In my first essay in this series, I mentioned that reading Sarah Chorn’s The Necessity of Rain was a particularly emotional experience for me. I do highly recommend the book. And a lot of what happened as I read was a realization that came to me: I am not putting enough emotion into my writing! Sarah is my editor now (don’t blame her for these essays though—I post them unedited). And I learn more every time she edits a story or chapter.
So I bought Donald Maass’s The Emotional Craft of Fiction. I’ve already shared two different exercises Maass suggests for writers to deepen the feelings in their prose. In the first one, you choose an emotional moment for your protagonist, make a brainstorm list of emotions they could be feeling and specific reactions, then choose a detail in the setting for the protagonist to notice, and write the scene with the detail but using none of the emotion words (because you will show, not tell).
In the second exercise, you choose an emotional moment for your protagonist and then think of the layers of emotion. Do not go with the most obvious emotion, but choose the one three layers down. To do this, ask your character, what are you feeling? Then ask what else? Choose the third “what else.” Then write about it with four emphases: have the character objectify the emotion with an analogy, then make a moral judgment about it, then consider alternative emotions, and finally have them justify the emotion they feel (which might be a selfish emotion).
Now that I have summarized the first two essays in this series, it is time for the subject of this essay: realizing the importance of emotion in fiction.
The Importance of Emotion in Fiction
Maass says, “We experience life as feelings.” Today, I got annoyed by a slow driver. I chuckled at funny items while Christmas shopping with my wife. I felt sadness thinking about a recently bereaved family member. I loved seeing photos of our grandchildren. And I felt relief checking some people off my shopping list (because I got them a gift, not because I decided to eliminate them).
Then Maass delivers this impactful observation: “It’s funny, then, that so much fiction is written to minimize feelings or leave them out altogether.” He thinks many writers believe showing (or telling) emotions in the story is simplistic. Or they just don’t know an effective way to do it without interrupting the flow of the story. They’ve been told that modern fiction is all action and “keeping things visual, exciting, external, and changing.”
But writing with emotion will require some sentences and paragraphs where the “action” is internal and not visible. Won’t this bore the reader? Isn’t this the same challenge as describing the setting without putting readers to sleep. And because this seems like a big challenge, it’s easier to skip the deep emotion and keep everything on the surface.
Great Storytellers and Emotional Fiction
Maass assures us that it is possible to show the depth of emotion in a story without stultifying our readers. Part of the way great storytellers do this is to make emotion the core of the story and not an ancillary part of it.
And being good at writing emotion means we will have to grow in emotional intelligence ourselves (I’m not sure Maass makes this point specifically, but it keeps occurring to me). Skilled writers can make small emotions blossom into gardens of feeling. And they can engross readers in the emotional world of the characters.
I know he is right because Sarah Chorn did that for me. And other writers have as well, her book simply brought this issue to my mind in a powerful way because she soaked her story in layers and depths of emotion.
So, in future installments, I will get back to a focus on “how to.” I simply wanted to pause here for some motivation. We need motivation to improve the emotional side of our craft. It would be easy to ignore the challenge and stay as we are.
But we are writers. We don’t have to write stories. We do it for love. And when you love something, you work at it!
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