by Jeanne Takenaka, @JeanneTakenaka
I’m going to be honest and say that writing nuanced emotions for my characters is hard. Over the years, I’ve struggled with making my characters—especially heroines—likable. And yet, isn’t that what our readers long for, someone they can relate to and feel with?
The one emotion I find easy to write is . . . anger. It’s kind of my default. I’m not an angry person, but that emotion flows naturally and too quickly from my fingers to the page.
Anger, however, isn’t always authentic for the situation.
As a friend reviewed some of my work recently, I was challenged by the way she brought a kinder side to my characters.
I’ve been taught techniques for conveying genuine emotion through my characters, and I’ve used them. But the easy emotion that comes out is ANGER.
Note that I said “easy,” not necessarily “best.” I want my characters to read as authentic. How I convey their emotions is one piece of that.
How we can write beyond the emotions we default to:
- We’ve all probably heard this one, but envision our characters in the situation they’re in. Pause . . . look at the scene through our character’s eyes, through the lens of what just happened before the scene, and write from that perspective. And, remember we’ll probably nuance this even more later on.
- For those of us who default to volatile emotional responses in our writing, remember human nature—most real-life people don’t tend to think the worst of others, at least not as our go-to line of thought. Our characters’ strong reactions in some situations rise out of the place of their greatest fear. But most of them will not blow up at someone without provocation. If our characters view each other in their best light, we writers can nuance the emotional interactions and the impact they have on readers.
- Think about our characters’ fears, lies, and wounds. Most of these do not evoke a sense of anger. Our characters want to avoid those things that will hurt them or resurrect the fear of being wounded again. They may not “play nice,” but they will, at least initially, not act in a volatile way. They’re trying to avoid feeling the pain, so they’ll try to appease the situation rather than explode immediately.
- Don’t tell the characters what they feel. What our character feels in a situation may be different from what we would feel in that same situation. We must be careful not to inject ourselves into our characters’ emotional responses.
Writing authentic emotions is tough. But, when we take the time to explore our characters—their wounds, lies, and fears, and who they are as people—we’ll be able to dig deeper than that initial, easy emotion. When we examine each scene through our characters’ eyes and with their hearts, their emotions will come across as more authentic to our readers.
What about you? What’s one of your tips for writing authentic emotions?
Award-winning aspiring novelist, Jeanne Takenaka, writes contemporary inspirational fiction that tackles real-life issues with a heart to draw women closer to God and those around them. She lives near the mountains in Colorado with her amazing husband and two exuberant boy-men. She loves being God’s girl—always learning about His grace, hanging out with friends and enjoying a great cup of coffee. When she’s not writing you can find her with a camera in her hand, looking for #alittlebitofpretty in her days. You can connect with her on her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter.