Exploiting Emotion

Jeffe told the perfect Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier story earlier this week. I'm happy to report the incident DID happen, according to Dustin Hoffman. 

Riffing off of what Jeffe talked about, I've come to say the story gives us a glimpse into the two distinct acting traditions these two men came from. Hoffman is a Method actor. It's a very American (by way of Russia) way to approach veracity in acting. The short theory behind it is that only honesty reaches through the divide between actor and audience. The actor must feel whatever the character feels or else the character won't read as true to the audience. Olivier came from the British acting tradition which, based as it is, so firmly in Shakespeare, focuses on technique. Another infamous Olivier quote goes something like "It isn't my job to feel anything. It's my job to make you feel what I want you to feel.' This one likely is apocryphal, but I can't prove that as a search for it took me straight to one of those 'hi-jack your box attempt' websites. It was just a story that got told at acting school. Since it shores up the technique (I don't feel) versus Method (I feel everything) acting arguments, we'll accept it. The theory to technique is that by mastering text, subtext, vocal range, and physicality, a technical actor can evoke emotional reaction in an audience.

The different schools are about establishing honesty. Modern audiences don't want to see actors acting, very much like readers don't generally want author intrusion in stories. In both cases, viewers and readers long to be swept up in the story as if they were standing in the protagonist's shoes themselves. To bring viewers and readers  as close to the work as humanly possible, actors and writers must play on some deep-seated psychological truths about humans.

Humans are deeply empathetic creatures. Whether we want to be or not, we are social animals. Our survival as a species relies on our ability to unconsciously and universally identify emotion from the faintest shifting of an expression or body language. This skill is available to us as infants. It's that important. More interestingly, for a brief moment, when we identify an emotion in someone else, we mirror it as if by trying on the expression we see in someone else confirms for us what feeling is associated with it.  Performers of all kinds learn to leverage it.

Can you see where Method and technique come at exploiting human emotional hot buttons from different directions? Method makes you mirror the feeling you see the actor experiencing. A technical actor has the physical, vocal, and body language skills so well rehearsed that they can choreograph the exact sequence of techniques to hit so as to elicit the emotions they want from an audience.

This is a lot of words to come at how I approach emotion in a novel. My only goal is to make emotion clear, clean, and cutting. If my character is laughing, I want you smiling along with her. If she's terrified, I want you looking over your shoulder. Method - me feeling the feelings  and then jotting them down is fast and easy. However, it's also easier to muddy the emotions and it's easy to get lost in the emo. Also, it's  a tough lesson, but just because I feel the fear, it doesn't mean I'm going to do a good job of communicating it to readers. Actors have faces and bodies for audiences to read. Writers have to build those things before readers can be impacted by them. Technique - word choices, paring complex emotion stacks down to bare bones, describing clear physical cues, sentence length, and white space - offers a tool kit that helps me manipulate readers into feeling what I need them to feel.

It will be no surprise to you that I feel like both are necessary. The trick with Method work is to use it to call up a reminder of a feeling. Technique then catalogues the details. Where do I feel that in the body. What does it feel like? What's my breath doing? What's the sensation? Where? What happens if it heightens? What does it feel like as it drains away? It's interesting to me that every human on earth may experience fear in personal and specific ways, but the experience is so recognizable, that even our 6 month old infants can identify and mirror it. That means I can give you my personal experience of emotion in a story and you will experience your version of that emotion - not mine. And I don't care. My job is not to make you feel what I feel. My job is to trigger you to experience your own emotions with the story I'm telling. My emotions will ring hollow to anyone but me. A story only comes to life if the emotion I write accesses your emotions. That's the only way a book can read as true to a broad audience.

So the answer is both. Both is good. I do need to feel. Some. I need to not feel enough that I can remain critical and objective enough to leverage solid technique.

To Feel or Not To Feel

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?

Writing Emotion and Owning Your Process

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is writing emotion and whether you as the author have to feel the exact emotion you're writing.

There's this tale about acting that's been making the rounds for ages - it's possibly apocryphal - about Dustin Hoffman being a method actor. (Oooh, Marcella found it!) That method asks actors to find the emotions within themselves to play the character, to find essentially their alternate self who would be that person and feel that way. The story goes that Hoffman spent an hour getting into that character's skin and Sir Laurence Olivier strolled in, did his bit, and left again, saying, "My dear boy, it's called acting."

The point of this (again, possibly apocryphal) tale is twofold: the first that you can create the appearance of emotion without feeling it, and the second that everyone does things their own way.

You all should know by now that my primary mantra is this: figure out what your process is and own it.

People like that story because they can smirk at poor Dustin Hoffman doing things the American way, the overly-complicated way, the fancy way, but... is he wrong? Hoffman has an amazing acting career. He's widely acknowledged as a brilliant actor. Clearly his approach isn't "wrong."

Is Olivier wrong in this story? Clearly not, for the same reasons as above. There is no wrong. There is no right. Both things can be true. Both processes work for those performers.

So, do I have to feel the emotion I'm writing in order to put it on the page? Nope. Do I sometimes? Sure, though it depends. Do other writers need to feel the emotion to write it? I've heard they do.

