Writing Big Feelings: Writer’s Digest Craft Article
I’ve long been fascinated and troubled by the question of how to do two separate but connected jobs as a writer:
Evoke a strong feeling within the reader (to make them cry is a kind of peak, I think).
Describe a character who is experiencing huge feelings in a way that doesn’t feel maudlin, or cheesy.
A lot of the best stories, fiction and nonfiction, focus on the major moments of life—intense moments. Death, betrayal, loss, a crisis of faith—our characters (or ourselves in nonfiction) are getting divorced, sick, losing careers; they’re grieving, or struggling against dire circumstances. The feelings are BIG.
And when we turn in pages about this stuff to a workshop, we’re often asked to “explain” more fully what the point of view character is feeling. Then we add descriptions of those feelings, and it comes across as cheesy, or “pushing emotions.” The emotions seem abstract. So…what are we supposed to do?
In my new piece for Writer’s Digest (print issue only, for now, May 202), I broke down various rules I’d learned about this subject from studying great writers at work in this space. In the essay I draw upon Annie Proulx, Joan Didion, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Francisco Goldman, and others.
Here are brief descriptions of three of the six takeaways:
Give It Time
This is particularly true in memoir and personal essay, but if you’ve been through a very painful experience, andyou want to write about it, you might need to wait. Often, and I’ve certainly found this to be true of myself, if the pain is too raw, writers will tend to “push emotion” onto the reader. There’s a lack of perspective, and often what a reader wants is the wisdom that the writer has gleaned after not simply having the experience, but also processing the outcome of that experience.
Write Feelings that Are Surprising, or Askew
Very often, the feeling that you have in a given situation is unsurprising. You get betrayed, and you’re angry. You lose a loved one, you feel sadness and grief. And so on. Most readers are very good at sniffing out subtle emotional cues, and they can often estimate a character’s emotional state even if they’re not told, and it’s not even implied, just given the context.
This work is what readers do well, they’re great at identifying and interpreting emotional states of characters. So when discussing emotions directly, it’s often best to look at surprising or counter-intuitive emotions.
Let Everyone Be Complicated
This is a big one. Emotions are more acute for the reader when the situation has the feel of reality, and reality is complicated. There are rarely good guys and bad guys in the real world. Instead, we have a lot of well-meaning people who make terrible mistakes, or misculculations. They are fearful, they are lonely, they make decisions without fully anticipating the consequences.
The most acutely painful moments in books and stories are often when everyone involves essentially means well, but the outcome is nonetheless tragic. Once characters start feeling flattened (good and bad), the reader feels the lack of empathy, the lack of nuance. And now the emotional range narrows, too.
This is an asynchronous class, which starts on Monday, July 8, 2024, is for anyone struggling with a book. Although that first sprint of fifty pages into a book—either novel or nonfiction—can be exhilarating, it’s hard to sustain. Sooner or later, you’re likely to find yourself in a creative ditch, wheels spinning. We’ll take a look at when to revise and when not to, as well as which questions are productive and which are not. We’ll seek out ways to reinvigorate ourselves for much more writing. The final class will be a tutorial on the business of finding an agent and/or publisher for your book.