Monday, November 14, 2005
Writing EmotionI wrote my first book at the age of 21. It was a monstrous historical romance that weighed in as a 120k word door-stopper. Oh, I was so obsessed with this book. I was immersed in the story, caught up in the lives and emotions of the characters.
For three months I drowned in their world to the detriment of living in my own. My office was strewn with paper and open books for research. I fell asleep at night with notebooks and pens tangled the blankets. I woke with ink marks on my legs and arms and on the sheets. I nearly failed two of my classes in college that semester.
I cried when the love between my characters was thwarted. My spirits were buoyed when they prevailed. I thought this book would sell because it was so imbued with emotion. It had to be successful, considering the way my moods fluctuated so severely when I wrote it. Wouldn't it affect readers that way, also?
Years later, after the book failed to sell, I reread it. Where was all that lovely emotion I felt when I wrote it? It wasn't there! The characters felt flat, their romance bland. Could it be that even though I'd felt their emotion while I wrote the book, that I'd lacked the skill to convey it effectively on the page?
Yes, that was exactly what had happened. I could see and feel everything so clearly in my imagination, but I lacked the ability to translate it onto the page.
That book was my learning book. By rewriting it and rewriting it (and rewriting it), I learned from my mistakes and I learned about the craft of writing, most especially about writing emotion. To this day, writing emotion effectively remains my biggest challenge when sitting down at the blinking cursor.
Essentially, I had to learn to write emotion. It wasn't something that ever came naturally to me.
My first step in learning how to write emotion effectively came from observing and learning how other writers did it. I read constantly and analyzed every book that moved me. I highlighted passages and dogeared pages, studying how the author got to point A to point B.
I watched movies that moved me to tears. Untamed Heart, The Spitfire Grill, What Dreams May Come, Beaches, these are a few of movies that have me reaching for the tissue box. I took notes, being the geek I am, about how the actors and actresses portrayed emotion and how the story wrung it from the characters.
I figured out what the emotional triggers are in my own personal life and worked these elements into my fiction. Even though I write paranormals, there are things that are universal emotion-makers, no matter where in time, or what fanciful land the characters may live in.
The loss of someone close, the inability to conceive, the prospect of watching someone you care for suffer. These are three of my own personal emotional triggers that I have used in my fiction.
As a writer, it's a scary business to write from the heart. It can bring up demons you'd rather leave buried. But by tapping the core of universal emotional triggers, and learning how to convey them effectively in your fiction, the rewards are great.
