By:
Donald Maass
The
surest way to stir emotion in readers can be summed up in one word: change.
Change
is a universal experience. We’ve all gone through it. We cannot
avoid it. The passages of life guarantee it. Change is necessary,
difficult, wrenching and individual. When a character in a story changes
we each recall the emotional earthquakes of our own lives. We feel for
characters, or so we say. We’re really feeling for ourselves.
Changes
can be small or big. In my post Stirring
Higher Emotions, I described a method for turning a character toward
virtue, the shift with the greatest reader impact. Change can also be
momentary, though, as when in a scene a point-of-view character gains insight,
makes an intuitive leap, asks the right question, reverses course or steps out
of the box of our expectations and acts differently or looks at things in a new
way.
Every
change, big or small, knocks us readers off balance which in terms of emotional
craft is good. Shake us out of our fog and our hearts open.
We’re free to feel . What does change mean, then? How does it
happen? How can it be built in a manuscript for maximum effect?
.
. .
Read the full
article HERE!
~*~
If
you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they
are again:
- 5 Ways to Brace Yourself For the Harsh Truths of the Author Career | Author Marketing Institute http://ow.ly/Ox9RA
- What
IS an Ebook?
by David Kudler — The Book Designer http://ow.ly/Oxa1A - How to sell out at a book signing without being a celebrity - Build Book Buzz http://ow.ly/Oxab4
- Writer Unboxed » Change http://ow.ly/OxauX "The surest way to stir emotion in readers can be summed up in one word: change."
- Save Money by Designing Your Own Promo | Jami Gold, Paranormal Author http://ow.ly/OxaYg
- On “Action” as “Tension” In Fiction, and Different Manifestations of It | Creative Writing with the Crimson League http://ow.ly/OxbIZ
- Writers On The Move: The Value of Finishing Your Writing Projects http://ow.ly/OxbQv
- The
dreaded competitive title analysis –
BookBaby http://ow.ly/Oxc03 - Fiction University: Lost in the Crowd: Working With Multiple Point of View Characters http://ow.ly/OxccD
- How Judgmental Are Your Characters? | Writers In The Storm http://ow.ly/OxcIn
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