I’ll bet you thought I forgot. I didn’t. In fact, I’ve been thinking about the conclusion to the series on emotions for a long time. Emotions keep coming up in everything I’m reading, it seems, and I don’t know if I can say it any better than these guys.

I’m not alone in seeing emotions as vital for making an impact on readers:

I once critiqued a novel whose opening scene failed to draw me in to the protagonist’s emotions. Yet all the other aspects of the scene were well done. . . . In reading the scene a second time, I realized what was missing. As this character waited, he displayed very little sign of the inner rhythm he would have been experiencing at such a moment. There he was, after two years’ meticulous planning, supposedly poised to spring into action. Numerous thought of what could go wrong were cycling through his head. Yet he just stood quietly waiting. No sign in his movements of fear, apprehension, the rush of adrenaline. No feel of his muscles tensing, shivering with the knowledge of action to come. And because he didn’t exude it I didn’t feel it even though the author informed me, through the character’s thoughts of all possible mishaps, that I should. (Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors, 121)

Emotions can improve almost any scene, and they can even make formerly boring scenes vital keepers:

Micro-tension has its basis not in story circumstances or in words: it comes from emotions and not just any old emotions but conflicting emotions. (Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great , 190)

In reality, it is feelings, specifically feelings in conflict with each other, that fill up an otherwise dead span of story and bring it alive. (Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great , 225)

I believe that emotions are vital to writing. They’re not easy to convey well, to balance or to keep fresh—but they’re at the heart of fiction. And you don’t just have to take my word for it:

Novels are unique among art forms in their intimacy. They can take us inside a character’s heart and mind right away. And that is where your readers want to be. Go there immediately. And when you do, show us what your hero is made of. If you accomplish that, then the job of winning us over is done. (Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great , 32)

What is fiction about if not the true portrayal of human emotions? That is the goal authors should strive for most. (Brandilyn Collins, Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors , 103)

What do you think? What’s your favorite lesson about emotion in fiction?

Photo by Duncan C