How to Write Stories That Make People Feel Something
Reach your reader emotionally, and they’ll love you for it
The best writers strive for an emotional reaction to their writing. They use the skills they’ve mastered to create hope, sadness, empathy, fear, or another emotion. Using emotions, the writer connects with the reader.
How do you write an emotional story?
Mastering emotional writing isn’t easy. Writers create an emotional response by digging into their own psyche. The result is the reader will feel anxiety, hope, happiness, or fear.
To write a story that makes readers emotional, write about things that create emotions in your own life.
- Write about what excites you
- Write about what motivates you
- Write about what scares you
- Write about what or who you love
- Write about what you hate
- Write about what angers you
- Write about what challenges you
- Write about what saddens you
- Write about what or who you’ve lost
- Write about what you care about
Writing about honest emotions requires authors to open up about their own fears, anxieties, and hopes. These emotions can’t be fake. They must be real and truthfully written. If writers tell the truth, readers will react by feeling the same emotions.
3 tips to connecting with your reader
Write about an intense emotional experience
Writing about something that is a little frustrating won’t appeal to your readers. They want to read about what made you enraged or feeling like yanking your hair out. And they want to know how you resolved the issue that gave you murderous anger.
Write with emotion but don’t go overboard
Bringing emotion to a story is good; gushing all over the reader is bad. Writing about how an awful marriage with an abusive spouse that ended in divorce will draw a reader into the story. Maybe the reader is in a similar situation and wants reassurance about getting a divorce. But going into morbid details by describing how tears were unending, and then more about crying and sobbing endlessly will push the reader away.
Emotional writing is like salt. Using a little salt adds flavor to a meal. Adding a lot of salt ruins what could have been a delicious dinner.
Record any event that gives you an emotional reaction
Writers are endless note-takers. When there is an event that triggers a powerful emotion, they write it down. If they don’t record it when it is raw in their mind, the event will fade in their memory and become less intense. A frightening bar fight will turn into a squabble. Or a fighting couple, screaming at each other in the middle of the night, will become a couple arguing.
Whether writing fiction or non-fiction, you must tell the truth. To do otherwise, you’ll be dishonest. As an author, you want your readers to react to your stories, so beware of telling tall tales. Readers have a built in truth detector, and they’ll know you’re not telling the truth.
Write a simple story, be honest, and include emotion.
Your readers will love it.
How do you use emotion when you write your stories?
