Part 5 of lessons learned from The Emotional Craft of Fiction
The fifth part of lessons learned from reading The Emotional Craft of Fiction. You can read the other essays here: The Importance of the Emotional Journey in Fiction, Inner and Outer Mode for Fiction Writing, The Emotional Life of Your Protagonist Affects How Readers Experience Your Story, Using Meaning and Arc to Elevate The Emotional World of Your Characters
One of the first concepts fiction writers either grasp or become aware of is plot.
When I began to write fiction, plot was a concept I fretted and wrung my hands over. I wanted my story to be captivating. I wanted it to make sense. Plot became a major focus in my writing, often at the expense of character.
We are told to motivate our characters through public stakes. But what isn’t mentioned enough is the personal stakes — the emotional plot — that keeps both your character and your readers engaged and intrigued.
To create a story that matters, embrace the duality of fiction — the outer and inner journey, the external and emotional plot.
The Emotional Hook
Let’s start with how you open your story.
The opening is the promise you make to the reader. The first impression. The hook. The intrigue.
Readers want an emotional experience. They retain a story when they feel it.
Think of a story that grabbed you from the beginning. The emotions of the protagonist. Like that story you have in your head, your opening should intrigue your readers and create an emotional connection. It should provoke them to get more invested in your story.
Exercises to master the emotional hook (90):
- As your novel opens, find something warm and human that your main character cares about. If your story is exotic, choose something we would care about in the here and now. If your story has an ordinary setting, find something about which your protagonist is passionate. Open with this feeling.
- Now find in your opening situation something different, odd, curious, puzzling, weird, contradictory, a paradox, or hard to explain. Highlight it. Don’t pile on more or explain too much too soon. Let the mystery posed or question raised work on your reader for a bit. There’s tension in the unknown.
Bonding readers to your protagonist
It’s fool’s gold to make your protagonist universally appealing.
What is attractive to me will not be the same for you. But you can give your protagonist qualities that can create sympathy. An emotional plot only has weight when the reader can bond with your character.
Capture the idea of that human longing we all feel, and you will bond your reader to your protagonist.
Exercises to bond readers to your protagonist (94-95):
- The method: Mentally go to your opening moment, or what seems to you a good place to start your story. It’s in your mind for a reason.
- Write down the plot event, however small, happening at this moment, the event that will bring about change and set your protagonist into motion.
- Great. Now cross that out. We’re not going to work with that, not necessarily.
- Consider this moment in time and in your protagonist’s life. What is something that your protagonist has strong feelings about right now? About whom does your protagonist care? What is something that your protagonist feels matters urgently, or that she doesn’t understand? Why? Detail the reasons. Write down what we need to know.
- Your protagonist doesn’t just care about this person, situation, or thing; he worries about it. It has implications, not for everyone (though it may) but for your protagonist personally. Write down what your protagonist is afraid will happen to him. Add an aspect of this worry that other people wouldn’t know or see. Why is your protagonist able, or unable, to do anything about it?
- Alternatively, pick something, or someone, that your protagonist is happy about. What brings her joy? What is she looking forward to? Why is this a good day? Detail why. Add a reason that others wouldn’t know or see. Why is your protagonist deserving, or not, of this happiness?
- Whatever passion you are working with, an apprehension or a joy, detail it. Add specifics. What makes this longing unique? Why is it different now than at any other time? Also, what is the experience of this moment like? Create a metaphor. To be in this moment is analogous to…what?
- Is this a perishing moment or a permanent fixture in your protagonist’s life? Is it good or bad? How does your protagonist know this is a different experience for him than it would be for anyone else?
- Now take your notes and craft a paragraph or passage that takes us inside your protagonist or shows us what is going on there. Capture not what is happening in the plot, but rather your protagonist’s inner yearning.
The Emotional Midpoint
The emotional midpoint is the mirror moment — the moment when your protagonist is utterly alone.
It’s the point in the story when the protagonist is unable to go back. She must plunge forward into the unknown.
The goal is to make your reader feel just as weightless. Just as lost or unmoored.
Exercises to master The Emotional Midpoint (99):
- What’s the moment of no going back, of despair, of who-am-I-and-what-have-I-become? Note the following: one detail of place, one ache of regret, one brand-new fear, one impossible hope.
- At the midpoint, write down your protagonist’s view of herself prior to this time. What about that view is no longer true? Who must your protagonist now become? What is she lacking — and utterly unable to achieve?
- At midpoint, what can your protagonist see (however far off) that was not visible before? What can he no longer see in the distance behind? What is coming? What is never again to be?
- At midpoint, is your protagonist lost or seeing a way forward? Is either condition welcome or unwelcome? What does it feel like to be suspended, lifted out of time, in a moment of pure being? Is this moment sublime or hellish — or both?
- Weave any or all of the above into a paragraph that describes crossing the apex or nadir of the journey.
Failure and Defeat
Moments of defeat and failure heighten the emotional plot and provokes the feelings of your reader.
A good, memorable story should have moments of defeat and failure, no matter how small. A peek at death.
