Showing posts with label emotion. Show all posts
Monday, June 9, 2014
The Emotion of Changing Your Mind
Throughout a story there will be moments where the central character will do things that are interesting, exciting, scary or whatever. These kinds of scenes where key events occur are what you build towards, and their aftermath will provide the momentum/motivation to keep the reader turning pages to get to the next one, and the one after that.
But even though the chase, the rescue, the attack on the enemy base, will be an entertaining set-piece, there is another, equally important, part of this moment: the decision to do it.
Every big scene will be preceded by the character having to choose to engage with whatever scenario they�re faced with. This choice is incredibly important, both to the character and to the reader.
You can, of course, skim over this moment. In some stories the main character is of a type where his actions don�t require much explanation. If the girl�s been taken, he will find her and punish those responsible. If the killer has put out a challenge for the cop to meet him alone and unarmed, he�s out the door straight away.
Or you could show the decision made in a very intellectual manner. The character thinks it through or talks it over with someone and comes to the rational and logical choice.
Or they simply go to bed unsure of what to do, and wake up with a determined glint in their eye.
All of these approaches are perfectly plausible, but they miss a great opportunity to connect your reader to your characters at a much deeper level.
Let�s say our main character wants to be a pilot. He studies hard and trains to be good enough. He faces difficulties, people stand in his way, but he knows what he wants and overcomes all obstacles and finally he gets his wings.
The problem with this story is that while it is a very relatable, true to life sort of tale, it lacks drama or conflict. Even if the obstacles he faces are tough and his responses very clever, or his journey is full of interesting and entertaining moments, as a character he is missing something very important. He never changes his mind. He doesn�t experience doubt. He never considers failure. He basically lacks depth.
Now consider a pilot who is asked to go on a vital mission. He is the best man for the job and the future of the world is at stake. He refuses. Everyone tries to convince him but he just won�t do it. But then something happens and he realise he has to go on the mission.
Why did he refuse? What got him to change his mind? How will he fare when he�s so obviously doesn�t want to be there. These are questions that make a straightforward situation into a dynamic one.
Before our hero has even started his exciting adventure the audience is already invested in the journey about to take place. And anytime a character heads into a dramatic event, showing how they get there will send the reader in at a run instead of a saunter. Any turning point in a character�s narrative pulls the reader into the character�s world and mind-set.
And the thing that cements this connection is the emotion of the moment. Whenever a character is sure they want to do X but end up having to do Y there�s going to be an emotional wrench. It can be any number of emotions�angry they have no other choice, delighted they get to be the one, scared they won�t make it out alive� but whatever it is, it�s important we see it happen and that it�s conveyed in the most visceral manner possible.
One way to do this is to use setting and activity to magnify the emotion.
Take our reticent pilot, for example. Let�s say he was responsible for a terrible accident that left his crew dead. He doesn�t want to lead more men and women to their deaths so he refuses the job to fly a space shuttle to a new planet that holds the future of mankind (or something).
Then he learns his son has signed on for this mission after his father specifically forbade him, and the guy in charge is somebody our hero knows isn�t up to the job. He has to take the assignment if he wants to make sure his son survives.
So, fairly standard stuff. But when our man finds out this stuff, where is he? What is he doing? Because those things will be integral to how the reader connects with the scene.
Once you work out the emotion the character is going through, then it will have far greater impact for the reader if you use the physical world of the scene to reflect that emotion.
So let�s say he is with his son and grandson at a local fair. He doesn�t want to blow his top in front of his grandchild. They�re at a coconut shy and the kid wants a teddy bear. Can you transfer the emotion he�s feeling into how he throws balls at coconuts? How he throws them, his aim, his competitiveness with his son, all these things can be used to reflect how he�s feeling about the other situation.
And while this sort of scene works as a way to show us the kind of person he is, the kind of relationship he has with his son (and grandson) and all sorts of character stuff, the big payoff will be when he turns up in the cockpit. No matter what his approach�polite, restrained, professional�we will have the inside story of what�s going on with him and it will add a whole extra level of reader engagement with the story.
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Monday, April 28, 2014
Scene Simpatico
In a scene where your character gets angry, you want the reader to share that anger. If the character is scared, you want the reader to feel that fear. If a character being interviewed for a job feels nervous and his leg is bouncing up and down, it�s very rewarding to be told by a reader that their knee started sympathy-bouncing when they were reading that scene.
