“Let’s talk about me!”
Generally speaking, that’s not good advice for handling yourself in social situations. Better is to listen and ask questions. Being interested in others is the way to make friends and influence people. (Smile too. That helps.)
In bonding readers to characters on the page, though, the reverse is true. We open our hearts to those whose hearts are open to us. For characters’ hearts to be open to us they must talk to us quite a bit about what’s going on inside them.
Effective narrative voices are essentially an awful lot about “me”. I’m not advocating for first person narration. Third person can draw us deeply in too. It’s less about the choice and more about how narrative voice is handled.
In many manuscripts, whether written in first or third person, the main characters do not disclose very much. Often they simply report what’s happening, a dry play-by-play conveyance of the action. As a reader one longs for color commentary, if nothing else. Even better would be some self-reflection but authors frequently hold that back.
Even witty, ironically detached first person narrators—the default voices of YA, New Adult and Para-Everything fiction—aren’t necessary revealing. Ironic tone can be used to avoid true intimacy with readers. Detached literally means unengaged.
Literary writing isn’t necessarily more honest, either. It can mistake imagery for emotional engagement, as if somehow the right words will, of course, evoke strong feelings in readers. It’s actually more effective when it works the other way around, with strong feelings giving rise to the right words. Plain language can easily trump pretty images, as Hemingway proved.
Why are authors stingy with their characters inner lives? Fear of self-disclosure is one reason but more often its fear of getting characters’ inner lives “wrong” or not knowing exactly what to do with them. That can be especially true in late stages of breaking in when emerging authors, having invested so much in their writing ambitions, are worried that small missteps on the page will ruin their chances.
The truth is that there is no “wrong” in opening up characters’ inner lives and emotions, the bigger problem is “not enough”. That said letting characters simply gush on the page doesn’t actually produce dynamic engagement with readers, either.
As I’ve said before, putting obvious emotions on the page doesn’t cause readers to feel them, just the opposite. Secondary emotions, especially when deeply explored, can both ring true and create space in which readers own emotions play. Emotional engagement is two-way. Readers feel involved not because characters are emotional but because they are.
In my post The Meaning of Everything, I discussed how anything on which you select to focus in your fictional world can have powerful meaning for us all. In Pin Connections and the Two Journeys, I showed how to dig out the personal meanings, for your characters, of plot events. Today let’s find out how the most absorbing subject of your characters’ inner deliberation can be themselves.
[pullquote]Effective narration not only brings us inside a protagonist’s head, mind and heart, it also raises questions and concerns about that inner world. Even as it invites us in it makes us uneasy. You can see this readily in any voice that welcomes us.[/pullquote]
Effective narration not only brings us inside a protagonist’s head, mind and heart, it also raises questions and concerns about that inner world. Even as it invites us in it makes us uneasy. You can see this readily in any voice that welcomes us.
Just recently I happened to catch up with Charles Martin’s Where the River Ends (2008), a Nicolas Sparks-like tragic literary romance. Its opening is a rule-breaker, a big no-no: pure backstory. It starts this way:
I don’t have good memories of growing up. Seems like I knew a lot of ugly stuff when I shouldn’t. The only two things I remember as beautiful were my mom and this riverbank. And until I knew better I thought they’d named the river after her.
Overtly, everything is wrong with these opening lines. Nothing is happening. There’s no story promise. The narrator is full of self-pity. He’s weak, helpless and without agency. It’s all interior, backward looking and reflective. So why does it engage?
It’s pure backstory but it’s also pure emotion, specifically the narrator’s love for his mother. He doesn’t say, “I loved my mother.” That’s too direct, a killer of reader feelings. Rather he evokes that love and for us, his readers, all the love we have for our own mothers, and how much we miss them now, has room to come flooding in.
I think there’s an even deeper level on which this passage is working. It tells us something about what this narrator, Doss Michaels, desperately needs in his life. Love. He later finds that with his wife, Abbie, but on an even deeper level Doss is afraid of losing that love…which—guess what?—plays out as Doss and Abbie, who is dying of cancer, make a final canoe trip down the St. Mary’s River in southernmost Georgia.
That’s a big load for a couple of lines to carry but they shoulder it easily. Looked at more simply, Doss Michaels is saying “let’s talk about me!” He does, honestly, artfully and emotionally. Our emotions in turn are stirred and thus we’re hooked. But not by the plot. What plot? We are hooked emotionally.
[pullquote]When we say, then, “let’s talk about me” what we really mean is let’s talk about what I need and specifically why and how I’m either getting that, or not, right at this moment. Me-centered narration is self-centered, yes, but it’s also reflective, questioning, conflicted, anticipating, hoping, fearing and fighting with itself. It’s interior but not flat. It’s indulgent but also dynamic.[/pullquote]
When we say, then, “let’s talk about me” what we really mean is let’s talk about what I need and specifically why and how I’m either getting that, or not, right at this moment. Me-centered narration is self-centered, yes, but it’s also reflective, questioning, conflicted, anticipating, hoping, fearing and fighting with itself. It’s interior but not flat. It’s indulgent but also dynamic. It’s not about changing plot but about changing self.
