Finding Emotional Resonance

I've been studying emotional resonance lately. I've noticed in my own writing that sometimes I write something that I felt was emotionally powerful, but then I come back to it a few weeks later, and it just falls flat. Which is, of course, sucksville.

HOW TO FIX IT!

First off, read this. This article was super helpful to me. I love how she talks about the limbic system, where emotions come from and how to trigger them.

TIP #1-- Emotion isn't created, it's triggered.

The reader has to bring their own emotion to the words in order to feel emotion.

 "Flannery O’Connor once said that as writers, we can’t create emotion with emotion. We have to provide it with a body; we have to create a world with weight and extension."

So the first step of creating emotional resonance is to think of what emotion you would like the readers to feel, and then pepper the world with clues and an underscoring of details that trigger that feeling. I tried to do that here in this passage from The Waxling.

A girl bit her chipped fingernails as she walked down the aisle, her bag catching on the vinyl bench in front of me before it let go. I flinched as it slammed into my shoulder. Her heavy bag dragged against the corner of my seat before it swung backward like a pendulum. The kid behind us grunted, but didn't say anything. Some kids in the front of the bus were fighting over something stupid, while the driver eyed them from the large mirror. The cloying smell of exhaust filtered in from under the rumbling bus as we waited for the bus to close its accordion doors and take us home.

At this point in the story, I want the reader to be feeling some dread, and anxiety, as I start to pick up the pace. So I chose a location where a teenager might feel anxiety. I.E. on the bus.

In movies, they use music to underscore the emotion. But we don't get a soundtrack to intensify a heartbreak, or speed up an action scene. But we have something better. The words we use act as music. We can write with short staccatto sentences, or long lyrical ones. We can use specific words that are tied to a feeling. In this example, I used details that put me a bit on edge (Chipped fingernails, grunts, rumbling bus, smell of exhaust, accordion). These small details are almost an underscore of what I'd like the reader to feel.

TIP #2-- The bigger the emotion, the smaller the detail you focus on.

Think Mulan.  Do you remember that scene where her troop arrive at a destroyed village? They were supposed to protect them, but they were too late. 

The music stops. And it never really starts again. It's a moment that changes the rest of the movie.

There's a huge emotional moment here, and they show this moment by having Mulan pick up a small dirty doll. Now the focus point of the tragedy is the loss of one little girl, which seems more manageable than hundreds of unnamed people.

So when you have a major emotional moment, focus on something small. A dapple of light. A freckle on someone's nose. The smoke from a gun recently shot. 

TIP #3-- Telling creates distance.

This is the tricky one. I think this is the difference between watching someone cry, and being the person who is crying. Obviously our goal as writers is to create as much emotional damage as possible, so in moments of severe emotion get in as close as writerly possible.

But also don't just circle in on your own emotion. It's not story telling if you are the only one who gets to feel it. Find the light, look downstage, and share it with your audience.

Michael Caine wrote a book on acting, and in it, he talks about whenever there's a big emotional moment, he gives a blank face. The story and the character motivation before the moment should clue the reader in on how the character is feeling. so when the zoom in comes, he freezes at full tilt. He holds still. He gives space for the moment, and the audience supplies the emotion.

This doesn't mean he steps away from the moment. He's still there, with energy, tense face muscles. and tears in his eyes, but he doesn't over shoot the emotion. He's British, but he's still human. The tears sparkle, but they don't fall.

I think this can apply to writing. 99% of the work that goes into an emotional moment happens long before the moment. It's the set up that will make the limbic system tingle.

TIP #4 -- Give objects meaning.

The first chapter of the Hunger Games we meet Butterball, the cat who hates Katniss, and loves Prim. It's just a cat, but his existence underscores one of the rules Katniss believes, that Prim is better than Katniss. There's no jealousy attached to this, it's simply a guiding truth of who she is. Katniss believes for the good of the world that she should die before Prim. That belief is the reason Katniss volunteers as tribute, it's tied to her overarching motivation as a character, and becomes a truth for her, that when she loves someone she has to die before they do.

And Butterball is the first clue to that motivation.

