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Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings Part II

Unbosoming

I journal. Or if you prefer, I keep a journal.

I’ve kept journals on an ongoing basis for a good part of my adult life. (Boxes of notebooks packed away waiting for my kids to read after my demise. Pity them.)

I’ve often said that as an author/writer I feel it’s crucial that I journal. But then I always add that I would journal even if I were not an author.

I don’t believe there is anything in my life that is more cathartic than writing out my feelings. Or you could say, spilling my guts. Ann Frank (Diary of Anne Frank) called it “unbosoming.” One must appreciate a young teenage girl who could express journaling so succinctly.

I not only journal, but I’ve even taught community education classes on the subject of journaling.

Feelings in the Novel

In my previous blog post, Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings Part I, I touched on the necessity of weaving feelings into your character with the purpose of causing the reader to care.

In that post I stated:

Events cannot stand alone no matter how exciting you believe those events to be. The events must be lived through a character who reacts to them.

I further stated:

I’ve seen way too many dead stories where feelings (emotions) are either thin or non-existent.

Out of Touch With Feelings

Lack of feelings in a novel, could possibly be a by-product of a novelist out of touch with his or her own feelings. After all, one cannot give what one does not have.

What might be a root cause of a being out of touch with deep inner feelings? Any number of things. We are wounded by people, events and circumstances. It hurts. We don’t like the pain. So we stuff down feelings to numb the pain.

So now if you are the aspiring novelist who has spent a lifetime tamping down feelings, how will you ever create realistic feelings in your characters?

Two things may transpire.

You could struggle for years producing weak plots and never know why.
You could actually meet yourself in the emotions of your character and begin your own journey of coming face-to-face with those submerged emotions in a healthy way.

(I guess I could add a third here – you might start keeping a personal journal and begin your own self-analysis process.)

Find Out Who You Are

Author, David Morrell (of Rambo fame) was mentored in his younger years by another author, Philip Klass. Morrell remembers Klass telling him:

Look inside yourself. Find out who you are. In your case, I suspect that means find out what you’re most afraid of, and that will be your subject for your life or until your fear changes.

Find out who you are. Whoa! That, my friends, is a powerful statement. It is classic advice for every novelist.

Avoid Dumping Feelings on the Reader

But then we must quickly add that if the only purpose of the novel is so the novelist can dump feelings, the work will suffer.

Author and writing teacher, Leonard Bishop, puts it this way:

The reader is not interested in the writer’s subjective vomitive revelations when they offer no contribution to the story or novel.

That’s why I am sold on the journaling process. It ensures (as much as is humanly possible) that my subjective vomitive revelations are in my journals; not in my novels.

Now I’m back to my main theme: Feelings, Nothing more than feelings. That’s pretty much what novels are all about – from conception, through the development, to the eye, heart, and mind of the reader.

Did you really think it was anything else?

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For an in-depth study on the process and the innumerable benefits of journaling, the Be A Novelist Writer’s Workshop #2 will be a great help. This workshop removes all the road blocks that have previously prevented you from keeping a journal. Check it out here.

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Are you one of those budding novelists who makes a great start but you can’t seem to finish? Then this is for you! Be A Novelist, Six-Month, Finish-My-Novel Challenge! Six full months of guidance and instruction. Guaranteed to light a fire under your novel-writing attempts and to launch you into a pattern of consistent writing! Check it out here!

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings Part I

You feel. Your character feels. Your reader feels. We all feel. As that old song says: Feelings, nothing more than feelings.

If, as a novelist, you forget about your character having feelings, you’re doomed.

Events Cannot Stand Alone

What is primarily communicated in a story? Feelings. A story is never solely about what happens. It’s not solely about events. It’s not just the facts.

Every event in your story matters in relationship with how significant it is to a particular individual – your character. Events cannot stand alone no matter how exciting you believe those events to be. The events must be lived through a character who reacts to them.

It is your job as the author – as the novelist – to engineer the events and facts so as to evoke a certain emotion (feeling) on the part of your character.

Facts in a Different Light

Facts exist outside of emotions. Emotions interpret those facts. The fact is, it rained last night. The fact creates little or no feelings. However, place the fact in a different light and see how it changes.

After Martha’s baby girl died, it rained the day of the funeral.
Nearly every evening, Sonja and her lover took strolls together in the soft Seattle rains before he shipped out overseas.
Parker Clemson’s soybean fields were dusty and bone dry – soaking rains had been few and far between.

As novelist and writing instructor, Dwight Swain, used to say, “…a story is never really about anything. Always it concerns, instead, someone’s reactions to what happens.”

How your reader feels about rain will become immaterial. You the author will create a character so vivid, only that character’s reaction to rain matters to the reader.

Scream at a Mouse?

Take another situation. Imagine a room full of people and a mouse skitters across the floor. While one person is screaming and running, another attempts to catch the mouse with bare hands.

Is that person screaming at a mouse? Or at his or her own feelings in reaction to the mouse? Evidently, it’s due to feelings. If it were only the mouse, everyone would react in the same manner.

Now you may be saying, “Okay, Norma Jean – all of this is so obvious. Where are you going with all this talk about feelings?”

I’m hammering on the obvious because I’ve seen way too many dead stories where feelings (emotions) are either thin or non-existent. The importance of feelings in a novel cannot be over emphasized.

Who to Care About?

Your reader has agreeably entered into your story world. How will that reader know who to root for? Who to empathize with? Who to share emotions with? Who to care about? Because if reader does not care, reader will not read. Simple.

It is your job to create a character so vivid that the reader keeps turning pages to find out what will happen to that character. Such an experience comes when you know your character inside and out, upside down and backward.

Once that happens, you then engineer events in the plot to trigger the needed emotions in your character to move that portion of the plot forward. It’s part of the art of plotting.

In Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings Part II, we’ll look more closely at the emotions that dwell within the novelist and how that plays a part in plotting.

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For a further, deeper study on feeling and emotions, the Be A Novelist Writer’s Workshop #15 will be a great help. This workshop demonstrates how you can feel what your characters feel – even if it is opposite of what you feel personally. This is a skill every serious fiction writer must achieve in order to make the story (and the characters) believable. Check it out here.

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Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings Part II

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings Part I

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