Tag: Emotions

Crafting Emotional Resonance: Part 4 – Precise Prose

Crafting Emotional Resonance: Part 4 – Precise Prose

Today marks the end of this series on writing emotionally resonant scenes and stories! There will be one more related post in a few weeks that covers writing effective dialogue—plus a critique post next week that provides insight into how all of these tips can be applied—but this will be the last how-to post that’s officially part of the series. Today I want to talk about how your prose can make or break the tone and emotion of your writing.

I’ve talked about why I love classic literature before, and one of the reasons is that classic authors took word choice very seriously. They made a point to choose exactly the right words to convey their meaning, connect to their themes, and highlight the emotion they wanted to resonate with readers. Mark Twain said well that,

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

As authors, we know that words have power. This is certainly as true on the micro level as it is true of story as a whole! Yet our specific word choice within stories, within scenes, within sentences is often less careful than it could be, and our stories—and their impact on readers, by extension—suffer for it.

The question is: How do we fix it? Continue reading “Crafting Emotional Resonance: Part 4 – Precise Prose”

Crafting Emotional Resonance: Part 3 – Repressed Emotion

Crafting Emotional Resonance: Part 3 – Repressed Emotion

Last week I talked about the importance of your characters’ reactions to the people and situations around them as a tool to connect their emotions with your readers. I talked about how to write those reactions in general, from the character’s perspective. But your characters won’t always be aware of what they’re feeling—or how they’re expressing it. Writing about those surprise emotions and responses is the topic of today’s post!

Outside Responses

Expressions and emotions that your character isn’t aware of—or simply isn’t acknowledging—require Continue reading “Crafting Emotional Resonance: Part 3 – Repressed Emotion”