In the final book, when Katniss has to tell Butterball that Prim isn't coming back, it's so HUGELY powerful of an emotional moment. In reality, it is a girl talking to a cat, but because of all those truths and emotions tied to that object, it is a killer sob-your-eyes-out kind of a moment. It's her admitting that she failed. It's her acknowledged the loss to the world, and to her world, because Prim is gone. 

If you attach meaning and motivation and truth to an object, then it becomes more than just a cat, more than just a wardrobe, or a ring, or a book, or a song. The object could be anything, the important thing is the work you do before the moment attaching meaning, and utilizing that object for a big emotional moment.

Essentially, it's about giving us something to look at while we are sobbing.

TIP #5 -- When in doubt, make it rain.

Go forth and cause emotional damage, people!
~Sheena

Helpful links:
http://art-of-stories.com/writing-emotional-impact/
http://allwritefictionadvice.blogspot.com/2012/12/giving-your-writing-emotional-impact.html
http://theprosers.blogspot.com/2012/03/creating-emotional-resonance.html
http://theprosers.blogspot.com/2012/03/newspaper-sourced-instruction-to.html

Those Sobbing Characters

This is going to be a short post today because of Thanksgiving in just a few days.  I still have lots to do, and I want to sleep. 

Anyway, this is a topic I’ve been thinking about off and on since I heard this quote from Orson Scott Card.

“If your characters cry, your readers won’t have to; if your characters have good reason to cry, and don’t, your readers will do the weeping.”

I understand the reasoning behind this advice.  Crying may seem like an easy way to show emotion and elicit an emotional response from the reader, but it doesn’t work and in fact, can make the character annoying if he/she cries too much.  Crying itself isn’t enough to show the emotion, the reader needs to feel the buildup of emotion and the reasons behind it.  In other words, it is more important to focus on the internal emotion of the character and not just use external cues to express it. 

But this advice bothers me for three reasons.

1.   I don’t like advice that speaks in absolutes.  While it may be best to avoid crying, there are going to be moments when crying is the right response.

2.  It feels a little calculating, as if this advice suggests that the writer tries to manipulate the reader into a specific emotional response.  I understand that storytelling is usually about forging an emotional connection with the reader, but I think that emotional bond should come honestly.  Personally, I try to capture the authentic emotional response of the character, and if the readers connect with the character, they too should feel it. 

3.  It reinforces the idea that crying (even in real life) is wrong and/or a sign of weakness.  There is definitely a preference for the emotionless, stoic characters.  These characters are believed to be stronger than their more weepy counterparts. As an emotional person who, I think, is strong, this perception drives me nuts.  Crying is a healthy, natural reaction to stress, fear, and grief.  From my experience, a good cry can relieve all those negative emotions and leave my mind clear to focus on the course of action that needs to be taken.  I get strength from crying; sometimes I even feel empowered by it.  It is a release.  I wish more books would portray crying in this way rather than showing a sobbing character falling apart.  I think we need to change our social attitude in regards to crying, and the best place to do that is in stories.

Crying in stories does need to be limited.  If a character cries in every scene, it does become annoying and it also loses the emotional impact.  But I do not think that crying should be eliminated completely.  Just show the emotion behind the tears and use it sparingly.  Like everything else, there needs to be balance.

So I’m curious, please share your thoughts on characters who cry.

~MaryAnn

 

 

Emotional Payoffs

There are about five movies that I will always sit down and watch, over and over again.  One of them is Titanic.  I love that movie.  It’s got romance and action and set in one of the most fascinating and tragic moments in history, and I’m a little shy to admit it, but I love, love, love, “The Hearts Will Go On” theme song by Celine Dion. 

SPOILERS (but really who hasn't seen this movie?)

But there is one scene that grates on me every time I see the movie.   It is when Rose gets on a lifeboat, and as she is lowered from the sinking Titanic, she looks up at Jack and jumps back onto the ship.  I understand that it is supposed to be a great, emotional moment, showing that Rose is choosing Jack.  She is choosing to stay on a sinking ship just to be with him.  She is giving everything up, her wealth, her privilege, her safety because she loves him too much to leave him.  I think it is supposed to be a great romantic moment, but I hate it.  It is the one flaw in what could’ve been a perfect movie.

The reason this moment is so passionately despised by me is that in that one action Rose essentially kills Jack.    In the end when Rose and Jack are in the water, he dies of hypothermia because there is no room for him on the slab of wood.  If Rose had stayed on the lifeboat, Jack could’ve had the slab, and he would’ve been the one who was pulled out of the icy water.