Exercises on failure and defeat (104):
- Go to the middle of your manuscript. Look at your protagonist. Pick a moment of challenge, reckoning, betrayal, setback, or coming up short.
- For your protagonist, what’s the worst part of this situation? What makes it excruciating? What makes it a personal failure?
- Work backward in the story to set up the moment and why this particular kind of failure should hurt so much. Who is counting your protagonist? Who is let down? What is the most painful way in which we can see that disappointment?
- What depends on your protagonist succeeding? What is slipping out of reach? What does it feel like to let that go? (Create an analogy.)
- At this moment, what does your protagonist wish she could do instead? What does your protagonist wish she could say, but can’t?
- As your protagonist falls in the moment you’ve chosen, involve others. When the floor falls away, let it fall away in a public place.
Catalyst and Catharsis
Two things about catharsis:
- A catalyst
- A consequence, often a positive one.
Catharsis is a huge part of the emotional plot. It is the moment your protagonist’s inner conflicts boil over. Often, the moment your reader has been waiting for after. The moment the truth can no longer be swept into under the bed and dressers.
Exercises to master catalyst and catharsis (108):
- What frustrates your protagonist? What inner need is constantly thwarted? Find three new ways to increase the need and one way in which to punish your protagonist for having that need.
- When you hammer, defeat, deny, or humiliate your protagonist, what about that so enrages your protagonist that he would pick up a gun, heedless of the cost or consequences?
- What’s the biggest way in which your protagonist can act out? What can she destroy? Whom can she attack? What’s the most hateful or most truthful thing she can say? What will shock others in the story?
- Having spent himself, what can your protagonist — or someone else — now do that he could not be before? What is now permissible to say? Show that.
What’s happening when nothing is happening
Even when nothing is happening, plenty can be happening.
The plot can stall, but the emotional plot can explode in these scenes. The great novels know how to do this. In Pride and Prejudice, there are many moments like this. The tension lies in the personal. Not the public.
Exercises to master what’s happening when nothing is happening (111-112):
- Identify your protagonist’s greatest inner need, the one that would preoccupy your protagonist even if your novel’s plot were never to come about. Craft a sentence or short paragraph that succinctly expresses the need.
- Pick out a scene from the middle of your WIP. Try to make this a minimally dramatic scene. Open a new document on your computer screen. Paste in the sentence or paragraph you created. This is the opening of a new version of the scene you’re selected.
- With the underlying need just below the surface of your protagonist’s awareness, rewrite the scene. Do not look back at the version in your WIP!
- The purpose of this rewrite is to get your reader to feel the underlying need in your protagonist. Work until you’re sure we will sense that need even though you don’t mention it or make it plain.
- Finally, go back and delete the paragraph you pasted in at the scene’s start. How does the scene feel now? Is the underlying need coming through even without being spelled out?
Emotional Goals in Scenes
When there is tension is a scene due to the emotional goals of your protagonist, the reader becomes more engaged.
When you construct a scene, consider the emotional goals of your protagonist.
Exercises to master setting emotional goals in scenes (115):
- Look at the scene you’re writing right now. Who is the point-of-view character? At this moment in the story what does that character have to do, get, seek, or avoid? This is commonly called the scene goal.
- Shift focus. What does your POV character need inside? What does she hope to feel? That’s the emotional goal.
- What in this scene is pulling this character closer to or farther away from the emotional goal? What is making that emotional goal impossible to achieve? How does this character attempt to reach the emotional goal in spite of what’s happening?
- Add to that. Why is this character afraid of his emotional goal? What can he do to subvert or avoid it? Conversely, why does the emotional goal greatly matter? What can make it matter more?
- In this scene, how does this character reconcile to the loss of the emotional goal, or to gaining it? What replaces it? What comes next? How is the scene’s outcome more satisfying, or less acceptable, than what was originally hoped for?
- Finally, take the raw material you’ve created and fashion a passage in this scene. Make the point of the scene to capture the dynamic inner “me” as much as to shift the outer circumstances of the story.
Get Real!
What is the opposite of unspoken need? Suddenly getting real.
Human interactions are layered — people, no matter what, play status games. When things get real, the scene’s subtext bursts through. It can be terrifying and refreshing, and can happen at any point in a novel.
Exercises to master getting real (118):
- Stop at any point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Address this character like a New York City cop: Stop right there! Whadda ya think you’re doin’? What’s really goin’ on here? C’mon, talk!
- Stop at another point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Become Mother Teresa: My child, you are suffering. Our Father in Heaven understands and forgives all. Tell me what’s troubling you. What do you need? What do you wish to confess?
- Stop at another point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Become Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Slam this character with a withering truth, a devastating irony, a shot straight to the psychological solar plexus.
- Stop at another point in your manuscript. Who is the POV character? Become the Oracle of Delphi: You wish to know your destiny? I will tell it to you, but be warned: If it pleases you, beware, and if it displeases you, be overjoyed. Ready? Your future is…
- How can you use any of the results above to pierce through the fog, crack the artifice, and suddenly get real?
Any of the above techniques will help you craft an emotional plot alongside your external plot. Just remember, readers want an emotional experience from their fiction, regardless of genre.
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