them, you're far more likely to feel, say, real happiness when, for example, they finally get together with their romantic interest. And that moment of euphoric closure is probably a lot of the reason why romantic fiction is so popular.

 

[Steve C]

Great topic. If we could master this we'd soon be selling books I find sound as well as sight to be useful. ie the crack of bones being broken or the whoosh of air that comes from a man being winded, the whimper of a crying man. Smell can be used to disgust- the odour of three-day old bodies left to rot. Most people haven't experienced any of these things but still react to the words

 

[RK Wallis]

I agree with @Steve C, great topic! How to elicit an emotional response in a reader fascinates me.

I think you must begin by knowing your audience and what triggers their buttons. They are the people who count, anyone else is a bonus, and anyone unaffected outside our intended audience shouldn't bother us.

A child or teenager or adult are never going to react the same way. If we understand our audience, we can begin to use methods that work on the readers that matter.

A key way to evoke emotion is to throw your protag into the path of conflict.

On a basic level, like @KateESal said, triggers can be death, or birth, or a kiss the reader has been waiting for, or the tension and suspense of sensing something about to happen but not knowing when, or betrayals, or the tension of a character doing something they shouldn't and making the reader wonder if they'll be caught (which of course they should be).

The strongest emotional reaction I've ever had was with Michael Crichton's The Lost World. We can learn from a master simply by reading him. The first half of the book is tame (except for a scene of warning), the second half of the book is intense. He put his characters into deeper and deeper danger. All of them. Then he upped the tension by putting one of the kid's in danger. That really got a strong emotional reaction from me. I actually had to stop reading (a few times), even though I didn't want to. I felt sick with worry. Once I calmed, I was straight back into the book.

Honestly, there are so many ways!

 

[Hannah F]

I also think you have to feel it when you write it. You are in the character's mindset so, if it's for tears (sad or happy), the words should make you cry. If it's disgust, the words should make you cringe. That should happen for at least the first two or three drafts. Line-editing makes us look at the scene through different (cold) eyes.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I think you must begin by knowing your audience and what triggers their buttons. They are the people who count, anyone else is a bonus, and anyone unaffected outside our intended audience shouldn't bother us.

This is the key. In heritage interpretation, we talk about the huge importance of knowing your audience and what things they will connect to--because you want to create an emotional response in your audience so they remember your message. We try to link the message with the emotion, by helping our audience remember times of great emotion in their own lives or evoking situations that trigger strong emotions. If you know your audience well, you can trigger a precise emotion.

We also talk about what to do when your audience is quite diverse, or you don't know much about them. Then we rely on what we call universal intangible concepts--ideas that everyone will have an emotional response to (though it may be different from the response we have). Universal intangible concepts are things like family, home, belonging, love, safety. In heritage interpretation, we're linking an artefact, resource, or place to the intangible concept. In writing, we're linking our characters and our plot to those concepts.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

It is in the roots, visceral. And quite possibly, fighting not to show itself.

 

[RK Wallis]

This is from my current read:

To become a writer, you first must be capable of emotional involvement. That is, you must feel, and feel intensely. Though you work with language, the words you use are only symbols . . . means to the end of communication of emotion. You can’t communicate that which you yourself lack. No feeling, no story.

Swain, Dwight V.. Techniques of the Selling Writer (p. 259). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition.

 

[CageSage]

No grave exists for her. No name would go on it if there were a headstone. There is only a space in my mind to recall the single moment she called for me, and the next moment, the longest moment, twenty-six years long, where now there remains only silence.

Those words bring me to an emotional crisis point every time.

 

[Rich.]

I find sound as well as sight to be useful. ie the crack of bones being broken or the whoosh of air that comes from a man being winded, the whimper of a crying man. Smell can be used to disgust- the odour of three-day old bodies left to rot. Most people haven't experienced any of these things but still react to the words

I think that's true. People can imagine, and it's our job to help them.

I also think you have to feel it when you write it.

I wholeheartedly agree!

--

I must admit, I'm always slightly sceptical (perhaps unfoundedly so) when it comes to the idea of knowing your reader. You can know their profile, sure, but their thoughts, their feelings, their logic and their drive? Not so much. There's a raft of psychology studies that show we tend to be very bad at figuring out what the other is thinking or feeling. Isn't that one of the reasons why we read fiction, to really get inside someone else's head?

So what to do? Write for yourself, I reckon, safe in the knowledge that if you feel it, others will too* – which, in my own head at least, takes us back to Hemingway in this thread's opening post.


* Finding those others, well... that's an entirely different question.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I caught my willie in the zipper of my jeans...that aroused instant emotion!

 

[Rich.]

Yikes! And indeed OUCH!

But the question is, how would you transmit that feeling to a reader, using only words on the page?

The pin-sharp bloom of a roaring furnace that tells you you've caught your willy in your zipper.​

 

[CageSage]

Perhaps the events that led to the effect ...

The best dress jeans, hadn't worn them for months. After all that effort, all that pain, they slid on like butter. I stood up, grabbed the jacket with one hand, and hefted the zip up with the other. The crunch of metal teeth as it cut through hair, the sting of sharp grinding as skin clogged the zip, the roar of pain that exploded through the balls to the willy to the gut to the chest to the back of the throat. I fell, face first. Groaned, held the pain in. Failed. Groaned. Stuck. Impaled. God, oh, God. How could I get them off?

Cause - carelessness, rushing. Effect - a painful lesson.

 

[Steve C]

Can we change the subject?

 

[Catherine Le Bars]

Yikes! And indeed OUCH!

But the question is, how would you transmit that feeling to a reader, using only words on the page?

The pin-sharp bloom of a roaring furnace that tells you you've caught your willy in your zipper.​

I think he already did, @Rich.

 

[Catherine Le Bars]

I often use supporting characters to guide an emotional response from the reader. It may not seek to evoke the same emotion as the said character's.
Equally, I will use their 'lack' of a reaction (to a clue or subtle flag) to distract the reader... don't tell anyone, okay

 

[Rich.]

...guide an emotional response from the reader. It may not seek to evoke the same emotion as the said character's...

This is a really good point. Often the reader's emotional response isn't that of the character. And you wouldn't want it to be – anger that inspires pity, affection that engenders embarrassment, confidence that raises fear. There's a whole other layer of emotional connection to the reader you've opened up for discussion here, Catherine.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I find that the most effective way to arouse emotions in the reader is to write something you’ve personally experienced. I’ve mined tragic, dangerous and amusing moments I’ve known, including depression, a suicide attempt, knife fight (blood is very slippery!), bereavement, loneliness, the excitement of artistic creativity, deceit, sexual delight and mistaken identity. Not all on the same day!

Such scenes ring true and evoked reactions in my beta readers.

 

[Rich.]

@Paul Whybrow, what you've sketched out above is the method acting approach to writing (which I use myself) – you dig into your own experience to find the appropriate emotion, and then you work that emotion into the scene. We may not have experienced the fear of being hunted by an alien monster, but we have all experienced fear. You take the real emotion and apply it to the fictional situation.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

@Paul Whybrow, what you've sketched out above is the method acting approach to writing (which I use myself) – you dig into your own experience to find the appropriate emotion, and then you work that emotion into the scene. We may not have experienced the fear of being hunted by an alien monster, but we have all experienced fear. You take the real emotion and apply it to the fictional situation.

Indeed, complete with tears....

 

[Steve C]

I find that the most effective way to arouse emotions in the reader is to write something you’ve personally experienced.

This may be where us oldies have an edge. We've done the rounds so have lots to recall. (or forget )