Third Level Emotions
By Donald Maass | June 2, 2015 |
In drafting your novel, would you leave out dialogue? Would you fail to include action or events? Would you ensure that nothing is described? Would you forego theme, forget mood, ignore time, eschew era, not bother with relationships, or erase any traces of voice?
Of course not.
Why then do so many novelists fail to write about the most fundamental, forward and obvious element of our human experience, emotions?
Now hold on, you may be thinking. My manuscript is chock full of feelings. It’s a tsunami of sensitivity, an earthquake of empathy, doused with desire, replete with responses. In fact, my manuscript causes my heart to ache so acutely that sometimes I must set it down and weep.
Uh-huh. That’s you. As for me, manuscripts too often stir in me little feeling. That’s not because I’m jaded. You aren’t either but when was the last time a novel truly took you for a ride on an emotional roller coaster? And how often do novels genuinely have that effect on you? I’m betting not often. There’s a big difference between what an author feels while writing and what readers feel while reading.
Why is that? Do we change when we become readers? It wouldn’t seem so. After all we are empathetic creatures. We mirror others stances and facial expressions. We can pick up others’ moods even from texts on a phone. We are full of sympathy. We may even collectively be swept up in what psychologists call emotional contagion, which is the mood of a crowd. We even feel our era’s zeitgeist.
Reading fiction is not like living life, though. When we talk with friends in person, for instance, we pick up their cues. Our postures mimic theirs. Our facial expressions reflect theirs. We begin to feel what they feel. In fiction we don’t get those cues, not in the same way, not even if they’re written in.
Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s The Emotion Thesaurus is not only a comprehensive survey to character emotions but suggests physical signals to convey each feeling. Adoration, for example, can be shown by releasing an appreciative sigh or laying a hand over the heart. Great. That looks like adoration, sure enough, but if reading such signals do we readers actually feel adoration? Not really. Because we recognize a feeling doesn’t mean that we’re feeling it.
The failure of fiction to excite much feeling in readers happens because of several misconceptions. They are: 1) that what characters feel is what readers will feel, 2) that incidental action is charged with symbolism and major plot changes have earthquake emotional force, 3) that writing about emotions will rob the reader of those feelings (better is evoking reader emotions through showing), and 4) that dwelling on emotions slows narrative pace.
Here’s a truth: We do not feel what characters feel. We feel what we feel. That’s so in life and it’s so in reading fiction. Hearing or reading about an experience can stir us, certainly, but when it does it mostly stirs comparison to our own experience. When a friend relates something that happened and how it felt to them we respond, “Oh, I know exactly what you mean. That’s just like the time when I…”
It’s good that we get what they’re saying but the exchange between that friend and ourselves is not the Vulcan Mind Meld we may imagine it is. That point is not just academic. It fundamentally changes our approach to the emotional content in our novels. The emotional state of readers is not a clone of what’s on the page. What’s on the page only triggers—let’s hope—an emotional effect in them.
[pullquote]The goal, then, is not to get readers to feel what characters feel but to get readers to feel something in the first place. When they do they associate what they’ve felt with the story they’re reading. They feel swept up in its currents, as if they themselves are experiencing what’s happening.[/pullquote]
The goal, then, is not to get readers to feel what characters feel but to get readers to feel something in the first place. When they do they associate what they’ve felt with the story they’re reading. They feel swept up in its currents, as if they themselves are experiencing what’s happening. But they’re not. That’s not actually possible.
You can see this easily on Amazon and Goodreads. Readers reading the same 100,000 or so words have many different experiences of those words. They report a great range of feelings sensed while reading what they read. The lesson? Not only can you not get readers to feel what characters feel, you cannot even count on getting them to feel what you, the author, want them to feel.
With me so far? Great. How then do we effectively go about building an emotional roller coaster for readers to ride?
Many authors believe that language or plot alone causes readers to feel deeply. That can be true but ingenious imagery and plot bombs both mostly evoke the same limited response in readers: surprise. Prose and plot can also generate tension, which feels significant but which generates less emotional force than authors believe. Tension grips our attention (at-tension), yes, but it is also only tension.
Incidental action similarly feels emotionally charged to authors but for readers has minimal effect. Suppose that a mother is worn down upon realizing that her child not only doesn’t want to practice piano but will never be a prodigy. The mother sinks into a chair. As the author writing it, this simple action is super-charged with symbolism. It’s utter defeat. This mother is all mothers, facing their children’s limits and their own. For readers, however, this simple action is just six words; words to slog through on the way to something more dramatic, something better.
Speaking of better, showing is better than telling, right? Writing about emotions is artless, many believe. It’s like yelling at readers to feel sad. Does the command feel sad cause us to feel sad? No. This emphasis on artful evocation of feelings has in recent decades brought about both in pulpy commercial fiction and high literary fiction a bare emotional landscape. From Ernest Hemingway to Dashiell Hammett to Cormac McCarthy, “good” fiction is largely emotion-free.