I would forgive Rose for killing Jack if her actions had been noble, if she had given her spot to another passenger, but she doesn’t.  She gets on the lifeboat and then changes her mind about being saved and jumps off when it is too late for someone else to take her place.  Rose knows that there aren’t enough lifeboats that half the people on the ship are going to die, and yet she takes a spot and then leaves it, without thinking about how she selfishly stole a chance from someone else to survive, like one of those little children that died with their mother (that scene was heartbreaking).

That scene could’ve so easily been rewritten so that Rose either nobly gives her seat to someone else or doesn’t have the option of getting on a lifeboat after she saves Jack from the brig.   Plot-wise there was no need for that scene.

But I doubt I’m seeing something that James Cameron didn’t see.  He is a master story teller.  His skills are way beyond mine.  He has written/directed/produced some of my most favorite movies of all time.  I seriously doubt that if he somehow magically came across this blog post he would think, “Wow, this chick has a point.  Why didn’t I or the other hundreds of other people working on this movie realize that Rose basically kills Jack?"

So why would James Cameron choose to have Rose jump back onto the ship?  I’ve never asked him nor have seen or read anything about him discussing this, but I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think I’ve got a decent answer. 

It is all about emotional payoffs.

Sometimes logic needs to take a backseat in storytelling (not always, just sometimes).   Stories, for the most part, are an emotional experience, and anything that gives an emotional payoff takes precedence over logic.

I read this blog post by writer Alexandra Sokoloff a while back on “What Makes a Great Climax.”  In this post, Alexandra talks about the ending of the movie Jaws (SPOILERS).  

It is powerful ending, where Sheriff Brody is hanging off of the mast of a sinking boat with his gun and Jaws is coming right at him, chewing on the oxygen tank.   Brody shoots at Jaws aiming for the oxygen tank but keeps missing until the shark is almost upon him and then he shoots the tank and Jaws explodes.

In her post, Alexandra talks about how author of the book and co-screenwriter of the script Peter Benchley reported arguing with Spielberg over the ending.  Benchley thought the shooting-the-oxygen-tank death of Jaws was completely implausible, that audience wouldn’t buy it.  But Spielberg believed that if he drew the audience in on this emotional journey that they would go with it, that they would trust him.

I’m going to quote Alexandra directly here because I love how she worded this in her post. 

“Spielberg paid that movie off with an emotional exhilaration rarely experienced in a story. Those characters EARNED that ending, and the audience did, too, for surviving the whole brutal experience with them. Brilliant filmmaker that he is, Spielberg understood that. The emotion had to be there, or he would have failed his audience.”

So maybe blowing up a shark by shooting at an oxygen tank he just happens to be munching on isn’t the most plausible way to kill a shark, but there is a huge emotional payoff there, in seeing the shark that had tortured Brody and killed and maimed his friends die in such a dramatic way.  It doesn’t have to be logical as long as it delivers the emotional payoff that the audience wants.  Honestly, I think that scene was brilliant.  It certainly worked for me.

I think that is the reason Rose had to jump from the lifeboat back on to the Titanic.  That was a big, emotional moment, and the scene needed to be big and emotional.  Rose needed to make that choice, choose to be with Jack and give up everything to be with him, and if she had missed the lifeboats, she wouldn’t have been able to make that choice.  And if she had given her spot on the lifeboat to someone else, that moment of choosing Jack wouldn’t have been dramatic enough.   It was the turning point of her character arc, and that moment had to be big. 

If you are on the emotional journey with Rose, you’re not supposed to be thinking about her taking someone else’s spot or how Jack might have survived if she had stayed on the lifeboat.  You’re just supposed to be relieved that she chose Jack over Cal and her mother and that soulless life of wealth and privilege that was destroying her spirit. 

I think the take home message here is that there are those moments that need to be emotional and need to be big to give the audience or readers the emotional payoff that they are waiting for.  And these are the times when logic sometimes has to step aside because the story comes first, and you have to do what is best for the story even if it isn’t what is most logical.  Of course there will be readers who might be annoyed with the lapses of logic, but those are the ones who are not emotionally invested.  You need to give that emotional payoff to your readers who are.

