When we’re crafting our characters’ emotions, we want to strive for consistency. Our characters are going to look fickle, insecure or flat-out crazy if it seems like they’re playing “he loves me, he loves me not” in every scene. However, while we want to make sure we preserve the causality chain of emotional responses, if our characters just play the single note of “love” or “fear,” well, that’s the definition of “monotonous.”
So we can’t just show our character as “in love” or “afraid” all the time—even highly suspenseful or romantic scenes will tend to lose their power when strung together ad nauseam. By incorporating other emotions—even contradictory ones occasionally—we enable our characters to come to life, throw their “main” emotions into relief, and show the many facets of human emotion.
Author Brandilyn Collins calls these “main” emotions passions in her book Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors. She bases her secrets on the methods of acting guru Konstantin Stanislavsky. On passions, she writes (emphasis mine):
Stanislavsky likens a human passion to a necklace of beads. Standing back from the necklace, you might think it appears to have a yellow cast or a green or red one. But come closer, and you can see all the tiny beads that create that overall appearance. If the necklace appears yellow, many beads will be yellow, but in various shades. And a few may be green or blue or even black. In the same way, human passions are made up of many smaller and varied feelings—sometimes even contradictory feelings—that together form the “cast” or color of a certain passion. So, if you want to portray a passion to its utmost, you must focus not on the passion itself, but on its varied components. (95)
So by using different aspects of these passions, we can better illustrate the real depth of feeling a person would experience. Instead of constantly hitting the same emotional cues in every single scene, we can change up some of the emotions to explore the real depths of the feeling. And every once in a while, we can even take a break from that passion—dropping a low-tension scene every once in a while to make the high-tension scenes stand out.
What do you think? What are the components of the passions you tend to write most?
Great post! My characters cover a wide spectrum, but I always want to make sure that there’s a reason for all of it.
I hate when characters jump from laughing to furious to joking to murderous in the same scene. The cues can’t change that much, can it?
Wow, some real thought provoking questions. I love the excerpt. I guess we writers can learn from actors. It’ will give me a lot to think about.
I tend to repeat emotions on different scenes instead of finding the character’s true feelings. Your post is most helpful in that regard.
I must add that the picture conveys a great sense of how emotion is shown most clearly. Emotion has much more impact when shown in contrast to usual emotion. Thus the more a character veers off from his or her normal emotions, the more we know about how the situation is affecting his or her emotions. So the picture you added is the perfect example to use. Good choice.
I am in the middle of writing a dramatic scene that conveys attraction/repulsion moments between two characters. I feel as if I am walking on a tightrope, not wanting to pull out all the stops but still making the reader feel in the moment. So while I’m trying to figure out the perfect balance, I seed the scene with sensory details and hope for the best.
I like the example you used. Helpful.
A good post.
Lot of food for thought here! I love this comparison to the beads on a necklace.
Yes, the times when emotions conflict can be the best.
Just been working on a scene where my MC is torn between physical fear, physical hunger, loyalty, aversion, duty, greed, and desperation. The greed finally wins (although it’s for a good cause).
I think those scenes really reveal character, especially when the character must choose between the competing goals.