Let’s try this with the scene you’re working on right now. If your protagonist is the POV character that’s great, but any other POV character will do. What is the outward action in this scene? What does your POV character have to do, seek or avoid? What does he or she need to get or to accomplish right now? This is commonly called the scene “goal”.
Now let’s shift the focus. What does your POV character need inside? What does he or she hope to feel? That’s the emotional goal. Now write down the following: Is what’s happening in this scene bringing “me” (the POV character) closer to or farther away from what he or she needs inside? How, exactly? Why, specifically?
Now dig further down. Ask your POV character more questions. This emotional need…is it good or bad to have that right now? Why? What would be better? Wanting this feeling says what about who I am? The experience of not getting the feeling that I want feels like what?
More questions to have your POV character answer: My inner experience in this moment could be described how? I would short-hand my emotional state with what words? I am afraid of my own need why? On the other hand I’m justified in it because–? The way I am going to feel later on is–? What surprises me” about what I feel right now, though, is–?
Even more: This is exactly what I need because–? This is exactly what I do not need because–? I accept what I am experiencing right now because I must, and I must because–? Who I am right now is changing…how? That’s awful because–? That’s beautiful because–? More than anything else what I hope will come out of this is–? Instead, what will probably come out of it is–? This is so characteristic of me because I am–? The me that will replace me after this is–? I cannot possibly go on because–? I will absolutely keep going because–?
Okay, that’s probably enough raw material to work with. Now take your notes and craft a passage in which your POV character expresses, says and/or acts out his or her internal state. Tell and show us all about “me”, specifically the “me” that exists right now in this scene.
Take your time.
There. The “me” you’ve captured won’t be the same “me” that we would encounter in any another scene, right? That’s because you’ve explored “me” with precision. You’ve captured “me” in a moment in time.
None of us stay the same but to get that kind of dynamic personal evolution down on the page means measuring “me” against who one has been in the past and who one will become in the future. That’s purely emotional work and, really, it matters as much as conveying changes in the plot.
Think about it. When we talk about our days we first explain not what happened but how we felt. “It was a good day” means that we felt good. “It was a bad” day means that we felt bad. Good means we feel hopeful and forward-looking. Bad means we feel bleak and as if we are being pulled backwards.
Let’s talk about “me” means let’s talk about how “I” feel, in detail. When your characters do that for us, we in turn feel that they’re actually speaking about you and I. And that’s what we want.
How is the POV character in your current scene talking about “me”? Share!
About Donald Maass
Donald Maass (he/him) is president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. He has written several highly acclaimed craft books for novelists including The Breakout Novelist, The Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel and The Career Novelist.
Looks fascinating, am sending to Kindle to read more leisurely later, thanks so much!
Great reminder, Don, especially to minimalists, though I have to give some cred to my former workshop teacher, Mr. Carver, for teaching us how to squeeze all the juice out of one illuminating detail. Your counterweight is advocating gathering all the fruit and juicers one can, and even trying out new variations (apple, kumquat and kale smoothie?). Nice. But then we have to decide, strategically, how much to pour out on any page. All of it is too much. None of it not enough. We have to know our overall strategy. I like emotional subtext affecting outer behavior–why is the character ACTING this way? What the heck is going on? Why, indeed, is he hiding his feelings? (e.g., Rick in Casablanca).
When it comes to openings, I like to stress that interiority follow, and be woven into, action. Doesn’t have to be heavy action. It can be as simple as a man getting on an escalator with a small drugstore bag and suddenly forgetting what’s in the bag (The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker). I’ve seen too many MSs that open with characters alone, feeling, thinking, remembering. Unless the writing is absolutely brilliant, I’m usually done by the end of the second page.
Yeah, exactly Jim. It’s a balance and yet in manuscripts I find that the balance is way tilted toward objective narration, action reporting and exposition that addresses plot concerns over inner character dynamics.
Keeping the plot moving doesn’t necessarily keep our hearts moving. My post today is aimed at getting fiction writers more comfortable with interior material by suggesting ways to use it effectively.
I like your juicer analogy. There’s a lot of goodness we can squeeze out of characters emotional lives. Most writers limit themselves to the fruit’s outer appearance, the rind, which has color but doesn’t taste like much of anything.
BTW, you caused me to pick up a volume of Raymond Carver’s short stories. I feel dumb for not previously reading him in depth. My god. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”? That guy is one helluva writer.
BTW, BTW, isn’t it, like, 5am in L.A.? There’s something called sleep, I’ve heard.
For an intriguing take on What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, see the film Birdman.
Hi Don,
Writing a scene always feels like a battle to me, just as in real life, where we are always juggling our perceptions of what is going on in the moment, our goals for the moment, and all those random thoughts and images that come to mind even as we struggle to focus on the task at hand.
It’s not about the what that is happening, but how it feels to us, why it feels that way to us, and what that means to us a person.
