A death reported on the nightly news means one thing when it’s a stranger and something totally different when it’s someone you know or a relative of someone you know. You know how this plays out in your own life. The reader may have a physical response-laughter or tears or shivers-as if whatever happened to the character had actually happened to the reader. By the novel’s climax, the reader should so identify with the lead character that the character’s pain becomes the reader’s pain, his triumphs, the reader’s triumphs.
By chapter three, if you’ve put the reader in the character’s place in the story, what touches the character can touch the reader. The reader won’t be affected by a character’s deep emotions on page one, simply because he has no ties to the character. Make sure the reader knows/understands/identifies with the character before trying to connect emotionally. (Readers can also identify with the shared human condition, so sometimes a particular situation will resonate with readers even before the character becomes involved.) If the reader can identify with a character-with her dreams or habits or choices-he can also identify with her emotions-pains and joys and sorrows. Make a character sympathetic, so the reader identifies with her. She inhaled only a shallow breath and then struggled for another.Īnd nearly shot through the ceiling when the microwave dinged, letting her know her tea was hot.Ģ. Tom had warned her not to open the basement door when he wasn’t around, but he was due home soon, so what could happen? She bit her lip and tightened her fingers around the cold knob.
She stood at the far side of the kitchen, debating what to do.ĭelores’s hand trembled as she reached for the locked doorknob. They do get emotional when they can step into someone’s shoes and experience his or her feelings as if those feelings were churning inside them.ĭelores was afraid to open the door to the basement steps. This is a major key for rousing reader emotions. Character action and response is a good place to focus. Show what fear or giddiness or grief does to him. Show the results of character emotions through the character’s actions. That is, don’t report that a character is afraid or giddy or grieving. Write in scenes, showing rather than telling. All from reading a story.īut how can a writer accomplish this? How does a writer make readers feel emotion?ġ. Readers can fear and feel joy and be excited and know grief. Writer and reader know the fictional events aren’t real, but the emotion can be. One technique the writer can make use of to create reality out of fiction is to induce emotion in readers, make them feel something of what the characters are experiencing.
Since readers want to immerse themselves in other worlds and other lives, what can writers do to make that experience authentic, to make the fictional world real for a few hours? To do what they can’t in the course of a normal day. They like to imagine themselves in worlds and situations that challenge them, that give them opportunity to do and be something other than what they do or are in their real lives.įiction, whether in book or film or games, allows people to not only step into other worlds, but to experience those worlds. Readers like to be touched, moved, by story.
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So, this article complements that first one, presents practical tips on how to stir the reader’s emotions. I wrote an article on the importance of creating emotions in readers, but I’ve noticed that writers are looking for specifics on how to accomplish that. Januby Fiction Editor Beth Hill last modified February 8, 2011
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