I just finished a well-written sci-fi thriller, Mindwalker by Kate Dylan. While reading you’ll feel the main characters confusion, tension, brief moments of relief, and hunger for rightness. If you hadn’t guessed, I highly recommend this read!
The inverse of tapping into all those character’s emotions as a reader is our topic of the week: do you have to feel the exact emotion you’re writing?
I’d love to do a mini study on this and interview authors of books that I emotionally connected to as well as authors of books whose plot sucked me in. I’m curious to see if there’s any correlation to their writing process and my connection to the book. Of course, any study done by anyone on this would be skewed by the scientists’ views and personal preferences. Still, it would be interesting.
I’ll put that idea on the back burner, but for now I can look at my own writing and compare to what readers have told me.
Step 1: Looking back at the books that I’ve written, my most emotional scenes do trigger the same emotions my characters are feeling. I do experience the anguish, the nervousness, the heart palpating fear—albeit to a lesser extent. And maybe that’s why writing is emotionally draining and I’m tired afterwards!
Step 2: Review comments provided by readers (listeners for TMS and feedback on my other manuscripts). Interestingly, the readers/listeners experienced grief, and some tears, during the major loss scenes. Readers/listeners also reported sharing sweaty palms and pounding heart with the intense action scenes. And, yesssss, they were swept into the romantic moments with one listener saying “now I understand why people read these books”.
Step 3: Comparison: My readers/listeners shared the deep emotion scenes with my characters, which correlates to the emotions I felt while I was writing those scenes.
Conclusion: For me, I do experience emotions as I am writing. I put myself into my characters shoes because I want to feel what they’re feeling and be able to sense my way through the scene. Is it necessary? No, there have been plenty of times I write with a more technical goal in mind…and I bet you can pick those parts out.
Maybe I don’t need to do a study on authors and emotions since I know for myself I will experience an echo of my characters emotions as I write. I believe it makes my stories better, but then again, I’m an emotional reader and want to be sucked in that way over the plotting.
Are any of you, dear readers, like me in this? Do you also need some yoga and/or meditation after a good writing session?
