Ways To Create Ecstasy Or Despair For Your Readers
Fiction Writing Tip — Creating an emotional experience for readers
The photo shows a massive tsunami wave in the background.
Writing descriptively is a vital skill for the creators of fiction. How many times have you heard the words show — don’t tell? However, nonfiction writers will also improve their reader’s experience using the same techniques.
Reasons for creating an emotional response in readers
Simply put — no emotional response equals no significant engagement. When a reader engages with our story in a meaningful way, it will have these results:
- Creates a memory
- Creates a desire
- Creates action
Thoughts, images, and ideas that touch us on an emotional level stay with us for a long time. They continue to surface in our memory, becoming a cause that will produce an effect. Advertisers use this technique to create an irrepressible need for readers to take action.
The action we want them to take is to keep reading.
How to push a reader’s emotional buttons
We all have them. They come with triggers. What are they? — Primal or basic emotions such as:
- Joy
- Trust
- Anticipation
- Surprise
- Sadness
- Fear
- Anger
- Disgust
- Love
- Guilt
When two or more of these are mixed, they create further aspects of our emotions.
As writers, we need to find ways that trigger these responses in our readers. Our basic tool is word choice. Combine that with theme, setting, conflict, and characterization, and the task becomes adventurous.
How does this work
Let’s take a simple sentence that accurately tells what a character is feeling but falls short of invoking an emotional response.
Her words hit their target, breaking his heart.
Let’s try that again and this time we’ll show what the character is feeling.
Her unforgiving words tore deep through his heart, leaving his lifeblood to drain through the jagged wound.
This time, we don’t need to be told that the character has a broken heart. We can feel his pain and weakness.
How to create emotional triggers using characterization and conflict
Conflict is at the heart of fiction. It’s the element that gives the story its hook.
For character-driven stories, the conflict must be directly connected to what that character most desires. Then, as a writer, we need to put that desire at great risk. Sometimes, we may need to destroy it so that we can move this character to attain new or higher goals.
Creating conflict with high stakes for the character will keep readers engaged through their emotions. They must feel ecstasy or despair along with the character. In short, we must make the reader care about this character and his outcome. Only then will they read through every page.
For plot-driven stories, the conflict must directly connect to the success or failure of the plot on a grand scale. Constant conflict will keep the plot moving, twisting, and changing until the conflict is resolved. Destroying hope, shattering dreams, and removing every means of success until the last moment will keep our readers mesmerized until the concluding scene.
5 Surefire Ways to Raise The Stakes in Your Story
Manipulating the reader’s emotions
The word manipulating carries a bad or unwelcome feeling. But the best fiction writers are those who have mastered the art of manipulation. When crafting their stories, they’re unafraid, bold, unmerciful, and unapologetic. And their readers LOVE them!
Why?
Readers want writers to create strange new worlds and fill them with characters that grab them by the heart or throat — pulling them into their realities. Even though their rational brain tells them, this isn’t real, their emotions assimilate them into the story. They live every moment with their favorite character.
The good — the bad — the ugly
A higher level of emotional response is achieved when we create characters that, by their personalities, appearance, and attitudes, showcase the good, bad, and ugly aspects of other characters. For instance, how can a hero be truly heroic if there is no villainous person or situation for him to conquer?
What are you feeling as the writer
One gauge of how successful a writer is at creating emotion is how they respond to their own story. If the writer doesn’t feel love, hate, sorrow, hopelessness, joy, or other deep emotions when reading his story, it’s time to slash and edit.
