This, I promise, wiping the tears from my eyes, will
be my last rave of the week about the recent LoneStar.Ink writing conference in
Dallas. Having spent the last lunch break of the conference grimly chomping my tuna salad sandwich while
listening to (sob!) other people’s names being called as winners of LoneStar’s “First
Pages” writing contest, I could barely bring myself to open a followup email
with the judges’ comments on my submission.
 |
| Kathleen Baldwin |
They must have hated my work, I told myself, barely
able to refrain from beating my head against my keyboard as I imagined sneers
wafting through cyberspace. And as every writer knows, it’s only a short,
slippery step from having someone hate your words to having them (gasping as I
choke back sobs) hate you!
Imagine my joy, then, to find that the judges loved my
pages. The craft, the characterization, the conclusion. (Excuse me while I gloat.)
What didn’t they love? There wasn’t enough emotion. Make that, not enough
visceral, heart string pulling, punch in the gut emotion.
“. . . take (the main character’s) voice and characterizations up a
notch with even more emotion as you get us in her head,” one judge wrote. And “pull
on our heart strings a bit more and the mystery and reader hook will be
strengthened,” wrote a second.
Showing emotions wasn’t something encouraged in my family during my
formative years. And as a writer, I heard only too often about the mortal sin
of telling instead of showing and of using clichés. No “he felt sad,” or “she
felt frustrated.” No “her gorge rose” or “his heart skipped a beat.”
What to do? Fortunately, I had, unknowingly, already taken a step toward
dealing with my emotional issues (in writing, if not life) by attending author
Kathleen Baldwin’s “Getting Emotion Write” seminar at Lone Star that
very day.
Readers, she told us, “crave vicarious emotional experiences.” It’s what
separates the reading of a narrative from, say, a reading of the tax code. And
to show us how to set up scenes with those vicarious, realistic emotional arcs,
she offered her own four-step “Emotional Code:” Stimulus, Visceral & Emotional Reaction, Mental Response, Decision.
Visceral reaction? That, according to the dictionary, is a reaction that’s
deep, instinctive, unreasoning. The reaction that’s involuntary and
unintellectualized, the one we can no more govern than we can halt the release
of hormones pouring into our bloodstream.
To avoid clichés, Baldwin encouraged us to personalize
physical reactions of an emotion such as fear, in reaction to a stimulus. And
yes, there must be a specific stimulus. Although the character’s visceral
reaction is unreasoning, we as writers have an obligation to be logical. We’re
not playing fair with readers by having a character show reactions or undergo
emotional changes without valid, specific reasons.
Baldwin’s audience brainstormed a list of expressions
of emotion of fear, including paleness, a feeling of cold, shallow breathing,
but also less common but valid reactions such as laughter, an inability to look
at the feared object, or excretory urges. (On that last point, however, I will
mention a caution I heard once from an agent – don’t introduce a character engaging
in what she termed the “three P’s” of excretory functions. Let us get to know
the person first!)
It’s only after the character has experienced a
stimulus and undergone visceral and emotional reactions (remember, these are
not intellectual), that she finally wins the right to come to a mental response
and decide what action to take.
Along the way, don’t forget the value of images,
metaphors and similes, and props. All of these should be specific to the
character and scene, and emotionally charged. Not sure all the steps have been
covered? Follow Baldwin’s advice and use the comments function to keep track!
For more about Kathleen Baldwin and her books (The School for Unusual Girls series), see her
site.
And check out her recommended books: Wired
for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers, by
Lisa Cron, and Creating Blockbusters!
by Gene Del Vecchio.
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