As storytellers, we are trying to take our readers on a journey that has great meaning to us — that may even embody what we have come to think of as our life’s purpose — but in order to write that story into life we have to live it ourselves, down to the nitty-gritty of it all, with all its contradictions, confusion, and complications.
It can get ugly.
Sometimes I play a soundtrack I have to contend with as I write, because it so powerfully expresses the emotional urgency of the battle I am trying to create on the page, between a character’s scene goals and her underlying emotional goals.
Fascinating stuff!
Thanks, as always.
Deb
> It’s not about the what that is happening, but how it feels to us, why it feels that way to us, and what that means to us a person.
Yes! Precisely. That’s how we experience our own lives yet so many writers stint on the page.
I think the dictum that showing is better than telling has intimidated us, but there are effective ways to tell and, indeed, some of the most effective fiction we read draws us deeply inside its characters’ emotional lives.
Not that I’m against showing, mind you, it’s just that much showing often doesn’t get me to feel very much and much feeling expressed on the page has the paradoxical effect of shutting down my own.
I’m for more effective methods on both counts.
What happens, Don, when we ask our characters the questions you suggest and they don’t answer? You make it sound so easy. I agree with Deb above that these scenes are sometimes a battle. I find exploring “me with precision’ as you say to be a challenging task, and if it’s really a painful emotional issue, I have to let the feelings process out and surface slowly. Maybe the character has to be ready as much as I do?
I read the opening of Charles Martin’s book. Wow, the “now” action doesn’t get going until page 6. Five pages of backstory and reflection? I wonder what Ray Rhamey would say to that?
Paula-
Last week I was leading a learning retreat in San Diego. Your question was raised by several participants. I also recently conducted an online workshop called “The Emotional Craft of Fiction” for the WFWA. Same thing. Participants described the emotional work as hard.
It’s a puzzle. It’s so easy for us to talk about ourselves! Why is it so hard to get our characters to do the same?
The solution, I find, is to try a different approach. Pretend your story is over, last page turned. Phew. Now bring your protagonist into a comfortable place with easy chairs, a cup of tea or a tumbler of bourbon, and plenty of relaxed time to talk. Okay, are you both there?
Now ask your protagonist this: “MC, that was a heck of a journey you just went on! What did you learn from it?” See what he/she says.
Keep going with the questions. What was the worst part of what just happened? When did you give up hope? What are you angry with me about? What do you wish I’d allowed you to do?
I found that the above exercise was helpful in unlocking protagonist’s voices. Try it out and let me know?
Hi Don, I was immediately drawn to this post. Love it. When first writing fiction I had trouble accessing my characters’ inner emotions (some may have trouble believing this!) and I finally figured out why: someone had described point of view to me as “a camera through which the reader sees the story.” And guess what? Cameras have no heart.
Once I started thinking of POV anew—as perspective, and with all that comes to bear on an individual to create it, including emotional makeup—I gained full access to my characters’ inner lives.
The power of teaching, gone awry due to one word.
I will try this, Don. It sounds very inviting and progressive. Gosh, I would love to attend a workshop for the emotional craft of fiction. Thank you!
Ray would say “If it works, it works.” There are no rules, and I have been captivated by openings that are virtually action-free. The thing is that I see so many openings that don’t grip either my mind or my heart.
I’m happy to hear you say, Ray, that there are no rules. We hear from the experts “how to” and don’t do this or that and it sounds like rules that we must follow or choke. I just read your book Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling. I loved it!
This reminds me of an exercise that writing teacher Bill Johnson had us do. . .meditations in which we asked the protagonist what he *really* wanted, and what his deepest fear was. . .and then repeated the process for the villain. . .and really listened to the answer, rather than trying to impose it.
Also another teacher who basically pushed me to the wall, asking, what does your protagonist want? Why? What’s underneath that? No, what’s really underneath that? . . .until I had an answer I hadn’t thought of, but seemed deeply, intuitively right. (And the novel’s coming out sometime soon with The Wild Rose Press, so apparently it was a useful technique.
Hi Don –
You know it’s a good post when the doc is opened and tinkering begins before the post is completely read.
This reminds me of the book I just started. A friend recommended Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn. The primary protagonist, Vin, is vulnerable in a dangerous world. She (rightfully) feels she can’t trust anyone, but this information is presented to us via her brother, Reen, who’s no longer with her (I presume dead, and probably died ugly on the mean streets). When a fellow street urchin offers her friendship by joking with her, she turns away thinking something like: “Reen always said not to laugh at their jokes. Laughing lets them in. That’s when they get you, once you let them in.”
We’re told Vin has trust issues several times in the first few chapters, but it doesn’t feel like Sanderson is flogging us with it. He finds various ways to show it, and however Vin feels about her “missing” brother (which is starting to feel really complex), it’s often his voice that resonates in her interior world.
Lot’s to think about and do as I wrap up my current draft. I’m grateful that my MCs have issues. That’s in no small way due to you and to our friend Lisa, and UnCon. But enough about me – what do you think of me? (I’ll be here all week, folks.)