That’s too bad. Literary greats like Hardy, Wharton, Forsyth, Lawrence and many others knew that writing about emotions is as necessary and narrative as writing about anything else. They also understood how to do so artfully. Here’s a passage from the opening of a novel published in 1895, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, in which young Jude Fawley considers his rural existence:
Jude went out, and, feeling more than ever his existence to be an undemanded one, he lay down upon his back on a heap of litter near the pig-sty. The fog had by this time become more translucent, and the position of the sun could be seen through it. He pulled his straw hat over his face, and peered through the interstices of the plaiting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as he had thought. Nature’s logic was too horrid for him to care for. That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it.
If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man.
Okay, Hardy’s prose today feels a bit turgid but he here conveys a boy’s self-reflection in a moment that we even now can easily recognize. If he could only prevent himself growing up! We’ve all felt that. And that’s the point. Even at the remove of one hundred and twenty years, Hardy gives us a chance to recall our own creeping dread at the approach of adulthood. Who wants to live with grown up responsibilities and suffer life’s ambiguities? Cripe, I hardly want to do so now and I’m long past the point of no return!
[pullquote]Emotions are as fit a subject in fiction as plot, place and personal journey. Indeed, what is a personal journey if not the string and sum of emotional reflection and ever changing understanding of self?[/pullquote]
Emotions are as fit a subject in fiction as plot, place and personal journey. Indeed, what is a personal journey if not the string and sum of emotional reflection and ever changing understanding of self?
If you ask me this—How was your day?—I’ll probably, on most days, say good. But what was good? Was it my productivity? Was it my progress toward personal goals? No. What I mean by good is that I felt good, especially about myself. I was happy, or at least content. That’s how we measure our progress and, over time, our growth. Our journeys are not our resumes or biographies or a timeline of major life events. They are how we have felt and what we think about that.
Which brings me to a key point: Research into emotional functioning has shown that feeling and cognition happen together. There is some disagreement about which happens first and how they mesh, but it’s clear that part and parcel of emotion is the assessment of it. In the passage above, is Jude Fawley thinking or feeling? It’s hard to separate them. On the page, writing about feelings entails not only the feelings but assessing them, which is to say observing them and their effects, judging them and discerning their meaning.
Thinking about feelings on the page accomplishes two things. First, it objectifies emotions, removing them from the reader to both make them bearable and to turn them into a kind of question: Do you feel anything like this? Second, by being longer than a single word or sentence, the examination of an emotion literally creates time and space for readers to process their own feelings, often unconsciously but sometimes with vivid awareness.
How much time do they need for that? About a paragraph’s worth, which is why Hardy’s passage above and thousands upon thousands of similar passages since are longer than the rules would seem to allow. The emotional craft of fiction is in essence not force feeding emotions to readers but clearing a patch of garden for them to grow their own.
Thomas Hardy understood something else that many artful authors have also figured out since: To get readers to feel something, and to think about it, requires a starting point that is not obvious. Obvious character emotions shut readers off. They’re too common. Their effect is dull. Spring an emotional surprise on a reader, though, and the reader’s brain lights up (quite literally) and the reader hears the question and begins a kind of inner dialogue.
So let’s turn these thoughts into a technique. It starts with taking a moment in a character’s journey, going down three emotional levels, and then examining that level in ways that objectify, judge and find meaning in what is felt.
Start by picking any moment in your story when your protagonist (or any other character) feels something strongly. What is that feeling? Write it down. Now, pause at that moment. Ask, what else does this character feel simultaneously? Write that down. Next ask, what else does my character feel at this moment? That third level emotion is our focus.
Examine that third-level emotion. Ask, what is it like to feel this feeling? Create an analogy for it. How is this iteration of this feeling different from feeling it at any other time? Also, is it good or bad to be feeling this? What might (or should) this character be feeling instead? What would a finer human being feel? What would a more honest one feel? Regardless, why is this feeling the right and only one for this character right now?
Finally, what does having this third-level feeling tell this character about self? What does it say about his or her condition? Has this character sunk or risen? Has this character grown or regressed? What’s the truth in it? How is this feeling beautifully universal or painfully unique? Is feeling this feeling to dwell in heaven or burn in hell?
Having gathered some thinking about this feeling, weave your notes into a paragraph of passage that captures this character’s emotional condition at this moment. Take a look at what you’ve written. What do you think?
In workshops, many participants following the steps above find that they’ve created a passage that’s highly effective. It is also counter-intuitive. Dwelling on emotions is supposed to be wallowing, a drag on pace, the stuff you cut and yet, paradoxically, done this way it works. Why? Because it catches the reader by surprise and then creates space and time for the reader to feel something of their own. In a minute or less a garden of feeling springs up.
Is writing about feelings in your fiction comfortable or uncomfortable for you? Is it better to tell or show? If you write emotions do you select them or go with your characters’ impulses? Are emotions incidental to story or the essence of it?
