How to Make Readers Feel Strong Emotions by Elizabeth Alsobrooks

What makes you love a book? Usually it’s connecting with the characters on an emotional level. Writers who make readers step into the character’s world and actually experience that world let them feel beyond their everyday emotions and live vicariously through the events and experiences of those characters.  They may be fictional, but the writer has made them become real to the readers, to make them into authentic people.

The stories might not be real, but the emotions the reader experiences must feel real. So how does a writer do this?  How do they make readers experience emotion?

1. Show Don’t Tell: how many times do new writers hear this? What does it mean? It means to show the character’s feelings through their actions and reactions to events rather than announcing to the reader what the character is feeling. There’s a time to write tight, and a time to invite the reader to live the story.

Here’s an example of telling: Jessie stood next to the car, but was too afraid to open the door. She knew what was inside and she didn’t want to see it.

Here’s showing emotion: Focus.  Steady. I can will my hand to stop shaking. I can walk over to the car door. Carl’s favorite CD. It's playing his favorite song.  His pride and joy’s motor is purring softly, so innocent and familiar as it fuels a steady stream of exhaust that's clouding around that slumped head, with those thick dark curls, soft, silky. No.  A hard swallow. So much shaking. It feels like earth tremors under my feet.  No! Please God, no!  The door handle feels cold. Or is it my hand?

The garage door jolted as the mechanism engaged and it began to rise. Screams. Make them stop. I need to focus, to get Carl. Wait. It's me, isn't it? 

2.  Realistic characters who elicit empathy.

Readers relate to shared human conditions, so characters who have realistic experiences (even if those experiences are fiction-based) that elicit realistic emotions. The reader first understands or identifies with a character before they can connect emotionally. The writer must build to the climax by developing a three-dimensional character the reader can identify with, can feel empathy for. By the time they reach the climax, the reader should be so engrossed with the character’s life they react to the character’s deep emotions with such realistic empathy they themselves experience emotional reactions to the character’s plight. Think about how different it is so hear about the death of a stranger, versus hearing about the death of someone you know well and care deeply for.  The character must become that someone the reader knows well and cares deeply for.   Characters, no matter how fictional their world or setting, must be believable and sympathetic. The reader must want to be that character, to live their life, fight their battles, experience their victories for the entire story.

3.  Villains are so much fun to hate!

A bad guy/gal solicits an emotional response very quickly. This character is so destructive, so vile and selfish or hateful that they torture the protagonist or someone close to him/her. When the beloved protagonist reacts to the villain, the reader will too.

4.  Writers don’t wimp out!  If they want to reach the reader’s emotions, writers  create emotion-evoking scenes. They may even kill off the main character’s child, pet, loved one, or destroy whatever means the most to them. Writer’s don’t have to be murderers. They can also have the beloved character experience betrayal or some other form of treachery.

5.  Anticipation causes tension. Great writers feed the reader hints of what’s to come. Foreshadowing versus announcing.  Foreshadowing is a thread of anticipation that keeps the reader in suspense while making them realize something is coming. Announcing, is telling the reader what’s going to happen and then it immediately happens, without any anticipation or tension, and absolutely no surprise. It doesn’t really even need to happen if you tell instead of showing.

6.  What’s in a word? Many words carry connotations. The use of them makes the reader expect something, assume something, or realize something. A character who never swears suddenly sounds like an angry dock worker. The reader immediately knows something is wrong. Some words create a mood, convey humor or passion or fear. Writers choose words carefully in order to elicit emotion in the reader.

7.  Situations or events that are vital or life-altering. Good plots create situations for the characters that threaten what they want, need or seek. The characters have to have high stakes motivation and drive. That helps keep the reader engrossed in the story and empathetic to the character’s plight, thus soliciting an emotional response.

8.  Time is of the essense.  Putting a time frame on the character’s goal achievement increases tension by causing the character to react with uncharacteristic decisions and/or adventurous even risky behavior. This sets the reader on edge, and solicits, you got it, an emotional response.

9.  Do you want the bad news or the worst news? If a character makes bad decisions the reader knows it. They realize the characters is creating more problems for themselves and there will be some dire consequences.

10.  Keep up! Writers have to move the pace. They can’t dwell so long on one scene or situation that the reader loses interest in it.

11.  Even fantasy must seem realistic. Characters, even supernatural, fictional characters must seem believable. Their problems must be realistic to their time, place and situation. Even if the world is made up, the events and rules for that world must be logical, in order for the reader to believe the characters problems and motivation are true and realistic.

12.  Plot twists add excitement and surprise. They keep the reader off balance, and guessing, adding tension and eliciting emotion.

13.  Conflict, both inner and outward add tension and emotion. Characters can have conflict with other characters or themselves (inner conflict), but they need to have conflict, something that gets in the way of their goal, in order to solicit emotional response from both characters and readers.

14.  Plot effects the rhythm, the movement of the story, and the reader’s emotional response. Tension is added to action scenes by using short sentences and paragraphs. It picks up the pace, making the reader’s eyes move more quickly down the page, increasing their pulse, their sense of importance or anxiety that the characters are experiencing. It creates suspense, even fear. Longer sentences and paragraphs slow the pace and let the reader take a breath and relax.

15.  Where it happens matters. If it’s a tense, spooky scene, it doesn’t add much suspense or anxiety to have it take place in a sunny garden. A rainy evening in a cemetery sets a dark setting and adding the sound of coyotes howling or owls screeching can make it even more atmospheric. Each scene should be in the setting that’s perfect of the reader, to help them get into the mood of the story line, and to feel they are actually experiencing the character’s lives.

18.  Make sense. Good writers know that no one lives in a vacuum. The characters are surrounded with sounds, smells and sights and they have reactions to these elements. Incorporating all the senses heightens the reader’s reaction and emotional engagement with the character’s world and the events taking place in it.

Play with all five senses to keep your readers involved, maybe off balance, but always interested in what’s coming next.

19.  Whose point of view is it? One of the most powerful tools a writer uses is deep point of view. It's not just about using 3rd person versus 1st person (used quite often in YA books). Deep point of view involves making the reader become so engrossed in the character's life, their hopes and dreams and goals and motivations that they feel as though they are actually experiencing it first-hand. The writer eliminates word such as wondered and thought and knew, tags like she said or he said. Instead, they anchor the point of view to one character at a time and stay as much as possible in the main character's point of view.  They show the reader what the main character sees, hears, smells and feels. Their narrative style develops the main character's voice so well they are not writing about the main characters but as them. The main character's beliefs and world views become an integral part of the story.

Using all of these methods (not just one or two) makes for a great adventure. The best writers know this, which is why their fans love their stories. Think about your favorite story and what made you love it so much!