So tell me, did that scene in Titanic bug you too or were you too emotionally invested to think about it?

~MaryAnn

WhatIf

You've met the subject of today's post before. So have I. 

WhatIf has been an acquaintance, a hanger-on, and sometimes a friend of ours for years and years.  WhatIf  is the lifeblood of every writer, every child, and the first step of any pursuit. 

Walking down the street your child asks, 'WhatIf I walked on the sky and looked up at the sidewalk?'

A businessman thinks, 'WhatIf I made a product that did X instead of Y, and far more effectively, too?' 

A couch potato watches runners go by and wonders, 'WhatIf I could to that?'

WhatIf is a powerful force in our lives. It sparks the imagination, ignites ideas, and lets us see the world in a different way. It drives us to change.

Curiosity, observation, and consistent practice help us cultivate and nurture the positive side of WhatIf.

Sometimes, though, despite our best intentions, WhatIf decides to veer off the productive path and go all negative on us.

WhatIf  you can’t get your novel to come together the way you want? 

Better let it stew longer.

WhatIf you've been raising your child/cat/houseplant all wrong, and they'll be in therapy for the rest of their lives because of you?
Must scour the internet for more advice...  

WhatIf you’ve 'wasted' years of your life on something you love but it will never be recognized by the world?   

Years that could have been spent, uh, playing Tetris instead?

Remember the raven from Edgar Allen Poe, crying ‘Nevermore, nevermore?’ Well, when WhatIf gets all overbearing on me, I sometimes imagine it as one of Poe's birds, just as sinister, only slightly more batty - cerulean blue, with stork legs, rhinestone glasses and a tuft of feathers poking out from the top of its head. From its perch on my shoulder, it cranes its ungainly neck, peering out at the world and whisper-squawks in my ear, “Whatif, whatif? You'd better not try.”

I'd really rather have WhatIf as an imaginative ally than a defeatist saboteur, so here are a few things I've found that help keep it in its proper place:

Think it Through

If worry over a possible outcome is paralyzing you, give in to the evil side of WhatIf and think of the worst possible result you might face. 

True Story: You decide to make ooey-gooey homemade donuts, and because you’re the generous sort, you decide to send a dozen to the neighbors. The kids are already out the door with the plate when you realize that your neighbor’s told you (more than once) that half her family is gluten intolerant. 

The WhatIf bird starts ‘Ack, ack, acking’ on your shoulder, your palms get sweaty, your brain starts in with the ‘you’re so stupid’ routine – 

And you stop. Okay, let’s imagine this through.  

The kids get to the neighbor’s door. They ring the bell, and all smiley they hold up the plate of donuts – and the neighbor’s nostrils flare, her hand jumps to her throat. “How could you?” she shrieks. “You know that will kill half our family, don’t you? Don’t you?”

Preposterous. And you brush that WhatIf bird off your shoulder, laughing, and realize that your neighbor will probably see your good intentions, even with your little goof. And the non-gluten intolerant half of her family will be happy to have twice as many donuts to eat. 

Things are rarely as bad as WhatIf can make it out to be.

Baby Steps

As Bill Murray says in ‘What About Bob’ (one of my favorite movies), baby steps, baby steps. That WhatIf bird may have had its claws in you a long time and has probably stopped you from moving forward on a lot of things you'd really like to do. I appreciate the twelve step programs that emphasis ‘just for today.’ Or if you can’t manage that, just for this hour, or this minute.   

Get past the first page...or paragraph...or word on a project. 

Force yourself to get on that treadmill...or go stand in the exercise room...or at least put your hair in a ponytail  - because you will work up to exercising soon.

Build Momentum

Use WhatIf as a compass. The thing that's so hard for you to begin doing, may be the very thing that will bring you the most satisfaction in the end. 

So, keeping that in mind, once you’ve taken the first baby step, don’t rest. Take another step. It might not get easier (Henry Fonda threw up before every performance because of nerves - every single performance, even into his 70's) , but those steps will get you farther toward your dreams than you are now.

 

Put Past Performance to Good Use

WhatIf your rough draft is awful and you can never make it good enough? 

WhatIf you can't ever figure out how to solve the problem you're facing, not in a million years? 