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Thanks for another brilliant essay, Don. Describing a character’s emotions so that the reader feels them is one of the most difficult challenges a writer faces. Writers know what their characters are feeling, but often there is a tendency to use a few subtle cues to show the emotion, because the writer doesn’t want to “tell” the reader what the character is feeling. Or, the writer chooses to hit the reader over the head with the emotion. In the first instance, the reader is left not knowing enough. In the second instance, the reader is robbed of the experience of feeling what the character feels, as opposed to what the writer tells the reader to feel. This passage is a great take-away:
“Thinking about feelings on the page accomplishes two things. First, it objectifies emotions, removing them from the reader to both make them bearable and to turn them into a kind of question: Do you feel anything like this? Second, by being longer than a single word or sentence, the examination of an emotion literally creates time and space for readers to process their own feelings, often unconsciously but sometimes with vivid awareness.”
Your exercise forces the writer to dig deeper. I have never explored third level emotions. I tend to focus on the overarching emotion (anger, fear, joy, etc.)– what’s there on the surface. I’m not sure I can identify a third level emotion, but it will come with practice. I can’t wait to try your exercise.
CG-
What you’ll find, I think, is that when you explore the third level emotion what the reader feels–in that space you’ve created–is actually the first level emotion with which you started.
Try it out. It has had that result in a number of workshops.
“3) that writing about emotions will rob the reader of those feelings (better is evoking reader emotions through showing)” –
Really needed this post. Your examples and explanations went a long way toward clarifying a big question in my mind. Thank you :-)
Great! You’re welcome.
It’s strange. Of all the exercises you give us, this is the one I have the most internal resistance to. I simply do. not. want. to. do. it. Every time I encounter it. And yet, every time I sit down and make myself do it, the results are amazing.
This time, when I actually sat down to write, my typing fingers seemed to find that the third emotion was quite different then the one that I had put down in the first part of the exercise.
I always strive to bring my character’s emotional worlds alive. I suppose I succeed. . .reviewers and readers have called my books emotional roller-coasters and frequently tell me that they cried or laughed out loud at the appropriate moments. Yet sometimes I’m hard-pressed to explain, even to myself, how I did that. . .which always leaves me a bit insecure about being able to achieve the same result in the next book.
Shawna-
“…which always leaves me a bit insecure about being able to achieve the same result in the next book.”
I hear you. That’s why I’m so in favor of turning the “art” of fiction into techniques, so that we can with every manuscript repeat what works instead of praying for accidental grace.
Unbelievably fantastic! Your craft techniques are always so inventive, and resonate deeply with me. My CP, who attended your workshop in Oregon, generously gave me a copy of forty-something pages of notes that she took there. Most of which I’ve devoured already. Someday, I’d love to attend live. Until then, at least I get a taste of your workshops. She attends all of them. Any plans in the future to come anywhere near New Hampshire?
I’ll see what we can do to get to The Granite State.
Love Thomas Hardy. He taps so honestly into the human condition. There’s no pretense and I’m glancing through his book and it all through vivid description and action and interior thoughts, which propel him to the next action.
Your exercise in dwelling on that third layer is wonderful. I’ve been using it while revising and it is so much more effective in making the emotion bloom with physical details I might have passed over in a first or second draft.
Vijaya-
So glad to hear you’ve taken that in, and even happier to hear it’s giving you good results.
“Our journeys are not our resumes or biographies or a timeline of major life events. They are how we have felt and what we think about that.”
This statement clarifies for me what I as a writer need to accomplish in my stories. Too often I work out the bare life events of the character’s journey, but now I see digging deeper to how the character feels about those events and, as importantly, what the character thinks about them is what must be explored and expressed.
Excellent post. I’ll need to dust off my copy of Jude.
As far as show v tell of feelings, I’m leaning toward tell, but to do it right, so that it’s subtle and not clunky, is quite a challenge.
Thank you, Don, for sharing your wisdom.
Vincent-
I have come to disbelieve the old saw, “show don’t tell.” Telling can be as effective, even more so, but you have to know how to do it.
I read Jude the Obscure in college and was depressed for a week. Hardy did know what he was doing. I’ve never forgotten the feelings a Hardy novel produced in me.
Likewise Theodore Dreiser. Clunky style But his ability to get us into character emotions is almost unsurpassed. That’s why An American Tragedy is so amazing, even when the writer in you is going, “Dude, you just repeated a phrase…”
Let me speak up for Hemingway, though. There is as much power in “Hills Like White Elephants” as in any prose-happy passage out of Hardy. Hemingway would have argued it’s a purer kind of emotion for the reader. It sneaks up on you and “Pow.” You find that in Carver stories, too.
Yes, these are short stories, but perhaps there are times when holding back is the better choice in a novel, too. A different kind of emotional pop.
If Thomas Hardy had written The Maltese Falcon, would it have been better, or just different?
Jim-
Hemingway, Carver and many others figured out the secret of emotionally restrained writing: If you leave emotions out, write about situations that are inherently super-charged with emotions already.