Putting the reader into a character's shoes by having them experience the same emotion is a powerful tool and a great way to form a connection between story and audience. But this isn�t always just a simple matter of describing what the character is experiencing and hoping the reader will be immersed into their world.
Moreover, not all states of mind are equally interesting to be immersed in. An insane character, a disoriented character, a bored character, these can all be accurately conveyed, but should they be?
It helps to keep in mind what the point of a scene is. Not the general mood you want to create but what's actually happening. If you put the mental and emotional aspects to one side and look at the scene in purely mechanical terms, is it interesting?
If it�s two people sat at a table talking, or a person alone in the woods, then simply adding a veneer of emotion won�t suddenly change it from dull to fascinating.
Let�s say my story starts with a man waking up in the trunk of a car. He doesn�t know how he got there or why. He�s confused, frightened and suffers from claustrophobia. If that�s all that happens in the opening scene I could write a fairly detailed depiction of what he�s going through, but how long before it goes from visceral to boring?
He�s trapped in the trunk, he�s tied up, the car�s on the move and he has to wait until it stops and his abductor lets him out before he can start working out what�s going on. Thirty pages and you�d really feel like you were in there with him. Too much? What about ten pages? Still feels a little long. How about a single page? How about one paragraph?
The thing is, when you�ve got nothing but a moment without context then the shorter the better. Once you understand the situation it doesn�t really add much to keep reinforcing the same point. Is there any advantage to having the guy in the trunk wake up with fifty miles still to travel?
While making the tone resonate with the reader can enhance a scene, the scene has to be worth enhancing. If you become too focused on the technical aspect of accurately portraying how the character is seeing things you can easily forget to make what they�re doing worth reading about, which should always be your first priority.
Back to our guy in the trunk. If he comes to, confused and disoriented, and then the car starts to be crushed in some kind of mechanical compactor, then his state of mind will become secondary to his need to get the hell out. He still doesn�t know how he got there or why someone�s trying to kill him, but that won�t stop him from taking the necessary steps to deal with the situation.
He can still be viewing it all from a particular perspective, one that you can pass on to the reader, but as soon as you give the character something to do it will quickly become clear where to focus most of the reader�s attention.
It also makes a difference where in the story the scene appears. If the reader�s had a chance to develop a relationship with the character, if they know where the story�s going, if they have some idea of what�s at stake, then they�re going to be much more tolerant of a scene where it isn�t immediately obvious what�s going on.
That doesn�t mean you can�t have a scene that's more about style than content right at the start of a story�not being sure what's happening can work as a very good opening hook�but it�s worth being aware of possible drawbacks and using other techniques to keep thing moving.
Putting another character (friend or foe) in the scene can also make a difference. Characters alone with their thoughts are the hardest to keep interesting. Not impossible, but not easy, and hard to judge for a writer. Once you add a counterpoint to the main character, even if that counterpoint is only seen through the MC�s POV, it can help ground a scene.
Our guy wakes up in the trunk, bound and gagged, and as he struggles to get loose he realises he�s not alone in there. Behind him is a young woman also tied up. He has no idea who she is. He squirms around and finally manages to get the gag out of her mouth and she proceeds to call him every unkind name under the sun and then lists a number of objects she plans to insert into his rectum as soon as she�s free and able to visit the nearest hardware store. Our hero, with near superhero effort, manages to get the gag back in her mouth.
And a little humour can also help. This won�t be appropriate in all cases, but it can often help keep a reader engaged through the more challenging moments. Just because the character is in a particular state of mind doesn't mean the rest of the world will pause to let him work through his personal issues.
It's not just a matter of transferring the character's mindset to the reader, there's a number of other factors to take into consideration. How long the scene is, where in the story it appears, what�s happening to the character and what they have to do next all play a role in deciding how effective any emotional connection will be for the reader.
If a character is bored at work and writes a silly email which he accidentally sends to his boss leading to a hilarious sequence of events, then how long do you need to spend establishing the boredom at the start of this scenario? Not very long, I would suggest.
On the other hand, if a character is enraged by the murder of his wife and hunts down the killers for the whole of the book, his anger might not only be worth maintaining at quite a high level, you might also want to show different stages of that anger and how it helps/hinders his search.