Whatif…

Stop and realize that you’ve dug yourself out of messes before. Things have always, always gotten better. Why shouldn’t they this time? They will. You know they will.

I suppose my silly WhatIf bird is really anxiety in disguise. I’ve often thought of anxiety as the evil twin to depression (which Melanie talked about so eloquently here).  And I think both can be equally detrimental to writing and life. 

 But...it doesn't have to be that way. So tell WhatIf to pipe down and behave. You have something to offer this world that no one else can ever give it.

~Susan

Writing Emotional Tension

So I found this post, Anatomy of a Tear Jerker, from the Wall Street Journal, really fascinating. It explains scientifically why so many people have an emotional reaction to Adele's song, Someone Like You. The key to it, and other songs like it, seems to be an  appoggiatura (yeah, I didn't try to pronounce it either), which is a note that is dissonent with the expected progression of the music. In other words, it's a chord that's out of place, and when the song returns to the harmonious melody, it actually causes a release of tension in the listener. When multiple appoggiaturas are stacked one after the other, it has the effect of raising tension and releasing it in an ever heightening pattern.





Sound like something we learn about in writing, doesn't it?

I've mentioned before that I use the outlining method of Helene Boudreau  (author of several novels including Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings).

The way she structures her climactic scenes reminds me very much of the appoggiaturas from the article. Briefly, her stories are split into 17 sections, with the inciting incident in chapter 1, plot point one in chapter 4, pp2 in chapter 7, and pp3 in chapter 10. All that is fairly routine.

This is where it gets interesting to me:

Chapter 11 or 12: False Victory - a resting place for emotions, may even be lighthearted
Chapter 13: Lighting the Fuse - introduction to the stressor
Chapter 14: Watch it Burn - the dominoes start dropping
Chapter 15: Kaboom - finally we see the culminating event
Chapter 16: Denouement - letting all the tension out
Chapter 17: Resolution


Before finding Helene's method, I had never considered how important a long build-up was to the climax. Since then, I've found this pattern employed over and over in smaller plotlines of stories as well as in final confrontations.

Here's an example of its use in a subplot from the Hunger Games:

False Victory - Katniss has allied with Rue. They help each other, they have plenty to eat. Katniss sees Rue as a surrogate for Prim on so many levels. They even have enough confidence to hatch a plan against the Careers - things are working out, there is a lull in the tension.

Lighting the Fuse - After the bomb blast damages Katniss's hearing, she makes her way back to the rednezvous camp. Rue isn't there. Something not quite right, but Katnniss isn't really worried yet.

"When I reach the site of our first meeting, I feel certain it's been undisturbed. There's no sign of Rue, not on the ground or in the trees. This is odd. By now she should have returned, as it's midday... She's probably just being cautious about making her way back. (HG, p 229)

Watch it Burn: Katniss eats and hangs out, even saying, "...this is the most relaxed I've been since I've entered the arena." But finally, she goes in search of Rue.

"In less than an hour, I'm at the place where we agreed to have the third fire and I know something has gone amiss. The wood has been neatly arranged, expertly interspered with tinder, but it has never been lit... Somewhere she ran into trouble. I have to remind myself she's still alive." (HG, p 231).

The dominoes are dropping.

 "And that's when I hear the scream. It's a young girl's scream, there's no one in the arena capable of making that sound except Rue. And now I'm running, knowing this may be a trap, knowing the three Careers may be poised to attack me, but I can't help myself." (HG, p 232)

Kaboom: We are in full panic mode.

"When I break into the clearing, she's on the ground, hopelessly entangled in a net. She just has time to reach her hand through the mesh and say my name before the spear enters her body." (HG, p232).

And by this point on the first read (okay, and the second, maybe the third) I was bawling my eyes out because the build-up of emotion through those stages was so strong. Do you notice, too, how there's a brief moment of hope - 'Oh, it's just a net, Katniss can get Rue out of that,' we all think - that hitches the emotion all the more when that spear comes out of nowhere and kills Rue?

Denouement: Katniss removes the threat (by killing the boy), and then that aching scene where she sings until Rue dies. The emotion is just flooding out by this point.

Resolution: She covers Rue's body in flowers, both to bury her and to shame the Capitol for what they make children do to one another. We begin to feel the strength of her resolve and understand that she's now fighting for more than her personal survival.

