TECH: Finding Your Heart (moldy oldie)
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writercisesOriginal Posting Aug. 23, 2017
Writer's Digest, February 2001, pages 28, 29, and 35, have an article by Joan Mazza with the title Finding Your Heart. The idea is that some of the stock rejections – not enough weight, too slight, lacks power – really mean that it's lacking emotional honesty, strong feelings. "Editors want a manuscript to arrive at a depth of emotional honesty that most beginning writers avoid. Beginners back away from strong feelings of all kinds. They are reluctant to have their characters suffer."
Avoiding pain-and-suffering is completely understandable. It's normal. But… "Facing and exposing these emotional upsets is what is meant by the old writerly adage open a vein." You need strong emotions, powerful feelings, all of that. "Tiptoeing away from the emotional punch of a story makes it bland and superficial."
One reason may be simply maintaining our own self-image. We don't want other people to think we're that kind of a person! "Worrying about what others might think will give you writer's block every time.… The distressing and difficult aspects of being human are exactly the parts of the story that people want to hear."
We read to explore experiences we might never have, to see the entire spectrum of emotions, to live other lives from the inside.
Joan points out that you start whispering, people around you stop talking so that they can hear. "In a way, a whisper is like a narrative hook: it gets the reader's attention." But… If you've promised strong emotions and then you don't deliver, your audience evaporates. Frankly, you have to lay bare the innermost emotions. "A willingness to be publicly honest and vulnerable is also what makes readers love authors enough to call themselves fans."
Take a look at what really is emotionally charged for you. What are the memories that you don't talk about, or the ones that you twist when you let someone know about them? What are your fears and worries? Illness, death, abandonment, failure, ridicule? Make up a short list of the things that really make you jump. Then… Start writing about them. Look at your nightmares, your daydreams, your memories.
"Enter the cavern of your most distressing sentiments on memories, then put them on the page. Your writing will be more compelling, as well as more marketable."
There's a tiny little sidebar in the middle of the second page. "Finding your emotional truth. Ask yourself these questions:
– What terrifies me?
– What disgusts me?
– What news stories make me wince or change the channel?
– What is my biggest secret(s)?
– What would I never do?
In your answers to these questions, you will find the seeds of your most powerful writing in all genres.
If this pushes any of your buttons, good! Go write."
Oho! So, emotional depth. And Joan suggests quite a few questions and probes to help us get started. But... let's see. Practice? Okay, take something you've written recently, and think about the emotions in it. Did you pull back at some point? Did you avoid really putting your character through the wringer, because you didn't want to have to suffer through that experience yourself? Are there emotional depths that you can dredge a little deeper, things that make your nightmares and memories twinge? Go ahead, add that emotional edge and see what the story does with it.
Write?
tink
Writer's Digest, February 2001, pages 28, 29, and 35, have an article by Joan Mazza with the title Finding Your Heart. The idea is that some of the stock rejections – not enough weight, too slight, lacks power – really mean that it's lacking emotional honesty, strong feelings. "Editors want a manuscript to arrive at a depth of emotional honesty that most beginning writers avoid. Beginners back away from strong feelings of all kinds. They are reluctant to have their characters suffer."
Avoiding pain-and-suffering is completely understandable. It's normal. But… "Facing and exposing these emotional upsets is what is meant by the old writerly adage open a vein." You need strong emotions, powerful feelings, all of that. "Tiptoeing away from the emotional punch of a story makes it bland and superficial."
One reason may be simply maintaining our own self-image. We don't want other people to think we're that kind of a person! "Worrying about what others might think will give you writer's block every time.… The distressing and difficult aspects of being human are exactly the parts of the story that people want to hear."
We read to explore experiences we might never have, to see the entire spectrum of emotions, to live other lives from the inside.
Joan points out that you start whispering, people around you stop talking so that they can hear. "In a way, a whisper is like a narrative hook: it gets the reader's attention." But… If you've promised strong emotions and then you don't deliver, your audience evaporates. Frankly, you have to lay bare the innermost emotions. "A willingness to be publicly honest and vulnerable is also what makes readers love authors enough to call themselves fans."
Take a look at what really is emotionally charged for you. What are the memories that you don't talk about, or the ones that you twist when you let someone know about them? What are your fears and worries? Illness, death, abandonment, failure, ridicule? Make up a short list of the things that really make you jump. Then… Start writing about them. Look at your nightmares, your daydreams, your memories.
"Enter the cavern of your most distressing sentiments on memories, then put them on the page. Your writing will be more compelling, as well as more marketable."
There's a tiny little sidebar in the middle of the second page. "Finding your emotional truth. Ask yourself these questions:
– What terrifies me?
– What disgusts me?
– What news stories make me wince or change the channel?
– What is my biggest secret(s)?
– What would I never do?
In your answers to these questions, you will find the seeds of your most powerful writing in all genres.
If this pushes any of your buttons, good! Go write."
Oho! So, emotional depth. And Joan suggests quite a few questions and probes to help us get started. But... let's see. Practice? Okay, take something you've written recently, and think about the emotions in it. Did you pull back at some point? Did you avoid really putting your character through the wringer, because you didn't want to have to suffer through that experience yourself? Are there emotional depths that you can dredge a little deeper, things that make your nightmares and memories twinge? Go ahead, add that emotional edge and see what the story does with it.
Write?
tink