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Friday, April 5, 2013
Emotions Belong To Readers
When it comes to using emotion in a story, the person whose emotions should be most important to you is the reader.
An emotionally invested reader is more likely to go wherever the story leads, and also more likely to make allowances for parts of the story they aren�t too sure about.
You can still keep readers engaged through intellectual curiosity or general drama and action, but grabbing them emotionally is always going to be the most intense experience for them.
An emotionally invested reader is more likely to go wherever the story leads, and also more likely to make allowances for parts of the story they aren�t too sure about.
You can still keep readers engaged through intellectual curiosity or general drama and action, but grabbing them emotionally is always going to be the most intense experience for them.
The simplest way to do this is to mirror emotions. The character in the story feel happy or angry or scared and the reader feels the same.
But you can also create scenarios that induce different emotions in reader and character. A killer taking great pleasure in his kill won�t engender the same in the reader. A daughter pretending she doesn�t know her own mother in front of her cools friends can make the reader weep while the characters on the page all behave with barely any emotion at all.
The ability to juxtapose characters in such a way as to spontaneously combust into emotion for the reader is a tricky thing to achieve but can be a very powerful an experience for the reader.
The cause of emotion rather than the display is where to focus. In order to do that effectively, you need to understand how actions create emotions.
This can be difficult since in real life we just feel what we feel and ascribe blame retroactively. I feel angry at Jack, therefore what Jack did must be worth getting mad about.
But that isn�t necessarily true. I could just be an over-sensitive whiner who likes to fly off the handle whenever challenged by a reasonable person. Judging actions by the emotions they create within you personally is not the best barometer.
You have to be able to step outside of your own personal feelings and view things objectively, see where the emotion is coming from (or isn�t) and adjust accordingly.
If a girl sees a snail on the way to school every day, and one day the snail is dead and the girl is upset, will the reader be upset too?
Maybe.
If the girl is bullied at school and ignored by busy parents, and uses the snail to confide in, telling it her fears and worries, even though the snail doesn�t respond in any way, when it dies will her anguish be felt by the reader now?
If the snail is killed by the school bully who drops a brick on it, can I switch sadness into rage?
If she takes the snail home and the mother is disgusted and throws it over the garden wall, and the girl retaliates by taking the mother�s pearl necklace and flushing it down the toilet, can I create sympathy for the girl? The mother? The snail?
Any given situation can be turned in any given direction emotionally if you understand the link between what people do and what they feel. How well it works is a matter of skill, but the emotion in the reader is waiting to be turned on. You just have to decide which switch you want to flick.
But you can also create scenarios that induce different emotions in reader and character. A killer taking great pleasure in his kill won�t engender the same in the reader. A daughter pretending she doesn�t know her own mother in front of her cools friends can make the reader weep while the characters on the page all behave with barely any emotion at all.
The ability to juxtapose characters in such a way as to spontaneously combust into emotion for the reader is a tricky thing to achieve but can be a very powerful an experience for the reader.
The cause of emotion rather than the display is where to focus. In order to do that effectively, you need to understand how actions create emotions.
This can be difficult since in real life we just feel what we feel and ascribe blame retroactively. I feel angry at Jack, therefore what Jack did must be worth getting mad about.
But that isn�t necessarily true. I could just be an over-sensitive whiner who likes to fly off the handle whenever challenged by a reasonable person. Judging actions by the emotions they create within you personally is not the best barometer.
You have to be able to step outside of your own personal feelings and view things objectively, see where the emotion is coming from (or isn�t) and adjust accordingly.
If a girl sees a snail on the way to school every day, and one day the snail is dead and the girl is upset, will the reader be upset too?
Maybe.
If the girl is bullied at school and ignored by busy parents, and uses the snail to confide in, telling it her fears and worries, even though the snail doesn�t respond in any way, when it dies will her anguish be felt by the reader now?
If the snail is killed by the school bully who drops a brick on it, can I switch sadness into rage?
If she takes the snail home and the mother is disgusted and throws it over the garden wall, and the girl retaliates by taking the mother�s pearl necklace and flushing it down the toilet, can I create sympathy for the girl? The mother? The snail?
Any given situation can be turned in any given direction emotionally if you understand the link between what people do and what they feel. How well it works is a matter of skill, but the emotion in the reader is waiting to be turned on. You just have to decide which switch you want to flick.
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