You do a great job of explaining this at our Story Masters workshop. You use “Hills Like White Elephants” as an example. In that story, a man and a woman sit in a cafe in Europe talking about apparently nothing. Actually, they are talking *around* something. He is trying to convince her to have an abortion.
Showing and emotional restraint do work, I agree, but not always. It’s important to understand the difference but that it a subject for another post!
Great post! This encourages me to reflect more on how I write emotion and analyze what I’m doing.
Speaking of Hemingway, I’ve found quite a bit of emotion in his stories. (Despite the fact that I feel like I’m listening to dialogue but can’t see the scene sometimes.) “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” amazed me with how much Hemingway accomplished in a short work, and all the emotions and change he covered, and now I’ll have to read through again to see if I can figure out how he evoked emotion in me as the reader–maybe it was the third level emotions? The story covers what seems to be lighter emotions to tap into much deeper ones.
Some great thoughts to consider and savor in the post and comments!
Jim:
Let me second your emotion: An American Tragedy is the worst written masterpiece in American literature. But its claim to masterpiece is legit.
I too wanted to stick up for poor Ernie. “On the Quai at Smyrna” and “In Another Country” speak to me. Our helplessness before the stupid horrible business we find ourselves in, given the necessary turn of fate.
Don–
I have the feeling (no pun intended) that you are on a quest for the fiction writer’s Golden Fleece, something like a unified field theory for evoking emotion in readers. As for drilling down through various layers to reach the cooled magma of the “third emotion,” if your students find this method helps them, who can argue with that? Certainly, I think it’s a real insight when you say that “we do not feel what characters feel. We feel what we feel.” Dead on.
I would be interested to know where you see the third-emotion process coming into play. After the first draft is finished? I assume so–you call on students to pick an emotional moment in their manuscripts to practice the method. Otherwise (I speak only for myself), the writer would be so engaged in an intellectual act of excavation that she would risk losing the thread, the tenor and momentum of the narrative being written.
I’m simple-minded, and have to hope that what I write develops out of what John Keats called “negative capability.” This just means being sufficiently free of myself to become caught up in the lives of my characters. If I succeed, I become less dominated by my own ego. Less dependent on what you tellingly call “plot bombs” that produce empty surprises. In this way, I can create believable characters with lives of their own, not cartoons, or versions of myself in fright wigs and combat boots, etc.
In other words, to the degree I create characters with real lives, they will reflect emotions that my readers will experience as their own. If I fail, or don’t care, I become dependent on plot bombs and electro-shock surprise. I think the passage you quote from Hardy illustrates this perfectly.
Barry-
That third level emotion exercise can be done at any time, while writing first draft or revising the fifth. Doesn’t matter.
Dwelling in characters’ skin is critical, I agree, and that authenticity (or lack of it) rings with readers. But that is not to say that the emotional life of characters is in all instances fresh, surprising and provocative for readers.
That takes skill and, ask me, some dialogue with the character’s own self. It’s not about making up emotions but exploring emotions that are authentic, just less obvious.
Fantastic! Really what I needed right now. it’s always a battle, isn’t it, to heed the advice to show, not tell and still have feelings come across on the page? I’ve just started reading “The Precious One” by Marisa de los Santos and only after reading your post, have I realized that this is exactly what she does. So many conflicting emotions that are laid out clearly and repeatedly, but in ways that make you understand and empathize with the characters.
In your Hardy example, the last line sums up for the reader what the character is feeling. “If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man.” I can just hear critiques saying, but that’s telling, not showing!
Thank you for a fresh perspective on ways to reveal the emotional journey of our characters.
PS When is your craft book on emotions coming out? The question ever author hates to hear.
Denise-
Thanks for asking. The book I’m working on, The Emotional Craft of Fiction, will come out some time after I finish writing it!
After hearing you talk about this in one of your classes, I began looking for places in my novel where I could go deeper. And big surprise, they were everywhere. In the scene I’m working on today, my teenage protagonist is dealing with a cocktail of feelings with regard to her best friend having a boyfriend. But because of where the protagonist is in her journey, the obvious emotions only apply on the surface. If she’s willing to get honest (read; if I’m willing to go there) then we’ll strike gold. I can say this because I’ve seen this kind of excavation work wonders on a scene. But saying isn’t doing. Going deep, for me, requires discipline.
I love what you say about our emotions being different from what a reader may take away. I can bring my own emotional experience into the work, but when I run it through my character’s veins, an alchemy occurs and it becomes uniquely hers. Hopefully, anyway. And often while reading the reverse is true. A character loses one thing, and it allows me to mourn something else. Something personal to me. It’s magic.
Susan-
To me it’s not magic, it’s basic psychology. Tell people what to feel and they won’t. Give them space and affirmation of what they feel and they connect.
One of my writing mentors wisely observed that while fiction writing has many principles it has only one absolute rule: affect the reader emotionally. Your post today shows why and how this is so important.
Thanks, too, for emphasizing the power of spending a bit of time in the narrative to focus on what the character is feeling, and triangulating her emotional reactions. Brilliant.
