Writing with Emotion Series – Part Two

How to Weave Emotion into Fiction

Emotion is important in fiction but there is always a danger of overdoing it. I’ve read some books where every page is a drama and the main character is always in a state of heightened emotion. I discard these books after a few chapters as the feelings are too much to be enjoyable.

Show not Tell
This is one of the cornerstones of writing and is especially applicable to emotion. Try writing an emotional paragraph and then take out any emotions mentioned by name – such as joy, hatred, anger, hope – and see if the meaning is retained by the rest of the content. Have a look at these sentences to see the difference between showing and telling.

· Jenny was jealous when she saw Lydia in the dress she wanted.
· Jenny’s insides curdled as she saw Lydia in the dress she wanted.

Use Body Language to Portray Emotion
Instead of saying the character was ecstatic or sorrowful, use body language to portray the meaning. Here are some examples to demonstrate the power of this method:

· Liam was disgusted by the awful stench.
· Liam wrinkled his nose and took a step backwards as the stench hit him.
· Jessica felt betrayed when she saw Simon with another girl.
· When Jessica saw Simon with another girl, it felt as though trust and faith were leaking from her heart.

Don’t Overstate Emotion
Melodramas are the only place for overdone emotion. Don’t use terms such as very excited or extremely irritated. If the emotion is strong, let the character demonstrate it by flinging a plate or cart-wheeling across the room.

Write in the First Person
An emotional piece often works well when written from the first person point of view – in other words, from the “I” point of view. The impact is generally greater as you can portray the feelings from the inside, as opposed to looking on.

Imagine Yourself in the Middle of the Scene
If writing an emotional scene, close your eyes and picture it unfolding it in front of you. What do you see? What expressions are on the characters' faces? What is their tone of voice? What are they doing? What is the main emotion? Are they restraining themselves or letting it all hang out? Once you can see it, write it.

Practise Writing Emotional Phrases
Take clichéd expressions and rewrite them into fresh language. Here are a few examples.

· He broke her heart.
· He took a scalpel and sliced her heart into two halves.
· She jumped with joy.
· Exuberance lifted her into the air

The Rise and Fall of Emotion
Make sure that emotions rise and fall throughout your book or story. This is how life unfolds and the story needs to be believable. Introduce enough emotion to keep the reader’s interest but not so much that it becomes tiring. Emotion should increase in intensity throughout the book until the final scene where all the threads are drawn together into a satisfying conclusion

Recommended Reading
Karen Kingsbury puts plenty of feeling into her books and tells stories of relationships and hope. Nicholas Sparks writes heartrending love stories, many of which have sad endings. He is a master at writing emotion. Richard Paul Evans is another gifted writer whose books have strong emotional appeal. If you want to improve your writing, take some of their books out of the library and read them carefully, analyzing the way they write.

If you prefer short stories, you can have a look at one of mine that placed first in the Faithwriter’s Weekly Challenge in November last year. It’s full of emotion but tender and not overdone.

If you have a piece of “emotional” writing you’d like me to look at, feel free to leave a comment or contact me. I look forward to hearing from you.

Writing with Emotion Series - Part One

Debbie Roome works as a freelance writer from her home in New Zealand. Visit her at Debbie Roome or read some of her work at Suite 101 , Take Root and Write and Faithwriters.

Do You Have a Marketing Plan?

Most of us writers don't have a clue about marketing when writing our books. But once that contract is signed, we realize how much of the marketing actually falls upon our shoulders. So what should be done first?

Take the time to create a marketing plan. It will help you stay focused, and if your brain works anything like mine, it will keep you from getting side-tracked into useless, time-wasting, or budget-busting options.

So what's in a marketing plan?

First, define your book. What is its primary focus? (Even with fiction, you'll still have a focus - whether it be a spiritual theme, an issue or agenda, or purely for entertainment purposes.) Consider this the "mission statement" for your book. You can do this for one book, for a series, or for your writing business as a whole.

Next, look at your book or business from "the big picture." What are its benefits to readers?

Then, identify those readers. Who, specifically, is your target market? As I've shared with some of my editing clients - imagine a customer looking at your book. One reader only. Is that reader in a bookstore? Which one? Where? Is that customer male or female? What age? Married or single? Occupation? Religious beliefs? Political beliefs? Children? You want to pinpoint that reader as specifically as possible, because it will be that reader you target in your marketing.

Yes, you'll pick up many other readers that don't fit the profile at all - but you want to match your original marketing as close to that one reader as you can possibly get.

Detemine a marketing budget. Your budget may be $5, $50, $100, or $10,000. Put it down on paper, and stick to it. You can use it for reference with your next book - so you'll know whether to increase or decrease the budget, and keep track of what worked and what didn't.

