It’s not enough to have a compelling plot
This essay is a part of the lessons learned from reading The Emotional Craft of Fiction. I highly recommend the book. Read the following essays before reading this essay (Or don’t. I ain’t your mother): 1. The Importance of the Emotional Journey in Fiction, 2. Inner and Outer Mode for Fiction Writing
The emotional world of your protagonist goes hand in hand with the plot of your story.
A story can have an amazing plot. Interesting lore. Compelling events. But none of that matters if your readers don’t care about your protagonist. If you give them no interest in being invested in the world you’ve crafted, you’ve hit the ground dead.
“We experience life as feelings.” – The Emotional Craft of Fiction, page 27
You must do everything you can to not minimize emotions in your work.
It should be laced in every word you write. Infused in how your protagonist interacts with the world around them. The emotional world of your protagonist is the window in which your reader sees the world you created. So don’t make it the dessert. Make it a part of the main course.
But how do you do that?
Me-Centered Narration
In fiction, Me-Centered Narration allows readers to open up their hearts, so to speak, because the character is essentially opening up their heart to us.
The character must “talk” to us about what’s going on. This, in turn, should raise questions and concerns about the world. About why the protagonist feels the way they do, often a reflection of the world they live in and their place in it.
Exercises to master Me-Centered Narration (taken from page 34):
- Pick any scene in the middle of the novel, one in which you protagonist is the POV character.
- Write an exploratory version of the scene that is about what’s happening–not in the plot per se, but about what’s happening with “me”. What does your protagonist feel about this place, each scene participant, what’s happening, and herself?
- How do your protagonist’s feelings about any of the above shift in this scene? What has your protagonist overlooked? About what or whom was your protagonist wrong, or dead right?
- What new feeling about the scene’s action does your protagonist discover? What new feeling about himself does your protagonist also find?
- Use your protagonist’s feelings to mislead the reader about something, or instead to convey the honest truth. Use “I am” to create uneasiness. Use “I am not” to create doubt.
- How much of what you’ve written in this version of the scene could be folded into your manuscript? Use it.
Small Details = Big Emotions
Small details lead to suggestions, and suggestions coax big emotions out.
You don’t have to hammer into the temples of your readers sadness, rage, jealousy, etc. You can use small details to slowly build up to those emotions. A clenched jaw, a twitch in the face, a side-eye, comments with double meaning. All of these things can add up to big emotions, building the emotional world of your characters.
Exercises to master Small Details = Big Emotions (taken from page 38):
- Pick a point in your manuscript in which the predominant feeling is large and primary. If you’re unsure, chose the moment in which your protagonist feels the greatest fear.
- What are small signs that indicate something large is happening? What details, hints, indirect clues, or visible effects have you used?
- What repercussions of what’s happening can the reader immediately see?
- What does your protagonist or POV character feel that is not immediate? How will she change, do something differently from now on, or see another person, or anything at all, in a way that’s forever altered?
- What can your protagonist or POV character say or think that’s not obvious, but insightful, unusually compassionate, brutally cutting, or prescient? What can she quip or point out ironically?
- What is a way of looking at what’s happening that scales it down to manageable size? In what way is this outrageous even actually unsurprising? How does it illustrate a truth or apply in all cases? In what way is it unique?
- Craft a message in which you convey not the primary emotion that your protagonist or POV character is feeling but the experience that she is going through. Use details, unusual feelings, non-obvious observations, calm detachment, and wise compassion.
Small Emotions = Big Experiences
Small emotions can have big impact, too.
Moment to moment emotions, like small details, can accumulate to big experiences. Show your characters struggle. Allow the reader to savor these moments, to become a referee in those moments as they build up.
Exercises to master small emotions = big experiences (taken from page 41-42):
- Choose a small but meaningful moment in your story. From whose POV are you writing the moment? What does she feel about what is happening?
- Discard that. Instead write down a contrasting feeling that your POV character also has. Make the contrast sharp, ironic, forceful, principled, passionate, or in any other way a challenge to the reader’s own feelings.
- Considering the moment, what’s one implications of what’s happening? What will your POV character have to do differently now? What must your POV character do that is hard, against the grain, or in any other way unwelcome?
- What’s one way in which this character must question herself as this moment? Go beyond self-doubt. Render a self-judgement. Is this character condemned? How? Is this character exonerated? How?
- At this moment are we in heaven or hell? Why? What is wonderful? What is unbearable? How does your POV character reconcile to this moment and what it means? What’s the outrage? What’s the wisdom?
- Craft a passage in which the big meaning of this small moment is processed by your POV character, a processing that’s unique to this character and contrary to your reader’s own feelings — maybe even to yours.
Good Deeds
Don’t be afraid to imbue virtue in your characters!
Moral elevation is a strong positive emotion that can elicit higher emotions within us. And higher emotions make us ponder. Many people have forgotten just how effective moral elevation is in pursuit of writing “realistic” characters.
Taking a stand for what is right is a great emotional tool to wield because moral stands and struggles have emotional power.
Which leads into moral stakes.
Exercises to master good deeds (taken from page 49):
- Think about your protagonist. What is one good thing your protagonist finds exceptionally hard to do?
- Work backwards to make that virtuous act even more difficult. Later on, perhaps following a catharsis, find a way for your protagonist to do, at last, that good deed.
- Build a secondary character that is selfish, self-absorbed, self-pitying, put upon, wounded, or treated unjustly. What is the selfless act this character would never be expected or called upon to do? Make it happen.
- Which character has a low opinion of another? Reverse it later in the novel, showing that the judgmental character has hidden compassion and insight.
- Which character has a justified grudge against another? Build the reasons for it, then enact the forgiveness.
- Which character is miserly? Choose a moment of celebration or ceremony for that character to give an unexpected gift.
- In what way can you protagonist self-sacrifice, giving up something (or someone) dear?
Moral Stakes
Readers care if your protagonist is a good person.
Signal early that your character has morals. That they care about something. Moral struggles keep readers engaged because they want the protagonist to be good. Acts of courage and generosity have the power to change us even when made up.
Exercises to master mortal stakes (take from page 56):
- Identify a higher emotion you’d like your readers to feel: self-control, courage, perseverance, truthfulness, fairness, respect, generosity, forgiveness, service, sacrifice, discernment, integrity, humility, readiness, or wisdom.
- Choose a character whose nature is, or whom you can make, the opposite of this quality. Who most needs to learn this lesson, see a truth, adopt this virtue, and change?
- Prepare the groundwork for change. Give this character every reason to be the opposite of what she will become. Reinforce that that opposite way of being works and is the right way to be. Find a way to show that at the start.
- Create three events that both build the necessity of change and necessary reasons to resist it. These events are the anticipation phase.
- Finally, create the event that will bring home to your character the better way of being. How can this character show us her better self? This is the moment when you will stir higher emotion in your readers.
To make a story worth reading, you have to focus on the emotional world of your characters.
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