And it's all good. Both things can be true.

 

Writing Emotion: The General Emo Vicinity

 This Week's Topic: Emotion -- Do I have to feel the exact emotion I'm writing?

Have to? Nah. Probably shouldn't, to be frank. It's hell on my health. Murderous rage? I try not to wind myself up that tightly since it's bad for the ol' ticker...and inanimate bystanders (I got a bit of Berserker in me and a large supply of smashables). Stark terror? I carry my stress in my digestive system, and I don't like wearing adult diapers. So turned on a lamp post is lookin' good? I gotta do a hard pass on the arrest warrant in this era of diminishing "reasonable expectations of privacy." 

Now, that's not to say I don't mentally get in the general vicinity of the feeeeels of what my character(s) is going through. The gist of joy and distress. The recollection of the highs and lows. I do that quite often. There are many scenes where my emotional investment is critical to wring the emo of the moment, but there's a line between investment and mimicry. Empathy doesn't require us to endure the physical or mental tumult; it's empathy that is the key to showing the reader my character's actions and reactions, rather than flatly telling the reader what to feel. That's how we--authors--leave enough room for reader interpretation. 

Admittedly, there are scenes when my head forgets to consult my heart, which results in my mss coming back from the editor with lots of "insert emo here" comments. That's when I stare at the scene and ask myself, "What would my protag be feeling here?" That's when empathy knocks on the ol' memory tomb and checks to see if we have anything in the emotionally comparable neighborhood.

I've never gotten in a street fight with dragons, but I did get in a catfight with my sister once. I lost fistfuls of hair and she wound up with a dislocated knee. Then the cops showed up. 

General emo vicinity, folks. General emo vicinity. 

My Greatest Writing Challenge and How I Manage It

I have always struggled with getting started - with everything in life, not just writing. My head is always full of ideas and plans that I want to try out and accomplish in a small amount of time, but instead of it being a facilitating factor, it is actually an annoying setback.

Numerous questions are always swarming around in my mind. Where do I start? Which storyline to choose? Do I go with my gut feeling or do I listen to the masses? The easiest thing would be to give in, go with the flow. Why chose the harder path by being different when it would be much simpler to write the same old story that has proven to be a sure win with readers?

The answer is very simple.

Because I want to stand out from the crowd. I want readers to recognize me for my own unique stories and the unique writing style that brings these stories to life. Yes, it takes more work to write a complex fantasy plot, especially one that is fresh and readers aren’t used to it (and don’t get me even started on the neverending hours that you will spend on research). Yes, you are going to have moments when you are grabbing your head and cursing the day that you decided to write this intricate plot overflowing with symbolism and hidden meanings. But you know what? In the end, when you are holding your book in your hands, you will realize that the countless sleepless nights and piled up stacks of papers were all worth it.

Now, once you’ve decided what the general plot is going to be, where to actually start? How to pull in the reader enough to keep him turning the pages?

The cycle of doubt begins anew, and I found that in overcoming this next burden, it helps me to physically step away from my laptop and literally go somewhere in nature – whether it’s a walk in the park, or just sitting on a bench somewhere and observing people. Such a simple notion, yet so effective – you would be surprised how fresh air and an increased amount of oxygen works wonders on the brain! And if you still have uncertainties when you return to your desk, take a piece of paper and jot down every idea that pops into your head. If the book was to start off with the main character speaking, what would he say? Where would he be? How would that single line weave in with the rest of the book? Would it be better if it wasn’t the main character speaking right away, but rather some side character that will act as a narrator? Or if the opening lines were to be an illustration of some grand event that will later be pivotal for the actual storyline, how revealing should it be? How much is too much?

Don’t get discouraged if you have three sheets of papers with random scribbles all over - my own notes sometimes resemble complex confidential battle plans rather than neat and organized author pages. Once you’ve jotted all of your ideas down, go over them, one by one. If it doesn’t feel right, scratch it out; it might be a great idea but maybe it’s not the right time for it, and that’s absolutely fine. Eventually you will be left with two or three starting points that you will deliberate over until your eyes fall out, and this is where my secret weapon comes in – my intuition. Don’t be afraid of taking a risk. Listen to your gut feeling – it will never steer you wrong!

Isabella Khalidi (pen name) is an adult dark fantasy & romance writer. Her novels are deep and complex, filled with scorching romance that leaves the reader breathless and yearning for more.

She is currently residing in a small town in Europe where she is finishing up her medical studies while simultaneously helping out in her local family owned shop. From an early age she has shown love for ancient lore and mythology, igniting her dream of one day becoming a successful author.

The Snows of Nissa is her first published novel, with the Forgotten Kingdom Chronicles as her debut adult fantasy series. You can find it on KU and Amazon. Follow her on Instagram @isabellakhalidiauthor.

 

The Biggest Problem is Between the Keyboard and the Chair

 

My greatest writing challenge. Hmm. How much time do you have? I've been through a list in my head. I thought about saying 'drafting' which is true, but it's a symptom. Not the root cause. Okay. So then I thought about claiming that carving time out to write was my greatest challenge but that leads to the fact that I'm stupidly slow to write. Which again, is a symptom, not the root cause. All of these lead back to one single factor and that's me. I'm the problem.