Looking forward to digging into the exercise to help with the crucial task of affecting the reader emotionally.
Dale-
Awesome, I look forward to the results.
Don – Where was this article ten years ago? Capturing and properly conveying emotion is definitely the trickiest part of the gig for me. I’ve spent years bouncing between extremes of showing and telling, and I’m only now comprehending that it’s somewhere between those things. And I still don’t have a confident grasp. I can see it, understand it. I can even recall effective instances in recently read books. Mastering it on the page myself – that’s the trick. But a worthy pursuit, for sure.
Getting back to that third emotion, for a young male halfway from boyhood to manhood. Hmmm…. Is it okay if that third emotion is most often horniness? ;-) Thanks for the inspiration!
Vaughn-
If your teenage character’s *third* level emotion is horniness, then I’m impressed. I recall that in my own teenage years that feeling wasn’t, shall we say, quite so far down the list.
What a wonderful exercise. “Don’t talk about emotion” is one of those bits of writing advice we hear so often we forget to question if it’s true. That one has always given me pause, and you’ve broken down exactly why in such a clear, supported way. I think the concept of “overdone” might be where people’s fear of emotion passages comes from. (Clunkers like “She felt sad” or “Anger boiled through him.”) But third-level emotions are a wonderful way to address that problem. I love your theory and techniques. Thanks so much for sharing them with us!
My pleasure.
Wonderful post. I’ll call this the “clear a patch of garden” technique as I call the one about elegant writing the “make a necklace” technique.
I have (rightly so) bought into the advice to keep the tension high and a reader guessing throughout the story. But I’ve read more than one novel where I’ve rushed through to find out the ending, only to put the book down completely dissatisfied. I believe it’s because there were no garden spots, no places to learn something about life or about myself.
Carmel-
I know what you mean. Plot and tension may propel readers across the water they don’t in themselves convey a sense of the depth of the ocean.
Thanks again, Don, for digging deeply into the work a writer must do to find and involve the emotions of the reader. I have benefitted from your workshops on this topic and this essay underlines and once again illuminates the process. It’s one to keep and to reread. Love the example from Hardy. Thanks.
Beth-
I find Hardy a slog sometimes, I have to admit, with Jude being a particularly challenging read. But he knew what he was doing.
Thank you, Don! I loved your point that the third-level emotion often illustrates how (or whether) the character has risen or fallen, grown or regressed. The characters’ third-level emotions are, I think, more tightly tied to character arc than we might assume.
I agree with your comment about McCarthy and Hemingway; most of the characters in their novels are not nearly as round as I need them to be. But I also agree with James that “Hills Like White Elephants” is packed with bottled, unexpressed emotion. While absence of emotion obviously isn’t an emotion, that which lies under that absence of emotion? Hoo-wee! There’s the emotion! As both characters work so damn hard to restrain themselves, we can see that fear underlies their restraint (fear of feelings, of commitment, of choices, of rejection). And what reader cannot relate to those fears?!? The surface-y absence of emotion can engage us; the fear underneath the surface connects us to the characters.
I now understand this so much better! Thank you, as always, for your generosity.
Sarah-
That’s a good analysis of the emotional operation of the Hemingway story. (See also my reply to Jim above.)
Emotional tension can simmer below the surface, it’s true. It’s just that many writers believe their pages are boiling when they’re not.
An absolutely brilliant post – and one I needed badly at this juncture. It validates my feeling that my historic WIP can let my characters focus on their emotional questions.
Thank you!
Judith-
Yes, just be sure to surprise us with what’s happening inside your folks.
Thanks again Don.
I don’t have any thoughts at the moment, but I would want everyone to know that Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s released a free PDF to go alongside The Emotion Thesaurus.
It’s called Emotion Amplifiers and it deals with addiction, attraction, boredom, cold, head, dehydration, exhaustion, hunger, illness, inebriation, lethargy, pain, and stress — specifically how those things interact with emotions as they occur.
Hope that helps someone interested in further reading.
Lance-
Their books are terrific, definitely recommended because they make us think about how we work with emotion on the page and the very words we choose.
Awesome. I’ll be sure to check the original out — I’m always up for learning something new.
“Which brings me to a key point: Research into emotional functioning has shown that feeling and cognition happens together. There is some disagreement about which happens first and how they mesh, but it’s clear that part and parcel of emotion is the assessment of it. ”
You are always handing me keys. Write-changing keys. And because I’ve been immersed in Game of Thrones, I’m going to dub you the Master of Keys.
Feeling and cognition are like lightning and thunder—you can’t have one without the other.
I found this scientific assessment of lightning and thunder online:
“We see the lightning before we hear the thunder because light travels faster than sound. The light from the lightning travels to our eyes much quicker than the sound from the lightning. So we hear it later than we see it.”
I feel that emotion like lightning may travel a wee bit faster than our cognition. We feel it, and then understand it… maybe? I know if I feel it when reading, I’m sucked in…
Thanks for the key, Don. No need to knock against the door anymore, I actually have the key to open it and do some exploring.
