Real Emotions

Have you read a book before that made you cry harder than you have ever done in your whole life? That had a romantic scene so intense, you felt like your whole chest is constricting and your toes curling? Those are real emotions, and they are the reason we continue to read, desperately looking for the next story that can bring us to those intense highs of feeling. They can be like a drug, and if you have experienced it once, you never want it to stop.

To create this level of emotion with your own stories and writing here are some tips:

• Build character.

If someone dies at the beginning of your story, there will be no impact. However, if the readers get to know your characters, their story, their dreams and hopes, their loss will feel far more real.

• Describing emotions: show, don’t tell.

Write emotion as action and reaction instead of description. Do not waste too much time describing what your characters feel, make them express it in their thoughts, in their actions, in their speech. This will allow for more subtle and also more nuanced emotions.

• Use comparison and metaphors.

There is nothing harder to define than emotions, so you should use every tool of creative writing handed to you to make this work. But do not use empty phrases but try to find your own comparisons.

• Details: Keep it small but special.

It is really hard to write about big love and untamed anger, as it quickly falls flat when you find there are only so many ways to describe those feelings. They have all been done before. Focus on smaller aspects that represent those big emotions instead. This goes along with the next advice:

• Make emotions personal.

People react to the same event in different ways and often, there is an emotion they allow themselves to show on their faces and in their body language and then there are underlying emotions that are deeply personal, might even be disturbing to those around them so they are withheld. This way, emotions will have an impact on the identity of your characters.

• Go for several emotions at once.

Make your characters feel more than just disgust or fear, make them feel disgust AND fear. Write about patronising affection and smouldering resent, combine and create new emotions.

• Let emotions have consequences on the plot.

Make the emotions a vital part of how your plot advances, do not let emotions be an addition to your story, let them be the drive of your story.

Final Advice:Do not be shy about honest self-inserts. Write your emotions from experience, try to relive a moment where you felt like that and examine what it did to you, how you thought about the feeling and how you dealt with it.