Next, you'll want to make a list of marketing goals. You need to figure out how to get your book in front of readers. Think of a variety of ways - and be creative in your approach. Book signings, speaking engagements, blog tours, media interviews, online and print advertising, your own Web site and blog, writing magazine articles about the subject of your book (or subjects mentioned in your book), etc. As you create your original list, write down as many as you can think of - you may not use them all, but you may generate other ideas from that original list.

After you've created a list, break it down. Determine the cost of each goal, how you'll accomplish item on the list.

Then set a timetable. All of your marketing efforts probably won't be very effective if everything is done on one single day. Spread out your marketing. You'll want to start the "marketing buzz" before the book is even published, but you don't want the groundswell to happen until the book is available for purchase - where readers can immediately get their hands on a copy. And to keep people talking about your book, spread the marketing out over several weeks or months.

Putting your marketing plan down on paper helps you stay focused, but just remember, it isn't set in cement. Be flexible, creative, and enjoy the process. It's not nearly as bad as you think it is!

Photo Assignment #10: Can You Capture Noise with your Camera?

Our writing prompts over the next few weeks are focusing on sensory details, so I'd like to see if we can do the same thing with our cameras.

Your challenge this week, if it's possible to do:

Can you capture noise with a still camera? Can a photo express noise?

Give it your best shot - try to take some pictures of NOISE (no videos/audios allowed). Share your best with us over at the Pix-N-Pens Photo Album. Use the password inspired to view or post to the album.

Montana Rose

This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
Montana Rose
Barbour Publishing, Inc (July 1, 2009)
by
Mary Connealy

Montana Rose is a love story. But it’s love on more than one level. It’s about newlyweds learning to know each other and growing in love. Look a little deeper and it’s a story about God’s love and Christian community. There’s even a story about the failure of love. Connealy skillfully weaves several threads together to create a complex and suspenseful story. While the young couple struggles with misunderstanding, self-doubt and her past, a very real threat emerges and keeps intruding into their life together.

I was drawn into the story from the first sentence and enjoyed watching the complex characters develop as the story progressed, with one exception. I couldn’t help thinking the young husband was too good to be true. At 23 he is already close to the ideal Godly man. His only fault is a temper that he controls rigidly with prayer. A bigger problem for me was that the dialogue was often drawn out, especially when the characters talked about the Lord. In fact, the last half of the book felt preachy. I don’t know any Christians who talk quite like that. But it did lead to a good ending. I anticipated the way the conflict was resolved as a possible solution, but I loved the way it was done. With God’s help, Christians do overcome. The only thing that left me unsatisfied was the resolution to one of the minor threads. I feel there is another book there waiting to be written. Overall, if you like western Christian romances, you’ll enjoy this one.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mary's writing journey is similar to a lot of others. Boil it down to persistence, oh, go ahead and call it stubbornness. She just kept typing away. She think the reason she did it was because she was more or less a dunce around people—prone to sit silently when she really ought to speak up(or far worse, speak up when she ought to sit silently).

So, Mary had all these things, she want to say, in her head; the perfect zinger to the rude cashier, which you think of an hour after you’ve left the store, the perfect bit of wisdom when someone needs help, which doesn’t occur to you until they solve their problems themselves, the perfect guilt trip for the kids, which you don’t say because you’re not an idiot. She keep all this wit to herself, much to the relief of all who know her, and then wrote all her great ideas into books. It’s therapeutic if nothing else, and more affordable than a psychiatrist.

So then a very nice, oh so nice publishing company like Barbour Heartsong comes along and says, “Hey, we’ll pay you money for this 45,000 word therapy session.” That’s as sweet as it gets.

Mary's journey to publication is the same as everyone’s except for a few geniuses out there who make it hard for all of us. And even they probably have an Ode to Roast Beef or two in their past.

Mary has signed an exclusive contract with Barbour that will have her writing eighteen (18) books for them over the next four years! This book is the first in the Montana Marriage Series. The second book will be the Husband Tree, and the third will be Wildflower Bride



ABOUT THE BOOK


Fire up your love of romance with Montana Rose.

When surrounded by a mob of ill-bred, foul-smelling, women-hungry men, the newly widowed and seemingly spoiled Cassie “China Doll” Griffin has no choice. Marrying handyman Red Dawson seems the only alternative to Cassie’s being hitched to a brutal rancher. But can this “China doll” bear exchanging smooth silk for coarse calico? Red was reluctant to be yoked to an unbeliever, but sometimes a man has no choice. Will Red change Cassie’s heart by changing her name? Wade Sawyer is obsessed with saving Cassie from a marriage of convenience. How far will he go to make her his own?

To read the first chapter of Montana Rose, click HERE.

Writing Prompt #10: Noise

Sensory details add richness and depth to any manuscript. So for the next few weeks, our prompts will focus on the senses.

Your character is in a fast food restaurant. What does he/she hear?