Thanks, as always, for continuing to push us to dig deeper!
Mistborn goes to the top of my to-read list. Thanks, Vaughn, great example.
Mistborn is an awesome example of a book that makes you FEEL with the protagonist. The whole trilogy is riveting, probably my favorite of Sanderson’s work to date.
Exploring “me” with precision. I love this concept. So many times in a new scene I find the narrative just feels like it’s drifting by. That’s always a time to stop, step back, and figure out what is going on underneath. I think these questions–which remind me of questions a therapist might ask to help get underneath to deep level emotions and false beliefs that hold us back–are excellent. Whether or not those answers make it into the narrative, the result is inevitably a different approach to writing, with greater understanding of what my characters feel. It will be lots of fun to use these questions this month and see how the scenes transform.
Let us know how it goes, John?
I will report in next month :)
This post is one of my favourites so far,not to mention perfectly timed, and those questions are going to be pasted into a file for referencing – frequently.
Writing in a genre that is in general highly plot-driven (epic fantasy) and where a clipping plot pace is a reader expectation, it can be difficult to know how much is too much when it comes to building and revealing the inner landscapes of characters’ emotions and motivations.
To answer the last question….I have two female lead characters who have been friends since childhood, and now as adults both are essentialy on their ‘heroes’ quest’. Ostensibly it’s a lead player and side-kick relationship, but what I’m working on now is showing the complexity of the relationship – the perceptions and mis-perceptions that both of them have about themselves as viewed through the eyes of the other.
I think that’s something we all do, don’t we? We see ourselves through our own lense, and are sometimes unable to see or are surpised to discover how others perceive us.
Each time I delve into this inner landscape, I try to ensure that something in the external plot has motivated revealing it to the reader, and that in turn, these inner tensions/confusions/ emotional progressions affect the outer world of the story.
Although I consider the story chiefly character-driven, I guess my first main concern is not to cross the line into “too much” at expense of pace and plot – and the other concern is how to apply the same to the male characters. I think your questions will definitely help there, too!
>We see ourselves through our own lens, and are sometimes unable to see or are surprised to discover how others perceive us.
Oh, excellent. Great approach. Stealing that.
On the interior life of male characters…it can be uncomfortable to make men too touchy-feely. If so, one can try getting them in touch with their feelings through dialogue. Questions from others can open up a lot.
In your story it sounds like your two lead characters are, as John evoked above, each others’ therapists.
On pacing…last summer I taught a workshop at Thrillerfest called “Emotional Depth at Mile-a-Minute Pace”. I argued that opening characters’ emotional journeys on the page doesn’t slow pace, it deeps those characters–and reader involvement.
Great comment, thanks for taking the time.
God, I love your Thrillerfest workshop concept. Are you teaching again this year? For once I’m coming, and will be teaching a class titled The Character of Crime. Be grand to see you there.
Yes, I’ll be at Thrillerfest, teaching a workshop called “The Thrill is Gone” about what it is in thrillers that actually provides the thrill. Let’s make plans!
Steal away! I tend to lurk, enjoying the posts, and learning from your regular commenters, too.
That’s a good tip about how to reveal the inner ‘me’ of men through dialogue, through the questions of others, and how they react to that.
I can’t speak for men, but as the lone female in our household, I think I’ve become attuned to reading between the lines of what the men say, or more often, don’t say. :) I’ll pay even closer attention now!
Thanks again.
You’re so right about literary fiction often leaning too hard on imagery instead of emotion. I work on the editorial board of a literary journal, and some of the most disappointing submissions we receive are all imagery and no substance. I think this trend confuses writers at the beginning of their careers, so they imitate the style of “artistic” literature with no understanding to back it up.
I agee, Abria. Literary writing that’s all imagery is missing the point. Without emotional engagement there’s no story, just pretty words.
Don,
So much to think about here. I took a pile of books out of the library to read more in my genre, and its been instructive to notice which ones pulled me in, which ones left me cold. Your post explains it. The story that engaged me least was one in which a first-person narrator spent most of his time being glib about what was happening to him. He wan’t feeling, and neither was I. Conversely, the stories that engaged me had characters who felt beyond the surface levels. Going to those deeper levels has shifted my writing. It’s harder to do (really hard sometimes), but once I get there, I feel the fizz. I’d love to see a brain scan of readers experiencing characters that reveal themselves as they grow and change, next to one where that doesn’t happen. One scan would look like a mountain range, the other, a desert. Thank you for the instruction today.
I couldn’t have said it better, Susan. Your experience as a reader is exactly what I’m talking about and what I hope we’re working on today.
For me, this discussion has as much to do with readers as it does with ways to engage them. True, all readers are moved by emotion, but what brings them to feeling for and with fictional characters varies a lot. Readers of romance novels demand high levels of emotive language. Readers of techno-thrillers want a book’s emotion to be charged by action-oriented pacing and high-stakes risk.