Bernadette-
The Master of Keys! I’ll take it! Thanks!
Hi Don,
Now you tell me! Haha. This makes perfect sense – to create space for the reader – as the character thinks about what he is feeling.
Thank you for another terrific article.
My best,
Deb Henry
Welcome, Deb.
Thanks! My work in progress needs improvement in this area. Lots to chew on here.
That emotional connection between reader and writer is vital. I cannot finish a book if I cannot relate to the central character on this emotional level. To convey the emotion in writing is a challenge. I remember a writing instructor advising us to go beyond, “Sarah felt sad.” As you pointed out so well, exploring the myriad of feelings inherent in that moment makes the moment more powerful.
Thanks!
Maryann-
Yeah, I agree, “Sarah felt sad” is kind of sad. (Now, hmm, what else to do I feel?)
Don,
I couldn’t agree more with your point that emotions are as fundamental (perhaps the most fundamental) as plot, pace, and personal journey. Chasing ever deeper layers of emotion is somewhat of a mathematical asymptote, one which always promises to reward the eager re-writer or chronic reviser. Third degree emotions? What a great idea. If there are fourth, or fifth, why not look at those too.
I like to approach writing my characters’ emotions like exploring an iceberg. Perhaps someone is angry. Well, that’s just what’s seen above the water. What’s under that anger? Fear, perhaps, and insecurity. But what’s under that? Feelings of abandonment? The memory of a mother who scolded her child for not being good enough? I try to connect with my characters much like a psychologist would with a patient. The act of writing is a great way to do this, because what better way to see deeper into them than to spend live time with them in a scene where I can enter their head? But I also spend a lot of time away from the writing, thinking about the larger picture their evolving arc is showing me. My characters become my friends, friends who I want to know very well, and it’s this passion to get to know them well that drives me to write, re-write, revise, dig into editorial feedback, all with passion and love.
If you ask me, emotions are the essence of story; unearthing them is the very reason I always come back to the keyboard. I feel when I explore the emotions of my characters that I am digging deeper into the layers of emotion that underlie human experience, transcendent to what I alone in my myopic day-to-day existence would see. In fact, when I write, I always try to make sure it’s something I can relate to, but I also take it beyond anything I can experience. It’s personal, but it’s also communal, since I’m not limiting my exploration only to what I have lived through–I’m expanding it also to what I could have lived through, and for this reason, I feel I connect to something which is not just about me, but other people as well. I feel I learn more about what it means to be human.
For example, many years ago I was hurt badly in the past by a love that ended far too soon because I sat on the fence and lacked confidence. I’ve moved on from that hurt, have learned from that experience, fell in love and am now happily married. I’ve left that old hurt behind…but the emotions, those memories, those hopes and dreams, that fragile time of uncertainty, of desperate hope, tears, joy, frustration, the lingering wound of self-blame festering with regret. Oh, how alive that time is! But what if I’d been stronger, perhaps even married that person instead and become someone else entirely? What would that be like? How would that have changed me as a person? This all is just one of infinitely many examples of how I can relate to a character who is very different from me, yet whose path converged with mine in a way I can feel, zoom in on, take myself back, re-experience hope, excitement, pain, and, through fiction, a sense of healing a buried wound I never thought possible; a way to gain insight to myself as a human being, and to share insight with others. I’m suddenly no longer entrenched in the prison of my limited experiences. I’m liberated, free, my emotional experiences becoming vectors that lead endlessly to brilliant horizons of vision and understanding.
But does it work? I guess I’ll see, but it’s part and parcel with this algorithm that the input of professionals will only compel me to dig deeper, write more, and become a pioneer of the bountiful landscape of emotions that define us.
John-
“If you ask me, emotions are the essence of story.”
Plot and tension grip the mind, emotions grip the heart.
Speaking of broken hearts, there’s some fascinating research and writing out there about the connections between emotion and memory. I’ll be exploring that a bit more in the new craft book I’m working on.
I used to work in academia and was trained to help students improve their study skills. I’m very familiar with the link between emotion and memory in the context of learning, so am eager to read your follow-up (and your book when it comes out).
Really helpful reminder of our discussion on the way to WOTRC back in January. I remember exactly what intersection we were sitting at when I said essentially these words to you: I hate it when an author tells me what a character feels about everything. And I do. And I heard what you were saying then, but like all important lessons I needed to hear it again. So I’m writing out those steps and will slowly, slowly apply as I’m revising. It’s the following of good advice that is the difficult part.
Erin-
Yes, my parents gave me lots of good advice which I failed to follow. I’m both sad and happy about that. Nowadays I try to follow my own advice. And do struggle with that sometimes! So I get you.
Don, in patient-centered interviews, while doctors inquire about the presenting symptom–quality of pain, duration, onset, etc.–they are taught to ask a critical question: What do you think is going on?
