EXERCISE: Find the Emotion!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting Jan. 2, 2015

Just a short one. First, take something that moves you to tears, laughter, anger, or some other emotion. Movie, song, news, book, whatever, something that grips you.

Maybe it's something like the news report recently here in Japan about the graduates at a local girls' school for the blind, showing this year's graduates getting their music boxes. For 50 years, an anonymous patron has sent just the right number of music boxes for the graduating class. There's something about watching them explore the boxes with their hands, wind them up, and listen to the music coming from their graduation present... Maybe it was the smiles, as they listened to the melody?

Or maybe it's Greyfriar's Bobby, coming to lie down, or even the Japanese version, Chuken Hachiko, another dog who refused to give up on his master.

Or the glorious relief of Let It Go, in the Disney movie?

Whatever it is, take that and look deep at what drives it, what makes you feel that way. What are the elements that yank the emotion out there?

Now. Wrap a scene, characters in action, doing something, around that feeling, that emotional push. Make your reader grin, make them reach for a tissue, make them jump as the pseudopod slaps against the window!

Write!