In my work, I do my best to meld reader and point-of-view character as one. In one scene early on in my forthcoming novel, Deep North, two women are headed west on the Interstate. My protagonist, a single woman journalist named Brenda Contay is at the wheel as her traveling companion gets a fax from her husband. The husband and the woman’s son are in London, and the wife reads the jokey fax out loud. She then folds the printed fax, puts in her breast pocket and turns in silence to gaze out on the passing landscape. The day is just ending, and lights are now coming on in distant farm houses. If I’ve done my job, the way Brenda Contay experiences this moment shows that a seemingly unimportant event has triggered in her real feelings of loneliness and isolation. If my reader is engaged, she will feel that loneliness and isolation without any direct reference to those emotions. Otherwise, I’ve failed–or, I haven’t failed, but different strokes for different folks means that the reader is just not likely to enjoy my kind of work.
How do you get a fax in a moving car? Sorry. The inner editor piped up there.
The scene you’re describing and the emotional effect you’re going for would make Hemingway happy.
I find, though, that the readers’ emotional response rises in proportion to how much the plot situation is already emotionally charged. (This was Hemingway’s great secret. He did not write about trivial happenings.)
As you described your opening scene in Deep North, I felt a momentary sadness or maybe a mild melancholy. It did make me think of missing my family when I’m traveling. It’s effective but on the page that effect is likely to be fleeting. I assume you know that, though, and quickly move on?
Don-
You can tell your inner editor to rest easy: the Greta GSM Fax and Printer serves the portable fax needs of “salesmen, real estate agents, lawyers, truck drivers,” etc.
You are certainly right in saying that “the readers’ emotional response rises in proportion to how much the plot situation is already emotionally charged.”
That means the scene I described would not work as the opening for Deep North, or any other novel. But the scene comes later, after one in which a housekeeper returns to an empty house that isn’t empty.
And if Hemingway were happy with it, good, because you’re right again in saying that Hemingway didn’t write about trivial things. That’s because–most of the time–he knew how to invest whatever he wrote about with power. Even two people in Spain, waiting in the middle of nowhere for a train.
This post came at a most opportune time for me. I have been working on a book that is totally out of my usual genre – mystery – and hired Katherine Craft to help me sort out just what it is I am trying to do with this story. She pointed out where I was off-track and gave me some wonderful developmental advice.
Ironically, my book, as written now, opens much the same way Charles Martin’s does. “I remember the day my father got married. Not to my mother, of course. The day he married her, I was not even a thought on the horizon or a gleam in his eye. Neither was the baby just starting to form in the comfort of my mother’s womb. That was my sister. The “oops” that sent Evelyn and Russell to the county courthouse that fall day in 1940.”
When I started writing this book, I thought it would be part memoir and part biography, as it is about my mother’s life, but Katherine pointed out that it lacked emotion, and perhaps the story should be about me and my mother. Then she alerted me to this post. I was going to come and read it eventually, as I do learn a lot from this blog, but she prompted me to come sooner. Glad I did.
That’s opening is high in intrigue–such questions it raises!–and yet low (for me) in emotional engagement. Glad you stopped by today!
Very helpful post, Donald. Thanks.
I’m curious about evoking emotional response can be viewed in breakdown between commercial and literary fiction. Of course, a good story evokes emotion, whatever its category, but I wonder if the approach is slightly different for the two.
I read one time–and believe, to a certain degree–that the difference between these two categories is this: Commercial fiction generally makes connections for the reader (through devices like plot, dialogues, etc.) whereas literary fiction leaves the reader to make connections for him- or herself. Reading the first lines of Where the River Ends, this strikes me as a great example of what you’re talking about, and I can think of plenty more great examples from literary fiction.
But what for commercial fiction? Who do you think does this well? Or do you disagree that the approach is necessarily different?
Rebecca-
Honestly, I find that both commercial and literary fiction (in manuscript anyway) are equally poor at engaging me in protagonists’ interior lives.
It’s not as simple as commercial narration telling me what to feel (bad) versus literary fiction provoking me to feel something (good). The telling is often ineffective but also so is the showing.
I distinguish between what authors report, or show, that characters feel and what readers themselves feel, independent of the characters they’re reading about. Those are two different things and are made effective in different ways.
The techniques that make any story an emotional reading experience, I find, has nothing to do with whether the author’s intent is literary or commercial. It’s all in how it’s handled.
I had coffee yesterday with a fellow WFWA Emotional Craft student. We compared notes and discovered the small things in large acts, and large things in small acts affected both of us. The balancing act of voice, characters emotions, action and plot bring me to this question — how do we know when the reader has enough, or too little, or too much? What is the litmus test for narrative versus ‘showing’? It’s easy for me to find it as I’m editing someone else’s work — more difficult to recognize in my own.
That said, your questions (many, many questions) are helping me know my characters better, and thus they are more real in my writing.
I’ve been reading Deborah Harkness ‘All Souls Trilogy’. I open the book and I become Diana, (spoiler!) capable of loving a vampire despite the gruesome lifestyle, exuding magical properties through my eyes and fingertips unexpectedly without any control. I am reading it slowly because there are only three books and I don’t want the experience to end — not just the reading — but my presence in her world. I want my readers to feel this way — someday.
