I say "emotion lives in the body" all the time when trying to show how
to write with more emotional intensity, but when I say it, I truly mean in the body. What do you feel when
you're angry? What are the physical sensations? Not, what do you do?
For example, it used to be that when I got angry, I got numb. If
something fairly dire had happened and I wasn't feeling anything, then I
was probably angry. I also think that we call emotions 'feelings' in
part because we feel them, physically. Especially the
strong, maybe-hard-wired ones. (Such as disgust and anger and fear, the
ones that generate such particular facial expressions that we recognize
them by sight, regardless of what culture or time the image originated
in.)
As far as I can tell, the way emotion is generated in the body is pretty much the same for all humans, the way we're all pretty much the same in how our physical systems operate. However, what trips our emotional triggers varies--for example, snakes disgust you but I think they're beautiful--and what each of us does with our emotions varies as well. We both get angry: you explode and get it out; I stew for days.
This can be very helpful in characterization. What triggers your characters' emotions, if different people have different triggers? How does each character express that emotion? And what emotions does s/he suppress and repress, if any?
That being said, I think there's absolutely a place for the simplicity of, "She stared at him, surprised." For me, the more time I spend on anything in a story, the more importance it has. So if the emotion--sadness or surprise or whatever--was part of the texture of the scene but not hugely important, then I would absolutely go with what you have. There's a phrase I read somewhere, I think to do with cavalry: Get over heavy ground as lightly as possible. Anyway, it comes to mind when I'm trying to figure out whether to go with something like the above, or to get more deeply into it.
Just some thoughts on writing emotion on a gloomy January day.
As far as I can tell, the way emotion is generated in the body is pretty much the same for all humans, the way we're all pretty much the same in how our physical systems operate. However, what trips our emotional triggers varies--for example, snakes disgust you but I think they're beautiful--and what each of us does with our emotions varies as well. We both get angry: you explode and get it out; I stew for days.
This can be very helpful in characterization. What triggers your characters' emotions, if different people have different triggers? How does each character express that emotion? And what emotions does s/he suppress and repress, if any?
That being said, I think there's absolutely a place for the simplicity of, "She stared at him, surprised." For me, the more time I spend on anything in a story, the more importance it has. So if the emotion--sadness or surprise or whatever--was part of the texture of the scene but not hugely important, then I would absolutely go with what you have. There's a phrase I read somewhere, I think to do with cavalry: Get over heavy ground as lightly as possible. Anyway, it comes to mind when I'm trying to figure out whether to go with something like the above, or to get more deeply into it.
Just some thoughts on writing emotion on a gloomy January day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment