It’s the emotion, stupid

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by Barb, heading out with the grandkids (and some of their parents) to Boothbay Harbor this week

Here we are for the second in my series of posts about what I’ve learned after putting in my 10,000 hours writing mysteries. The first post in the series, about Voice, is here.

As I said in my introduction to the series, “One caveat: Since these are things I’ve learned along the way, you will find as the posts go on that I have violated or neglected every one of them in my work. Don’t bother looking for examples because you will definitely find them.” That is particularly true of this month’s post because it is the lesson I learned last.

I’ve written before about how I started my career at Information Mapping, a company that offers a proprietary methodology for analyzing, organizing, and presenting complex information. I worked there for a dozen very formative years from my late twenties to my early forties. The Information Mapping methodology forms the bedrock of my intellectual approach to everything.

There’s a whole lot more to it but the methodology starts with two questions:

  • What do you want readers to do? And,
  • What do they need to know in order to do it?

What you want the reader to do can be as simple as putting part A into slot B or as consequential as making a decision that will affect your company for years to come. But you always start with what you want the reader to do and what they need to know in order to do it.

For a long time that way of looking at writing confounded me in terms of creating fiction. What did I want the reader to do? Turn the page, I suppose is one answer, but not a very actionable by itself. I decided my old discipline didn’t apply to my new work and I discarded it.

But then, as I said, late in the game I realized the paradigm was this:

  • What do I want readers to feel? And
  • What do they need to know in order to feel it?

Once you see this, you realize emotion is the lens through which to view the whole project. What we want is for readers to feel. The books we remember are the ones that make us feel. The books we press on our friends, saying, “You have to read this!” are the ones that resonated in our emotions.

In the crime fiction world we work on the worry/anxiety/fear/dread emotional axis a great deal. As crime writers, we talk about creating suspense all the time. But we also want people to love, or hate, or be puzzled by, or feel empathy for, or to cheer on our characters. We want readers to long to visit our settings and shed a tear at our weddings, and at our funerals. We want them to care. They will care because they have been moved.

Often in panels and interviews, writers are asked if there’s a reader they picture when they write. It just happened in the panel Liz, Edith, and I were on at the Kensington CozyCon in May. Often the question comes in a marketing context–do we have a target demographic? I’ve never found this idea the slightest bit useful and I doubt most other writers do. I always answered this in terms of thinking of a reader giving me their precious time and not wanting to waste it–which is the beginning of an answer but not all the way there.

Now I realize writers should not be thinking of a reader, or a group of readers, but of readers writ large. What do I want the reader to feel right now? And what they need to know, either in the moment, or before we got here, in order to feel it?

When we choose one word over another, when we paint a picture or invoke one of the five senses, what do we want the reader to feel? A slippery piece of seaweed between the toes evokes a different emotion than a slimy rope of seaweed entwined around an ankle. A night so dark you can’t see your companion is different than gazing at his profile in the moonlight. These scenes are clear to us as we envision and create them, but thinking in terms of how we want our readers to feel, and what they need to know in order to feel it, it tells us what and how much to put on the page.

Novel writers work alone. We don’t have directors or actors or music scores to interpret, to help the audience find the emotion. This is both the best and the worst part about writing books. But we do have partners. When readers read about our specific wedding between two specific characters, in a specific place, they bring with them every wedding they have ever attended and how they felt in those moments. Then the story belongs to them. Our job is to get them there.

Writers: Do you think about the emotion you are evoking in the readers as you create or edit? Readers, do you agree that the books that stay with you are the ones that touch you emotionally?

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Published by Barbara Ross

Barbara Ross is the author of twelve Maine Clambake Mystery novels and six novellas. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com

30 Thoughts

  1. Another brilliant, insightful essay, Barb. I’m writing a first draft these days, and I needed this reminder.

    I’m not sure I think consciously about the emotion I’m trying to evoke unless it’s a particularly suspenseful or scary scene, but I know my writing does bring out emotions – sometimes in myself!

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    1. Thanks, Edith. There’s no question our writing brings out emotion if we’re any good at all, and you are. What I’m trying to do here is move from unconscious to conscious competence in order to be more consistent. However there may be an argument to be made about whether this is a good thing in a creative endeavor. You don’t want to be too much in your head. On the other hand, different parts of the complex fiction writing job come easily and naturally to different people. Being conscious of a skill can help one over the challenges.

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  3. Most definitely! It doesn’t matter if it’s feels of love, fear or warmth, if the reader doesn’t “feel” it then the moment is lost. Feelings are what keeps me turning pages. It can be feeling as if you are part of the close knit group of amateur sleuths, worry over whether the heroine is going to make it out alive or dreaming for a happily ever after for a couple determined to stay apart. When the emotion the writer is trying to portray makes the reader feel it them mission accomplished for the author and makes the reader keep turning pages or coming back for another book.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

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  4. Fabulous post, Barb! I try to be very conscious of underlying emotions in a scene, especially when my sleuth is confronting a suspect. I try to add the little body movements to convey nervousness or agitation. It can be a challenge to avoid using the same actions over and over!

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    1. Definitely the characters’ emotions need to be conveyed. And these are linked to the reader’s emotions–if they care enough about your character that the emotion transmits.

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  6. Wonderful post, again. My best writing happens when I’m so involved that I feel the emotion. I actually cried writing two scenes in The Drinking Gourd, and laughed aloud scribbling a scene in Church Street Under. I have to physically enact some of the scenes…well you can see I wholeheartedly agree with your premise. (And for any Information Mappers, I chunk scenes relatively but don’t label them.)

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    1. Hi, Kathy! So funny that we come to this gig with the same baggage. I’m beginning to think that there is a connection between the writer feeling the emotion and the reader feeling it. Edith mentions that above, too. As long as the writer is skillful.

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  7. I enjoy FEELING as I write. It seems that’s when I write in a way that best gives those feelings to the reader. It’s like I have to be there, and FROM there, I reach out to the reader. So yes, this post resonates with me. Thank you.

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    1. There seems to be an emerging view here that if the writer feels it, the reader will feel it. I’m not sure–and not sure how to prove it. My suspicion is that the writer must feel in order for the reader to feel, but it’s not a guarantee.

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  9. Yes, the books that stay with me are ones that make me feel. But it can be happy emotions. Books that make me laugh, make me feel happy, are just as likely to stick with me as ones that make me feel other emotions.

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  10. Great post. I do think about “what is my character feeling right now?” because that is often what I want my readers to be feeling as well. Not that I always get it the first time, but I do try.

    And yes, books that make me feel something stick with me long after I’m finished. Same with movies.

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    1. I’m not sure what the writer feels (as others have suggested) or what the POV character feels are 100% equivalent to what the reader feels. Thinking on this. In this case, at least, we can look for evidence.

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  12. As a reader, I definitely want to feel what the characters are feeling. Otherwise, it is just two dimensional. If I don’t feel I’m right there with characters, I quit reading the book. Barb, I loved being in Busman’s Harbor with all my friends. 🙂

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  13. Absolutely, I am a reader, not a writer. The emotional connection is not just important, it is vital.

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  16. Hey, Barb! Another insightful essay. I think you’re wise to distinguish what the writer feels as she’s writing and what the character feels from what the READER feels. They are connected, of course, but showing or describing a character’s emotion is not the same as evoking emotion in the reader. Agent, writer, and teacher Don Maass talks a lot about this is his book, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, and it’s something I try to keep in mind as I work. For me, it’s a part of revision. It has a lot to do with what’s at stake, for characters whom the author has made us care about, whether we like them or not.

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