I used to have people misunderstand the point of this addition. Some felt it indicated laziness on my part. Others thought I’d abdicated my responsibilities. But most understood that physicians are after the story about the story. Because if this isn’t specifically addressed in some manner, the treatment cannot reach the highest level of health-promotion. At best, the patient leaves feeling vaguely dissatisfied, at worst, a significant illness or opportunity for education has been missed.
What I hear you saying in this piece is that the story is often in the story characters tell themselves about the plot events and their reactions to said plot events. It strikes me that this is the place where we may see the character’s original flaw or wound. It’s also where we can measure their internal growth as the story progresses. It makes perfect sense, then, to have an internalized process by which we ask them, “What do you think this means?” Neat!
Jan-
I love it when you pull back the curtain on your medical work. I appreciate doctors so much more. They’re not called the medical “arts” for nothing.
Aloha Don,
This is such a great topic and wonderful conversation. To throw something else into the mix, in Dr. Joe Dispenza’s book, “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” he makes the connections between thoughts and feelings and that they are in a constant loop:
“There’s a certain synchronicity that takes place moment by moment between the brain and the body. In fact, as we begin to feel the way we are thinking—because the brain is in constant communication with the body—we begin to think the way we are feeling. The brain constantly monitors the way the body is feeling. Based on the chemical feedback it receives, it will generate more thoughts that produce chemicals corresponding to the way the body is feeling, so that we first begin to feel the way we think and then to think the way we feel.”
So your “third level emotion” continues to loop over and over again until the person, or the character decides to think differently or there is another event in the plot that causes another set of emotional reactions. As humans we totally understand this and often work hard to get out from under it. If you can accurately portray the character’s thought train — how one anger morphs into fear, into anxiety, back to fear — the reader will pick up on it easily.
Rachel-
“… we … begin to feel the way we think and then to think the way we feel.”
Love that. Thanks for mentioning Dr. Dispenza’s book, it’s one to check out.
I am very excited to hear your next book will take a focused look at emotion, Don. I have learned so much from your workshops and books (especially 21st Century Fiction), and love how you encourage writers to look at emotion in a different way so they can go deeper, bringing forth something authentic that has visceral pull.
Thank you for the kind words about our books as well. You have no idea what that means.
Angela
Angela-
Those books of yours are cool. My whole attack on this subject of emotion in fiction came about because in so many manuscripts authors have clearly given little thought to how they portray, and evoke, emotion in readers.
You and Becca have focused the microscope there and I’m grateful for that. I hope to add something worthwhile to your own teaching.
Don,
Wonderful post. Funny thing: I was just listening to Taylor Swift songs today as I wrote for exactly that reason. Her simple lyrics create images and situations that touch something in almost everyone, and–as you pretty much say in your post–it’s a writer’s ability to shortcut to a reader’s own memories/situations that create strong reactions. I’ve long understood that, but perfecting that ability is the key to the story working. I hope “Abby” does that for many middle-aged women when I’m done with it. (Almost there!)
Michelle-
Funny, I was just listening to Taylor Swift the other…nah, kidding, but maybe I should!
Ironically, I was just having this conversation with my kids today, about how people are usually feeling more than one emotion at a time. I love the idea for your “third emotion” exercise. What a great way to tap deeper into a character’s feelings to come up with realistic and personalized emotional responses.
And I, too, want to thank you for mentioning our books. Coming from someone I greatly respect, whose books have been so insightful and helpful—it’s pretty awesome :).
Becca-
Per my comment to Angela above, thanks right back at ‘cha!
Hi, Don:
Sorry to be so late to the party.
I love the simplicity of the technique: go to the third emotion the scene evokes, and run with that. I think many writers unconsciously do that, recognizing the first level emotion as too obvious, too pat. Not sure they keep going two more levels down, but it makes perfect sense.
I suppose you can also get a little too clever for your own good and end up exploring an emotion that actually serves to take you away from the scene, rather than intensify the reaction. But like everything in this gig, guidelines are merely that, and the proof is on the page.
Glad to hear another book is in the works. I heartily recommend the ones already on the shelf every time someone asks: What books do you recommend on craft?
Have a grand week.
David-
The party’s always better whenever you arrive. Hope we get to hang out again sometime soon.
Don,
I think your third emotion exercise is my most valuable takeaway from the Uncon. I love the way that the unexpected emotion shakes up the reader, taking her by surprise.
I also love your idea of giving the reader space and time to be overwhelmed by her own emotional reaction. It reminds me of Robert Bly’s _Leaping Poetry_–an enormously influential book for me about how the magic happens when the reader is asked to make a leap, contribute her own understanding to make a metaphor come to life or bring a sense impression into the present moment.
P.S. I’ve long been enchanted by Hardy’s novels and his poetry, so thanks for the reminder. You’re right that he knew what he was doing.
Barbara-
A project for me, someday, is to re-read the classics I read in college with the understanding of craft I’ve developed more recently. I’m hoping to enjoy Wharton and James more than I did then!
Emotions are essences of story.
It doesn’t matter if a story resides in a blog post, a song, a movie, a television show, or a book; if it grips my quickened emotions, I will not be able to free myself until the story is finished, ha- probably not then either.