Deni-
“How do we know when the reader has enough, or too little, or too much?”
In virtually all manuscripts the emotional effect is “not enough”. Err on the side of more. If you go too far your beta readers will let you know, but I’m betting that will rarely be the case.
Oh, Don! You hit the nail on the head for me about something that isn’t taught much in writing classes, how the pure emotion emitted by a character and resounding in a reader can hook the reader like a fish so that you can’t put the book down.
I remember reading the opening of Prince of Tides and breaking down into tears. I had never been to South Carolina, never been near a shrimp boat or even knew such things existed, but I became completely emotionally invested with the protagonist in Pat Conroy’s first paragraphs. I was lured into a story by a siren’s song, into a tale where I had to go, because I cared so much about the protagonist I wanted to know what happened to him.
This post is a keeper. I am going to read it over a few times, put it away and read it again. Proof. The truth of a great story is not in the plot itself but how the events of the plot scar a character’s emotional psyche and change who they are forever. I think this kind of emotional journey also changes the reader a little bit, forever. Thank you for this powerful lesson.
Bernadette-
I have come to believe that while plot pulls us through a novel, it is story that pulls at our hearts. Without that the most plot-driven novel cannot really move, stir or change us.
But *how* does an interior journey and a protagonist’s emotional life grip us and bring us to tears? That’s what interests me, and the answer is not as simple as show-don’t-tell, or tell sometimes, or any of that easy advice.
Both the emotional life of characters and the emotional response of readers become effective, or not, in ways we need to understand. It’s a craft.
That’s what I’ve been posting about today and in recent times.
One of reasons for lack of emotion in popular genre, with the exception of romance, is the author’s fear that emotion will destroy the pacing. Or it will weaken the perception of hero in the eyes of the reader.
Creating emotion isn’t about navel gazing scenes or long introspection, but by giving the viewpoint character a goal which has emotional resonance for him and the reader. By that I mean that he should be doing what he is doing for a relatable and good reason. He should be seeking the treasure, not for the dancing girls and wealth it will bring, but for the sword which can slay the dragon decimating his country.
Every scene should be about gaining that goal.
Emotion is also about viewpoint. If you are in hot or warm viewpoint inside the character’s head with all the senses working, you will evoke emotion in the character and the reader.
http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/2012/06/hot-warm-and-cold-viewpoints.html
http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/search/label/character%20goals
Marilynn-
I’ve read your posts before! You could have added the one on creating emotions in fight scenes.
Your advice is sound. Goal should carry emotion. Warm (if not hot) viewpoint more readily engages the reader.
I would term warm POV differently, though, as POV that immerses us not just sensually but in a character’s whole experience of a story moment, the story world and even his or her own emotional world. Sensual detail alone, for me, isn’t by itself the ticket to a character’s inner journey.
I’ve also begun to focus more on the difference between what characters feel and what readers feel. I have come to believe that while characters’ feelings are not irrelevant–done surprisingly they can capture us–what is more important is to open a space where the reader’s feelings dwell.
When we listen to others’ stories in conversation, we don’t automatically put ourselves in the other’s place and experience only and exclusively what he or she felt. Rather, we *relate* to them, which means that we return to, and sift through, our own experiences and try to fit those with what we’re hearing.
“Yes, that’s just like the time that I…”
To put it differently, readers do not first feel what characters feel, they first feel what *they* felt in similar situations. It’s an important distinction.
What it means is creating an emotional reading experience is not founded on how we report characters’ emotions but on opening space for readers to feel their own feelings. Which is a different thing and accomplished differently.
great key words, “but on opening space for readers to feel their own feelings.”
Thanks!
Idea story VS character story. Without emotion it’s hard to root for the hero, unless the hero, like James Bond, is just a device to float the idea. A lot of sci-fi of yore was idea related and thin on characterization. Isaac Asimov, prolific with idea loaded stories, didn’t do much with character. The ideas sustained his work more than character development. Times have changed, character is more important today. Sequel scenes is where one shows more character and less action. The emotional aspects must be seen or why would a reader care?
Hi Don,
Reading this, I thought back to your comment on my first assignment during the WFWA workshop and a light went on. I know how Ella feels. She is very open to me, so why am I not putting that down on the page?Why am I not revealing what she is thinking, what is churning inside her? As one other respondent said, I wrote a few lines of text before I had finished reading your post. As always, thanks.
Awesome.
Very timely. Thanks Don.
You’re welcome, Bronwen.
Don, this post puts such a close—and instructive—glass on that Maya Angelou quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Scratching below the surface in that damp fictional soil brings up so many unseen things.
And your Martin example quote had such a fine sense of compression of emotion, something under pressure, not fully seen but evocative. Great example that you probingly fleshed out. Thanks!
And thank you, Tom, for being an enduring voice here.