Okay, I've never been good at summarizing things and wrapping them up with a pretty bow. But here goes: Taking the time to allow a climax to unfold provides a more emotionally satifying experience for the reader. This unfolding includes the early signs of tension and trouble, as well as spending enough time on the aftermath to allow the reader to process the event before moving on to the next. In this way the reader can become fully invested in the action and feelings of the characters. And by employing these steps throughout a story in smaller plotlines, it gradually heightens the emotional level of the entire piece until the final climactic scene.

Book Review: The Emotion Thesaurus

I don't know about you, but when I edit, one of the things that really makes me cringe is all the repetition I find trying to show emotion (how many times can my characters sigh, shrug, or look away, anyway?) So, when I  ran into a post about The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi  over on Inkpagent, I immediately had to check it out.

I have the Kindle version, and so that's what I'll be reviewing.

The Set Up

The Emotion Thesaurus includes a brief, but effective, section titled, "Techniques for Writing Nonverbal Emotion." It covers a broad range of topics such as dialogue, the proper use of inner thoughts and avoiding cliched emotions.

This is followed by another brief section explaining how to use the emotion thesaurus


The Main Course

The Emotion Thesaurus contains 75 emotions listed in alphabetical order from Adoration to Worry.
In the Kindle version, each emotion has it's own link in the table of contents taking you directly to the page.

Each emotion is broken down into five sections:

Physical Signals - often more than 30 listed per emotion
Internal Sensations - dry mouths, racing pulses, it's all there
Mental Responses - daydreaming, scheming, those things that run through the mind
Cues of Acute or Long-Term Emotion - this includes links to other related emotions
Cues of Suppressed Emotion - I love this one, so good for hinting w/o everyone knowing.

Each section also includes a writer's tip.

My Take

I highly recommend this book. It's such an amazing resource. Just browsing through it opened my eyes to so many ways I could be beefing up my writing. And when I'm in the zone and really need to find that perfect way to express something, being able to flip to the topic keeps the muse flowing (whereas before, things would often grind to a halt with me wondering, 'well, what would she do/think?')

The Emotion Thesaurus is available for $14.99 paperback, or $4.99 on Kindle and most other e-platforms. I swear I read somewhere that it was available PDF, too, but I'm not having luck finding the link back again.

Angela and Becca host The Bookshelf Muse, which I'm just starting to explore. It's amazing! They have even more thesauri including character traits, settings and even colors. They've been so free and generous with their time and advice.

I hope you'll take the time to look into this great writer's tool.

Creating Emotional Resonance

Sarah’s brilliant post on poetry got me thinking, especially her number one reason for blogging about poetry: “All writing seeks to elicit emotions in the reader. Poetry just does it efficiently.”

I agree with her. I think there is a lot that prosers can learn from poetry.

I must confess, I haven’t read a lot of poetry, hardly any since high school, and I’ve never really studied it. Most of the poetry I’ve read didn’t really speak to me. I appreciated the rhythm and figurative language, but for the most part, they did not elicit an emotional response.

But the few that did reach me on an emotional level, I really loved; I mean deeply and passionately, read-over-and-over-again-obsessively loved.

I think poetry more than prose either resonates with you or not. If you study the poem, you can appreciate it on a deeper level, but that won’t necessarily evoke an emotional response to it. We all have unique experiences, and sometimes a poem manages to tap into those experiences and put into words the perfect expression of those thoughts and feelings connected to it. When that happens, it is truly amazing. It shows you the real power of words.

My Experience

When I was young, our local zoo had a cat house. Where all the cats big and small were kept concrete cages with iron bars. Every time I went to the cat house, at least one of those big cats, the panther, tigers, or lions was pacing. And even as a child, I was entranced by power and grace of their strides, but there was something sad in it, that these sleek, formidable creatures had all this pent up primal energy, and their pacing seemed to be the only way to relieve centuries of predatory instinct. It was so sad, so powerful, so stunningly beautiful.

The Poem

Then in high school I was forced to read the poem The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke, about a panther pacing in cage in a Paris zoo. I was blown away. Rilke described exactly how I had always felt when I watched those big cats at the zoo. He expressed my experience, my emotion in a way that I couldn’t. He gave me the words to describe how I felt. And that was amazing, powerful.