It’s difficult trying to find the third level emotion. How would my main character respond if her first in command, whom she trusts with her life and also has secret romantic feelings for, attempts to kill her father whom she holds in the highest regard?
How does the relationship journey between the main character and first in command impact the main character’s response? What is her emotional state before the incident? What is her relationship like with her father? She received the news initially from a secondary source, than, from her father. How will that impact the situation?
She has emotional responses after receiving the news from the secondary source, followed by more or different emotional responses after speaking with her father. I’m having a hard time figuring out the first two level emotions. I’m thinking disbelief, anger, and betrayal. I’m gonna go with confusion for third level.
Uh huh, this isn’t an easy task.
Don- you make my cerebrum itch…..and I can’t scratch it….yet.
Brian-
Here’s an emotional level to check out when writing stuff that (for your characters) is frightening, painful or conflicted…relief.
“I’m glad this happened. I knew it would but couldn’t face it. Now I don’t have to avoid it or worry anymore. The biggest disaster is waiting for disaster to happen.”
There’s always another level. Go counter-intuitive, toward the opposite of what you think characters should feel in the moment.
Got it!
Thank you!
Great article.
I have always been a people watching from toddler on wondering what makes the world go ‘round, and people ‘tick’. I have noticed the differences in cultures, families, people. I was blessed with seeing the reality of life, I guess – good and bad.
In the Novel I have been striving to finish (again) after leaving the paper draft behind after a move, I have an intense flash-back scene to show where one of the main characters is coming from.
Without years of self-education of the writing process thought trade mags and books, and the history of being a bit Introverted (perhaps shy is a better word) I doubt I could have done half as well.
Dialogue is (to me) probably the most important factor in a story – after a great idea. It defines your characters, offers breaks, move the story along with clarity of where its headed, and helps the reader recognize this word on page as a living being – at least in our minds eye.
Straight to the core of the matter — a story that doesn’t make the reader feel something, and that doesn’t explore a deep level of emotion in the characters (whether explicitly or not), is a story that ultimately fails to move and thus matter.
Thanks a lot for this potent reminder.
Comes very timely for me too. ;)
Donald, as ever your advice is spot-on. I’m going to take another look-through of my current WIP to check the “third-level emotion” in it.
By the way, I enjoyed meeting you at the 2014 DFW Writers Conference. Still reading The Fire In Fiction. Sterling advice!
By the way, Donald, I shared your blog post with my Facebook friends.
“The emotional craft of fiction is in essence not force feeding emotions to readers but clearing a patch of garden for them to grow their own.” How wonderfully put! Thank you.
After reading and re-reading your article a few times, I wanted to discover right away the three layers of thoughts/emotions in the passage from Thomas Hardy’s novel. Here is what I found:
Layer 1: reflecting – morose
Layer 2: remembering – disillusioned, scared
Layer 3: thinking – fear of growing up, perhaps fear of becoming cruel and part of something horrific
It seems that these emotions make-up a miniature emotional arc, or a journey down the rabbit hole. Perhaps asking “why” between the layers can help us dig deeper and deeper too.
I wonder if this technique could somehow be used in screenplay writing as well. If so, would you have thoughts on how?
Katalin-
Wow, what a great question. Emotional content generally is left out of screenplays, except in what characters do or say. A third level exercise could lead you to some dialogue surprises, I imagine.
You asked me at WRW if I could write the entire book at the same level as the exercise I’d done in the class you taught. Since then I’ve done nothing but go through scenes in the book using that exercise. It’s like discovering the book beneath the book. And yes, that’s the one I do want to write, at a deeper level where being in complete control of what the reader feels is not an option.
Another great lesson. But why do we always have to do WORK to really get the lesson?? can’t you just implant the knowledge in our brains? Learning is hard work. :-)
Of course I’m joking. Taking the time to try and implement a skill is really the only way to know if you’ve got it. And you know what they say about practice…Thanks for all the valuable tools, Donald Maas.
Nice essay, really brought to life some of the obstacles to bringing prose to life! Thank you Donald!
Thanks for the excellent read, Donald!
As for your question, writing about feelings always makes me a little bit uncomfortable, it feels like I’m sticking my nose into someone’s personal life, even though I’ve create it:)
Great article, though I’m a bit confused over this technique (mostly because it’s so new, and no one else has touched upon this topic). I would like to use it as it seems extremely effective, but I think I’ve not wrapped my head around how it’s done. I looked at the example you gave and I couldn’t pick it apart. Couldn’t tell what was being done to create that emotional “garden”. Maybe that’s a good thing?
It looks simple, just another part of showing, and creating a mood, but putting it into practice is…tricky.
When we pick a third emotion for our characters, are we supposed to somehow show all three at once or just the third emotion? Or is it more a slow build? Moving from emotion 1 (obvious), to emotion 2 (less obvious) to finally emotion 3 (unexpected). And somehow our character’s can’t seem all over the place…
– Maddie