What a great and truthful quote, Tom. My favorite books are the ones which leave me in a fugue-like state for days after because of emotional resonance. I’ll remember that experience, too. But plot? It’s rare for me to remember much of the external conflict unless it was dramatic and fresh.
Don, I’m adding this to my WFWA class notes. My brain is still reeling; I feel like I’ve been challenged to climb Mount Everest but been given the funding, the equipment, and a personal trainer. No excuses remain.
It’s not that bad, Jan. You only have to climb K-2.
Hi Don,
I’m with Beth on this one. Doing your workshop with WFWA cracked open my head AND my heart in a good way! Unfortunately (or fortunately?) it made me realize that my MC may just be a little too two dimensional. I’m hoping she is salvageable.
I took a completely different approach when I was writing my second book (which I’m halfway through) and somehow my MC’s emotions and inner life are open and just bleed onto the page. She’s so much more “real” to me than my MC in book one. I definitely don’t want to abandon book one -spent way to much time on it but I really hope I can find a way to make her work. I did the conversation with her in the WFWA workshop and realized she has huge holes in her inner world. She’s mad I didn’t make her more well rounded. I would love to know how to know if something like that is fixable or if you have to say ‘I wrote a lousy character’ and it’s time to let her go…
Kelly-
There’s always a way to make a character three dimensional. You only need delve into how she got to be the way she is and look for inner need and conflict.
David Corbett’s book The Art of Character is a great place to start.
For a jump start, ask the character what do you truly want to do and why are you sometimes doing the opposite? It’s the beginning of exploring inner conflict.
Thanks Don. I was just writing such a scene this morning. So your insight is very timely. I’m midway through writing the fourth book in my Dinosaur Wars science fiction series. Although romance usually takes a back seat to action I have allowed the heroine Kit Daniels a little quiet time to discuss her romantic issues with the hero Chase Armstrong. She chats with her girlfriend, Maddy Meyer, about her conflicted feelings over Chase’s recent proposal of marriage. Kit, at age 21, feels she is too young and inexperienced to marry just yet. The two women have a long discussion of the pros and cons. I had indeed been hitting some emotional points of Kit’s plus-minus reaction to Chase’s question by focusing on her conflict: “I’m too young,” versus “He’s the perfect guy.” And I believe I was getting some of Kit’s “me” to come out. But thanks to your insights, I think I’ll go back and see if I can’t get some more!
Hi, Tom. She’s too young to marry but he’s the perfect guy. Try having her friend challenge that thinking. What if she’s older inside than she’s admitting (witness her caution) and he’s too perfect to be true?
Or…what if she’s trying too hard to be perfect and he’s putting on a show of being young. Which is to ask, what is she compensating for and what is he hiding?
I like that you’re making time for relationships amid the action.
Masta Don:
Well, I thought I posted a comment earlier but it seems to have vanished in the ether.
I’ll keep it short: My take on inner life is that it works best when it serves or supports the action in the scene. Shakespeare’s monologues typically end in a decision to act or a change of heart, and I think that’s a good guide for how to use thoughts and feelings. Like JIm, I believe character is revealed more in action and dialogue than thoughts and feelings, because the latter can always be replaced by other thoughts and feelings. But once we act, we’re committed. That action exists in the world and cannot be taken back. We’re responsible for it.
I believe inner life woks best when it serves that commitment and responsibility, when ti shows the character wrestling with what he must do, how it affects him, and why.
I think the Martin opening you quoted works on this level because there’s a feeling that these insights are going to justify his actions in the novel. They also work because they show vulnerability, which immediately opens a character’s heart to the reader.
I don’t think we’re in any way disagreeing, btw. But that’s all I got.
Loved this post, and copied some of it out to use as grist for the mill in a course re: getting emotion on the page I’m planning.
David-
> My take on inner life is that it works best when it serves or supports the action in the scene.
Indeed, its best when it springs *out of* the action in the scene. I teach it that way, using something–almost anything–in a scene as a springboard for inner measuring.
In addition to wrestling with what he must do, I prompt authors to get the protagonist wrestling with who he is.
Action and dialogue are best to reveal a character’s inner state, no question, though sometimes keeping it purely interior is good too.
When we speak in real life we don’t always say everything that’s on our minds, and so in fiction. Characters can say things to us or themselves that they wouldn’t say to others and that can be the most revealing stuff of all.
That’s how I look at it.
Thanks for the insight into why the scene I’m writing isn’t working and how to make
it better. Your questions help me understand my character more fully. Until I
fully understand my MC, I can’t expect the reader to.
I love this post and have passed it on to others in my writing class. Many thanks.
How right on your thoughts are, Don. I’m working to do that very thing in my WIP, working to create feelings that rise out of the narrative and into the reader. I also think that a character’s well-placed emotional reaction to what’s happening can create a strong story question, and it can (should) ultimately affect the plot. Thanks again.
