Character emotions remain some of the trickiest writing there is.  All too often authors fall prey to cliche phrases and dilute their writing by telling us what emotion we are supposed to be experiencing, rather than showing us what the character is going through.

In Creating Character Emotions by Ann Hood, authors are provided with a new way of expressing character emotions.  How?  Ms. Hood gives practical exercises drawing upon the author’s memories of experiencing the emotion being discussed.

The book is organized by emotions and then three poor examples are given with an explanation of why they are poor.  The author then follows up with three good examples and explanation.  Finally, she provides the reader with three exercises to write so the reader can create fresh writing for the emotion.

Emotions include fear, love, excitement, hope, desire, loneliness; thirty-six emotions in all.  By the time you finish working through the exercises, your writing will be more evocative and fresher.

Some of Ann Hood’s advice:

1) Use specific, concrete details.

2) Fresh language and images rather than tired cliches for you-and your reader-to see emotions in a different light.

3) Much emotional work can be done by suggestion….Using props rather than stating the obvious is a good way to avoid that pitfall….How much better to see that character’s sadness rather than be told he’s said without anything to convince us.

4) Don’t fall into the trap of stating the emotion you want the reader to see, then forcing your character to act in a predictable emotional way.

Here is some of what Ann Hood says about the emotion of fear:

1) To write it convincingly, we need to look inward at our own experiences and then dig into our character’s personality to see how we can translate our experience into his.

2) Piling on similes diminishes the emotion’s effect rather than strengthening it.

in the exercise in writing about fear she suggests:

Make a list of physical responses to fear.  Then list at least tne fresh ways to describe these physical manisfestations of fear.  An example she used from Margaret Halsey was that of weak knees being described as knees “that could have been stirred with a spoon.”

I highly recommend this book to improve your creativity and writing, to step past your comfort zone into a uniqueness that is particular to you.  These exercises will stretch you creatively, and in our profession that is a very good thing.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 10:57 am and is filed under Tips and Tricks, Editors Desk, Reviews, Writer News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.