A version of this post was originally posted 17 November 2009 as part of the character arcs series.
Emotions are important in fiction and can be hard to get right. After highly emotional scenes, for me, the next most difficult type of emotion to convey is multiple emotions in a single scene. Although most passions are composed of multiple emotions, we typically don’t experience, say, love, ambivalence and annoyance all the same time. But sometimes we need our characters to.
Typically, these evolving emotions are easier to handle with constant stimuli/input to create these emotional reactions (as in a scene). It’s more of a challenge in a sequel: what comes after the scene—the emotional response. However, the sequel also has a structure that can help with this kind of character arc.
In Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham gives a structure for the sequel: Emotion – Thought – Decision – Action (which leads to another scene). The Emotion is the initial response to the events of the scene and its Disaster. When the character moves past the initial emotion, they think through the events, their response and their options in the Thought phase. This ultimately leads to a Decision, which takes the character to another Action.
Not all the steps of the sequel are necessary. In fact, the sequel itself might not be necessary—depends on the pacing and whether the emotional reaction constitutes a change. But when the character is going through a major change, we can spend a little more time here. And this is where we motivate the next action.
When an emotional change in the sequel follows the full steps of the sequence, we know that there’s a logical progression of the events of the sequel. By moving through these steps, we can lead the characters and the readers through the steps of the change and create a compelling, convincing change.
For example, if we need our character to go from shocked after the last disaster to furious in the sequel, we start with that initial emotional response—the shock. We don’t have to spend a long time exploring the shock, especially if that’s the kind of reaction you’d expect in light of the disaster. Once we create a vivid picture of the shock (and that’s a toughie, since it’s characterized by the absence of feeling, really), we can give the character a minute to get her bearings again.
Once she’s had some time to recover, she’s ready for the Thought phase. Here we can explore exactly why she’s so surprised—because, say, this revelation is something that the hero could have told her. It’s something she would understand and would have even made her happy, if he had just told her, and he knew that—but he’s chosen to lie to her about it the whole time they’ve known one another.
And that can lead us to the Decision. The Decision can be about the coming Action and set up the next scene—or it can be a further decision about the emotional response. You know what? He should have told her. How dare he not? And if he could lie about that, what else about their relationship was a lie?
And now she’s mad.
What do you think? How have you handled drastic emotional changes in sequels?
Photo by Dan Foy
I think I’m coming to a place in my story where my crit partners are going to skin me. I have a character who feels deeply and strongly, but taught herself not to react.
So… the moment the door is closed, she’ll fling a vase against the wall. The next, she’ll have her anger tamped down and be counting ceiling tiles.
But it’s going to be fun to write when her stored bits of rage rips loose…
That’s hard. I know I want to put little notes in to my CPs: Just wait! Just wait! 😉
It’s so hard for me to portray emotions so vividly. I can tell I’m getting better at it, but when I look back at stuff I wrote a year or so ago, I cringe! It’s hard to capture some emotions, especially shock, like you said. I’m working on it though, and hopefully you guys won’t have to ask me to show more emotion in my coming chapters! 🙂
It’s not just you—it’s just hard, Chantele! I think it’s something we all have to work on and tweak and basically learn over and over again. It’s a “revision skill” for most people.
(Worst ever description of shock I’ve read: “Her shock was huge.” Oh, yeah. Now I feel it….)
The only big emotion change that I can recall having done would be from anger to fear. Though that happens so fast (the thing she is afraid of is familiar), would one go through the same process through thought and decision?
I use a lot more physical action along with the emotions when writing the sequel, e.g.
“I sank down in the tub, bent my knees and resting my head, I let the water spill over me. Michael was a cancer, a malignancy eating away at me. Pretending the sickness wasn’t there wouldn’t make it go away. With my face to the stream, I willed the flow to scald out my weakness, to cleanse away my guilt.”
This pointed action + emotion pattern is consistent throughout my writing, but I’m not sure if it’s my style or a truly effective way to handle extreme emotional shifts.
This is an interesting technique, but it makes sense. I’m bookmarking this page for review when I start revisions in a few weeks.
Thanks!
I’m going to have to think about this…not sure I really do the “sequel” bit. Maybe it’s something I need to look into more.
I guess I try to wrap things up in the same scene, but I wonder if I leave the reader hanging sometimes.
Sequels have generally fallen out of favor as stand alones. We see them as lines or paragraphs at the end of Bickham’s definition of scenes (or the beginning of later scenes), and I think we can usually do them justice. The example in the post comes from a story of mine, where this is a major turning point, so it’s a bit more developed, but still at the end of a scene.