I think one of the reasons that emotions get left out is that critique groups, for some reason, tend to bludgeon them out of a writer. I know with my debut novel, my the critique group I was with at the time kept telling me cut the emotions here, cut the emotions there. . .fortunately I saved all the discarded material in a separate file, because when it sold, the editor wanted me to put in everything I had been told to cut. The novel won a couple of awards, so I venture to say the group was wrong and the editor and I were right.
Thank you, by the way, for another timely post. I was struggling with how to approach a crucial scene in my current WIP . . . Over the course of the trilogy, my reformed dark mage protagonist has through atonement won the right to rejoin society (book one) and found his footing and defended his new place (book two). A crucial moment in book three is when he risks his new place and new relationships to extend help to a young man who, like he was, is the child of a dark mage and who, like he was, is being pushed and pulled down that path himself. Raven can’t help but see himself in the boy, and wants to give him the aid that he needed at that age and wasn’t given. I already knew he was going to feel hurt when the people around him disagree with his choice and believe the boy isn’t worth it. After this exercise, I realized that he still carries residual anger at how he was rejected by the light and pushed to the dark all those years ago, and part of his inner journey in this novel is finally coming to terms with that.
It’s going to be tricky to manage because it turns out that those around him are right, and the boy is not just the misguided pawn Raven wants him to be. Raven would never self-identify as an altruist and a surfeit of trust is not generally one of his failings, but his history makes him vulnerable to this particular deceit. It turns out he is wrong (and has to learn how to admit his failing), but he just as easily could have been right. And he is doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, so it is a move forward in his character arc even though it causes near-disaster in the plot arc.
Shawna-
You’re right about critique groups. They can err. Sometimes they push for more back story up front. (“I need to know more about her!”) Sometimes they impatiently kill exposition. Both impulses are not necessarily right.
I love, love, love what you’re doing with your character in the third book! Wow. Meaty stuff. If your readers give you heat, too bad. You’re taking them on a better inner journey than they’re expecting.
Sounds great!
Putting emotions onto the page can be the hardest thing, but very rewarding if done right with timing and pacing. I find the biggest emotional impacts happen when little emotions are played with and build up into something bigger. One book I loved seeing that in was The Help, and another was in the Gormengast novels.
I’ve heard of interviewing your characters, but never sitting down with them after all is said and done. I like your suggestion (in the comments above) of sitting down and asking my main character what he learned from his journey and to keep on with questions. It’s like working a mystery novel, only weaving through emotions instead of clues. Love that.
Naomi-
Gormengast! I’m so impressed. Too few have read those classics. They’re dense but so worth it.
Glad you like the approach here. I’ve seen solid results from it. Do more.
Also, I must say you have the coolest avatar image going. Sets the bar for us mortals.
Donald;
Thanks. This is a reminder I can’t hear too many times. My first books usually garnered the same criticism, that I had left the characters too remote. It took a lot of editing and writerly desperation before I figured out that the one character left out in the cold was me. So I relaxed and remembered why I write anyway and the inner life of my characters began to grow and become more complex. At the same time, I tried to keep that inner core accessible to readers. I also learned how not to intrude in the narrative voice too much. One editor called it “airing your knickers in public”, which I was and still am occasionally guilty of. Thank all the Lit gods that this is a process and that most of us will have enough time on the job to allow us to connect with a reader or two.
“…the one character left out in the cold was me.”
That’s wisdom. Thanks.
Donald and contributors-
This post and discussion belongs in the “best of” collection of Weter Unboxed.
Thank You!
A high compliment, thanks.
Don,
Perfect timing on your post. I’ve been wondering if I’ve included too much of Abby’s self-reflection in my WIP because so few writers in contemporary fiction really delve into their characters’ minds, as if we’re supposed to come to our own conclusions about what they think. In fact, during the past few weeks I’ve been pouring over novels for comparison. However, the difference in this novel is that Abby is expressing thoughts that middle-aged women/mothers/wives aren’t supposed to voice, whispering to the reader like two best friends sharing a common sin. I’ve only shown it to a few women. Their eyes widened, and they admit this is their story too. Abby is saying what they can’t say. I’ve been told that as a man, you won’t “get it,” but we’ll see. Almost done. Thanks for the affirmation.
Hi Don, (I have read your books and thanks)
Not sure if this advances craft, but before we can imbue our characters with emotional dimensions through action, description, or introspection, it helps to have a strong sense of our own inner landscape & sense of emotional dynamics–both obvious and subtle. In my expereince, many do not. Oh, most generally know happy, sad, mad, etc., but to connect subtle words & actions by others to our own fine-tuned radar is often a blank, just as a layperson might see a tree while the artist sees the caterpillar on a leaf (years on the couch helps.) If our own emotional lives are rich, it’s a helluva lot easier to project same onto out characters.
I’m about showing with taint. The taint of a character’s total make up. Before I start the project I do back story, psychological profiles, hurts and interests, secrets, childhood debasements and all the flavors of a character’s life situation. As I write the plot, the emotionally charged stuff presents it’s self without me forcing it because it’s already there floating beneath the surface, or orange skin as Bell might put it. Know thy character and let her feel the story.