The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
When characters show us that they are complex, we feel complex, too. We chew on them, and ourselves, as well. And isn’t that the effect you want?
Donald Maass • The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
When characters celebrate themselves, make sure that the celebration is tinged with apprehension.
Donald Maass • The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
The second is to provoke in readers what characters may be feeling by implying their inner state through external action. This is outer mode, the showing of emotions.
Donald Maass • The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
What is Pat feeling? Quick doesn’t report that because it doesn’t matter. What matters is what readers feel, which perhaps is shock, horror, or even compassion for a guy who obviously is in distress.
Donald Maass • The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
Interesting how he concludes that here.
Showing is all that’s needed here. That’s important to remember if your characters are dark, tormented, suffering, or insane. The painful emotional lives of such characters need to become tolerable for readers. Humor and objective showing create a safety zone. In that zone readers can process their own response to emotional conditions that are
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This echoes WITD “writing cold” for dark/trauma/heavy things
Yes, scientists really study this stuff. Seeking out a story to experience demonstrates what scientists call intentional motivation. The processing of a story then involves sensory memory, working memory, an episode buffer, and finally retention in long-term memory. While we speak of hunts and campfires, scientists posit Attribution Theory,
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Getting real is what happens when a scene’s subtext bursts through.
Donald Maass • The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
Fiction can do things that no other art form can. It engages the imagination on a deeper level, stirs minds and hearts, and brings about change in a way that few other art forms can manage.
Donald Maass • The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
Who am I right now? What has become of me? How did I get here? How do I see things differently? What did I want and have I found it yet?