Making Our Writing Emotional
Strong emotions (especially negative emotions such as grief, failure, and shame) can be uncomfortable. As humans we try to temper and shy away from some of these messier emotions and the undignified moments of life.
It shouldn’t surprise us that as writers we sometimes do the same thing.
Now, for the record, it’s not necessarily healthy to be stifling our emotions throughout our lives so if you find yourself doing that, maybe give it some thought on how to process emotion in healthy ways and practice self care along the way.
But today we’re focusing on emotions in our writing!
Because we don’t want to be stifling the emotions there, either.
Making Our Writing Emotional
It’s automatic for us to avoid strong emotions in our writing.
Sometimes we aren’t even doing it intentionally, we just hold back as an ingrained method of self-protection when handling potentially painful topics.
We keep our protagonist from complete and utter heartbreak. We protect their ego. We make sure they don’t *quite* hit rock bottom. Even when we make our characters go through hard times we make sure they are never without hope or a few options.
And yet… those messy and painful emotions are real.
Our characters need to fail.
Now not all stories and character arcs require tons of painful moments. But we want to make sure we are utilizing and pushing into the honest human experience.
Studies have identified around six core emotions that are part of the universal human experience: sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. (I recommend watching Pixar’s movie Inside Out as reference 😉 )
These core emotions are powerful and worth exploring in our stories instead of shying away.
So let’s invest in Kleenex and go all out.
Let’s be okay with making it complicated and experiencing some deep and messy emotions.
Our writing, and our lives, will be the better for it.
Originally published September 17, 2021 on Bethany-Henry. com.