Emotion in Story-telling

Story-telling is all about emotions. A horror story is trying to evoke horror; romance, love; suspense, umm suspense; fantasy, a sense of wonder (sometimes, not always). All try to form an emotional connection between the reader and the main character (although some stories to a lesser extent than others).

If, as a writer, you achieve that emotional response, the reader will not care about whether the story is realistic or if it has any plot holes. They are willing to suspend belief and let the story take them on an emotional ride. If you fail to establish the emotional connection, the story will be torn to shreds by the reader because no story is ever perfect.

The thing is that like poetry, not every story is going to work for every reader. That is why any book no matter how brilliant or well-written can be trashed by a reader who did not buy into it, even the classics. I can tear down a few classics myself because they did not work for me(although no one else may agree with me).

So, yeah, there is a subjective factor in creating emotional resonance with a reader, but that is not all there is to it. There are tricks that can be used to achieve it, and we can find those tricks in poetry.

Creating Emotional Resonance

Before I get into this, I want to say that I think that a lot of this is done intuitively. We don’t have to examine the poem or prose to feel the emotion in it. So most of the time, I think we can naturally add the right emotion to the story, but there are some times when it isn’t quite there, and these are the times to consider these tricks.

So in order to look at how to achieve emotional resonance, let’s examine the poem The Panther.

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.
It seems to him there are a thousand bars;
and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly--.
An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Stephen Mitchell

1. Sentence Structure and Rhythm- When this poem is read aloud, you can feel the rhythm in the sentences. It matches that of a pacing panther; slow, smooth, and steady. In the last stanza the rhythm and pacing changes just a little, this adds emphasis and emotion to the last stanza.

Varying sentence structure and rhythm can add emotion to prose as well. Long sentences are more reflective; short sentences are more exciting. Using short sentences in action scenes or long sentences in romantic scenes can help establish the correct emotion.

A sudden change in sentence structure or rhythm can be used for emphasis. If a short sentence is used after a paragraph of longer sentence, that sentence will stand out and will have more power. Make it an emotionally charged sentence, and it will resonate with your reader.

2. Emotionally Charged Words- Look at the word choices in this poem (I know it is a translation. How I’d love to be able to understand the original).

Words that evoke the feelings of being trapped: “cramped,” “bars,” “paralyzed.”

Words that evoke the image of power and beauty: “Powerful soft strides,” “dance,” “tensed, arrested muscles.”

Words that show repetitive motion: “constantly,” “over and over,” “ritual dance.”

Words that imply hope: “curtains of the pupils lift,” “rushes,” “plunges into the heart.” Of course the last three words kills that hope.

The use of emotionally charged words is key to eliciting the right emotions. I know that is kind of obvious. But this is where finding the right word makes all the difference.

When I was struggling with writing romantic scenes I stumbled on a writing advice on Stacia Kane’s blog called “Be a Sex Writing Strumpet.” The whole thing is on her blog, but you can also buy it.

Yes, this book is about writing sex scenes, and no, I’ve never written a sex scene, and I’m not sure I ever will. But the advice Kane gives can be applied to any romantic scene, and really any emotionally charged scene (Warning, her examples are very sexually explicit).

One thing she said was to make a list of words that you find sensual. Now I think this advice can be applied to any emotion.

There are lots of words and phrases that are emotionally charged: ones that evoke fear, horror, happiness, sadness, disgrace, loyalty, jealousy, rage, etc. Brainstorm trying to express these emotions and find the words and phrases that connect you to them. Don’t worry about anyone else. Find the words that work for you. Then use these words and phrases to add those emotions to your scenes.


3. Subtext- There is so much in the poem that isn’t said. Never does it say that the panther feels trapped or disheartened, but it is there. Never are we told that the panther has a glimpse of hope, but it is there. All in the subtext. What is not said is powerful.

The emotions that are shown are more powerful than the emotions that are told. And what isn’t said but is there will be felt more deeply than what is on the page. I know it is tricky, but if you can manage some subtext, it will make your writing more emotional and more compelling.

So there you have it. The tips of writing emotion that I got from one of my all time favorite poems. I’d love to hear any tips you have for creating emotional resonance, so please feel free to share.

~MaryAnn