Can you feel the love (and all those other emotions, too)?

I guess I wasn’t alone this week in thinking about the emotional aspect of the stories we read and write.

I missed the AotP chat this week. (Darn it! I really love that chat!) However, in reading the transcript, I discovered that emotion and adding it to your writing came up in the chat, too.

Katrina made the following comment in the chat: “This article I read said the stories that really suck you in are the ones where you FEEL what the characters feel. You cry when they do, you feel their pain, and their joys. And I thought about the stories I love and realized she's right.”

I actually got there by thinking about character first and how I love those moments in books where my heart gets that rollercoaster jolt. You know the one – you feel like the car you’re riding in just crested the top of the hill and is now plummeting down a steep embankment with a sharp turn at the bottom. Your stomach drops and your heart races. And, really, you haven’t done anything except sit quietly and read a really great book.

So, yeah, it’s all about character – the most important part of a book (in my humble opinion). But it’s more than that – it’s about the emotion with which you imbue your characters.

Later in the chat, Samantha said, “the underlying emotional conflict is always more compelling than external conflicts.”

Again, I think that’s true. Some stories have great plots, but the characters don’t quite resonate. I’d like to hypothesize that those stories are missing some link in the internal conflict.

And then Roxy said, “The external problem causes the internal/emotional problems.”

And Katrina said, “Maybe the internal/emotional problems make dealing with the external conflict more difficult. They complicate things.”

Yes and yes and yes! I completely agree.

I thought I’d throw out a few examples.

In the novella Sun, Sex, and Sand, Linda Lael Miller’s story is called One Last Weekend. In it, the couple are on the brink of divorce and agree to spend one last weekend together at their beach cottage at the request of their lawyer, a long time family friend. When they become stranded, their long squelched passion erupts. At this point, Linda has done a good job of setting up their emotional conflict – not a marriage where they don’t love anymore, but rather one that’s been sorely neglected. Before they make love, the hero (Teague) looks at the heroine and implores, “Don’t be quiet, Joanna. Please don’t be quiet.” The words alone are powerful, but you can feel all the passion they’ve lost because they just let life get in the way. And readers can relate to the pressures that can cause married couples to coexist rather than exist together. (If you don’t know the difference between the two, you haven’t been married long enough.) And what's more, we can feel what Teague feels -- that desire to know they can both still live out loud and his doubt about it and his begging her to prove he's not wrong.

Another example is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Now, if you haven’t finished the book, STOP. Spoiler ahead.



Late in the book, Harry is dead (as far as anyone knows) and Voldemort has told the battle survivors to bow before him. And then one of my favorite characters, Neville, comes forward.

Let me pause for an aside here. I LOVE Neville. In the beginning of the Harry series, he’s a dumpy talentless boy. But as we progress, we see that he works hard and has talents others overlook. He is not an orphan but rather the child of parents who sacrificed their lives to fight Voldemort’s evil. Rather than the blessing of death at the hands of evil torture, they are spared to live inside minds destroyed by the evil lord’s most faithful servant. Neville is the heir of heroism, but he’s still just a dumpy kid who has to work harder than everyone else.

Now, if that doesn’t pull at your heart strings, you need to… well, stop reading because emotion has no impact on you.

Anyway, Neville comes forward and Voldemort disarms him. However, Neville still stands before him defiant. Even when the dark lord plays to Neville’s ego and flatters him, Neville isn’t interested. Through a short series of unfolding events, Voldemort sets Neville on fire, and chaos ensues. Neville proceeds to kill Nagini – the one request Harry made of Neville if anything were to happen to Harry. Neville doesn't seek life or vegence. He seeks to honor his word and to do the right thing.

What bravery! I got teary eyed just writing this. There are many more examples of flawed characters making sacrifices and choices that could and do have extreme consequences.

Rowling and Miller and a host of other writers, whose books litter my keeper shelves, roll the emotion into their books. They weave it tightly to character and plot and story arc so that we love, and laugh, and cry right along with characters we love.

So, yes, I’ve been noting the emotion in everything I read, noting the methods authors use to saturate their stories, and noting where it could have been done better.

And, yes, praying a little, too – praying that my books will make people laugh and cry and keep them turning pages all night long.

Macy