I’m sure you’ve read books that, without quite knowing how
it was done, brought memories, feelings and emotions you didn’t even know you
had up to the surface to flood through you.
Books you’ve laughed with, cried with and even screamed in terror with.
They are not always the obvious books; the romantic weepy,
the slasher horror story or the slapstick comedy. They can be books about ordinary lives and
the kind of people we might know. People going about their business;
experiencing their daily small hurts and triumphs.
Written by authors who can make their words dance in a way
that speaks straight to our hearts.
The best books let us learn something about ourselves. They
illuminate parts of us we might not really want to look at; allow us to feel
stuff, revisit old hurts and wounds safely in the world set out between the
pages. The tears we cry for our
fictional friends are just as cathartic, the joys we share with them just as
uplifting as those we feel for ourselves.
With books like these, when you turn the last page it’s like leaving
home and saying goodbye.
So as writers how do we go about putting the emotion back
into our writing?
I have to confess I am at the very beginning of this journey,
so all I can do is share the thoughts and insights I have had and what brought
me to the realisation that my writing needed more feeling, more raw life and a
bit of true grit.
Writing the Aten Sequence books is fun. It is a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek romp
through science fantasy and Ancient Egypt.
So far the characters have faced some challenges, been in a bit of
danger and had their petty disputes, but there’s been nothing too heavy. And
let’s face it, there’s not a shred of evidence that our protagonist Aten even
has a heart, let alone knows how to use it.
In the third book, which I’m currently revising and editing,
this all changes. Something happens
which will have a major impact on the major characters; they will experience
loss, suffer grief, regret and guilt.
Yet when I went through the chapter that would change
everything for them and, hopefully the reader, it read with all the emotion of
a recipe posted on a cooking blog.
The words are there, the facts are there; everything the
reader needs to know about what happens and move the story along is there. But the feeling isn’t there. It’s as emotionally flat as a pancake!
So what have I done to help put the emotion into my writing?
Exposure – as authors we might think we are writing solely for the benefit of our readers, but I believe the most talented authors know that they have to put themselves into their work. They have to expose themselves. Show who they are through the actions, feelings and thoughts of their characters.
Exposure is scary; letting people see who we really are and
be honest about our feelings is hard for a lot of us. But the only emotions we have access to are
our own, so we need to use them when we are creating our characters and putting
words into their mouths. Especially, the
darker, pettier, less glorious traits we possess.
Exposure makes us feel vulnerable, but as an
author I feel you have to accept you will feel a degree of vulnerability every
time you send a manuscript out, every time you read your story out loud to an
audience or ask a friend to critique it.
Letting myself feel vulnerable like this has been a hard one for me, as
I used to hate anyone reading my writing.
But I’m having to work to get over it, or all I’ll ever have to show for
my effort is a few yellowing manuscripts at the back of a drawer.
Practice – like everything you want to be good at, writing
is about practice. Just as nobody gets
to be good at tennis by sitting on the sofa watching TV, your writing won’t
improve unless you write. Most experts
recommend that if you are serious about your craft then you need to have the
discipline to write every day. To set
aside some time and write, even if you only produce a couple of lines in the
time allotted.
Intention – if, like me, you don’t think you are getting
your readers to feel the range and depth of reaction and emotion you would like
to call from them; take time and pay more attention to the words you choose and
how you use them. I tend to like to
gallop on with the story, so miss opportunities to draw the reader in and give
them the space to experience it all – to feel whatever it brings up for them.
It is also tempting to tell our readers what they should be
thinking or feeling. Avoid being too
explicit with what your characters are experiencing. The old ‘show not tell’ is just as pertinent when
it come to emotion and allows the reader to create their own interpretation,
come to their own conclusions. If you
tell your readers your hero Joe is heartbroken because his girlfriend left him,
it is not likely to grip their imagination as much as if you painted a picture
of his grief and sense of loss through his actions and dialogue.
So, taking my own advice on board, this week I have been
practising! I have been writing poetry,
which is very unusual for me – love poetry no less! It might not be very good poetry and probably
wouldn’t win any competitions, but the aim was to write emotionally, to expose
feelings, pain and hurt.
As an author you can never really know if you have achieved
that; only a reader can tell you if you touched them with your words. It may
take hundreds of thousands of these words to get it right, but if you are
serious about being a writer you will keep on trying and will never give up.
I Wish I Knew
Ribbons of thought unwind
Round kisses, words and time
When lying warm and drowsy
Sun creeping across your bed
Was all the paradise I needed
To banish the doubts from my head
From the night I first saw you
The casual glance you threw my way
When I saw in a stranger
A man to steal my heart away
The heart I left unguarded
A trust for which I’d have to pay
Didn’t know shadows could lengthen
Thought the sun would stay
Believed that in that patch of golden light
My dragons you would slay
So when I smiled and reached for you
I didn’t see you’d slipped away
For though your body lay warm beside me
In your head you’d gone
Galloped to a distant country
Where another conquest you won
I wish I’d seen, I wish I knew
That all I was, was the past to you
That even as you loved my body
My face you did not see
Patterns on the wallpaper more interesting than me
I was a port of call,
a pit stop along the way
A place to fuel and rest awhile
Till other interests lit your day
I tried to stay, I tried to pretend
Things had never changed
That the words you said still rang true; believed them all
the same
But knowledge is a dangerous thing, so when I saw you smile
And look across the crowded room to catch a brand new gaze
I could hide no longer; from Eden turned away