My brain is addicted to getting it right. No. I don't know what 'it' is. But my brain is wired to believe that there's  a Right and a Wrong way to put a story together. Can we all agree there are a million ways to tell the same story and none of them is wrong or right? Can we tell my brain? My head believes I'm a terrible person and will be haunted for the rest of my life if I get my story wrong. I wrote all that and I know it's not a rational way to live life. But there it is. My single greatest writing challenge: spending an hour over a single paragraph trying to get the words  and the feeling of it just right.

To top this nonsense off, I add in a day job, a house perpetually full of too many people, and a deeply introverted nature that gets zero true alone time. It's a recipe for a great big mess. Which is an apt description of the situation.

It did take some time for me to realize that writing requires me to unmask. I can't give over brain space to characters and conflict and still maintain a pleasant expression. Can't do it. I need to be able to be completely unmask the autism while I write and the utter lack of expression (or what gets taken as a mean expression) makes the fam SUPER uncomfortable.

I almost highlighted and deleted this whole blog post because my brain is telling me that this isn't what anyone wanted to know or read. I should just write a light, surface piece about how I find drafting to be difficult and what steps I take to work through it. I'm resisting that voice. Maybe what I'm posting is wrong. Or dull. Or too random or whiny or whatever else these synapses and electrical currents are trying to get me to buy. Fine. I'll be all those things.

To address the situation, I'm building fences around writing time - time when I can close and lock a door and everyone else can adult while I write. The next step is to close out distractions - for one hour of writing time, I have the work computer on, too, and that is not at all an ideal situation. That needs to be handled. I've made a bargain with myself to free write scenes a couple of different ways so I can pick the bits that hit just right from all of them. It's still slow - but it's faster than agonizing word by word and sentence by sentence. I'm slowly working for speed again. It'll take a bit before I actually talk about speed but at least there's a plan and a framework. I'm also working on allowing myself to feel my way through a scene rather than worrying about how it sounds. I have a long term goal of kicking the day job to the curb. It's barely a shine of a rising star on the horizon, but it is there. Step by step. Word by word. I'm following that star.

To Nap or Not To Nap

It’s fully summertime with its 90 degree Fahrenheit heat and activities! So it’s quite fortuitous that our topic of the week is to identify our greatest writing challenge. Are you aware of yours?

Do you struggle to get writing done during certain seasons or holidays? I know many authors who take off around the winter holidays—too much egg nog and twinkling lights to ignore! And I know some authors, like myself, who have kids home in the summer—which is a time demand to work around. 

The warmest season of the year is a tricky for me to carve out writing time, but I’ve come to rely on practices or tournaments that allow me to find a patio or bench for me and my laptop. But it’s not my greatest writing challenge. Energy is. 

I have a chronic disease and depending on where my iron levels are at, my energy tends to tank in the afternoons. Not merely a little run down, but a full on brain e-break stop. 

Energy dips are a known thing for me and if I’m going to be productive, for anything, I need to plan around my physical capabilities and make sure I’m eating and drinking what my body needs to ride that rollercoaster back up to the top. Some days my challenge wins out, and that’s okay. Because I know that there’ll be inverse days where I’m able to get more done than anticipated.

Having a writing challenge doesn’t have to mean you stop. Yes, it can be very difficult, but allow yourself grace and time to figure out how to work with it. 

May your weekend be filled with words!

Trusting the Creative Process

 Happy Summer Solstice, all!

This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about our greatest writing challenge and how we manage it.

In some ways, this is a moving target for me, because it seems that - like clockwork - each book presents its own challenge. With 64 published titles under my belt, I feel like I should have this process down and there shouldn't be surprises.

No such luck.

What I have to constantly remind myself is that the creative process is its own creature. It's this connection to something beyond ourselves and thus is not within our control. Particularly for a writer like myself - I am incapable of pre-plotting and write for discovery, relying entirely on intuition - letting go of that desire to control is critical. It can also be difficult, especially when I'm trying to write to a particular idea or market.

For example, I recently wrote one-hundred pages of a book for my agent, according to a very particular comp. Let's call it Ghost meets Out of Africa. (That is NOT it, but that's one of my all-time favorite fictional comps. Points if you can name the movie it's from.) In thinking about this project, I consulted my friend, Melinda Snodgrass, incredibly talented novelist and screenwriter who counts among her credits the Star Trek: Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man. I asked her how closely I should follow the beats of Ghost, if at all. She gave me an incredulous look and asked why, when I had a hugely successful story blueprint right there, I would do anything but follow those beats?

So, I tried.

Turns out that, not only am I incapable of pre-plotting, I also can't follow an outline to save my life. I struggled to write that book. Having the story laid out in essence should have made it easier. Instead it made it 1,000x worse. For me. Because that's not my process. Once I abandoned that outline (sorry, Melinda) and followed my intuition, the words began flowing.

That's the major challenge for me: remembering to trust the process. Particulars change with every book. This principle endures.