On Evoking Emotion
Emotion:A conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body. (Merriam Webster)
The human range of emotions is far greater than we can consciously perceive.
It's easy to generalize them by saying things like, "angry," "sad," or "scared," but how do we hone in on those emotions?
How do we, as writers, make an individual emotion expressed by a fictional character somehow seem believable?
I mentioned the importance of character development in one of my posts under the Immortality Awaits book, but after specific traits and emotions are established within the character, how do we then transfer it into unconscious, unique, separate reactions under the same emotional branch?
As with most things in the world, there is not just one answer to that. In Psychology, there are plenty of different theories on how emotion affects the psyche.
The James-Lange Theory suggests our autonomic nervous system creates physiological events to react to our experiences.
Event --> arousal --> interpretation -- > emotion
The most common association with such emotional responses is the "Fight or Flight" instinct.
Your muscles tense under fear, your blood starts to boil when you're angry, etc.
This theory suggests that emotions occur because of the neurological reactions we have, and that the changes in our body language happen after the event or exciting fact has already happened.
A second theory, The Cannon-Bard Theory, suggests that we feel our bodily changes in concurrence with the stimulating event.
Event --> Simultaneous arousal and emotion
With that, the thalamus sends a signal to the amygdala, which is connected to our emotions, and we feel the emotion being internally processed.
The Two-Factor Theory suggests in order to learn who we are as individual characters on the earth, we must first pay attention to ourselves and our reactions, then try to deduce our nature from that.
Event --> arousal --> reasoning --> emotion
This theory suggests emotion is a cognitive act in that we can both assess and control our feelings; we feel them first, then find a way to label them.
Finally, The Cognitive Appraisal Theory suggests we decide what to feel after we interpret or explain what we just experienced.
We must then determine if the event was good or bad for us, and assess what we believe was the cause of it.
Event --> thinking --> Simultaneous arousal and emotion
After we consider how the situation affects us and our general well-being, we then consider how to cope.
With all of this information, how then do we, as writers, convey all of these possibilities into our fictionalized, as-of-yet nonexistent (or continuously developing) characters?
As I mentioned in my post about character development, The Emotion Thesaurus is a great way to compare different types of physical and internal reactions to emotions, instead of leaving it at "angry" or "happy."
For example, let's say your character is having a bout of nostalgia and yearns to return to the past. Instead of merely saying he is "nostalgic", this thesaurus will help you break down a few options:
Physical Signals:
An unfocused gaze
A shallow sigh
Gently touching memorable items
Seeing similarities in the present
Internal Sensations:
Eyes prickling with tears
An overall relaxation of the body
Dulled awareness
Mental Responses:
Losing track of time
Mentally replaying past events
Cues of Acute or Long-Term Nostalgia:
Discontent with the way things are
Expressing more emotion about the past than the present
Hoarding tendencies
Depression
Inability to move on
Cues of Suppressed Nostalgia:
Sniffing back tears
Rejecting reasons to visit the past
There is obviously so much more than just this, but these are all part of the reactions and idiosyncrasies we weave into our characters. These are merely ideas to help us think deeper into the emotion and bring it out of our character the best way we can.
Each character, each person, each creature, each individual and unique entity within our stories (and within our real lives) will have separate reactions, thoughts, movements, ideas, emotional capacities, everything.
Everything we, as humans, can carry needs to be separated and isolated into shaping a unique and believable fictional character. (Those of you in non-fiction have this a bit easier.)
What non-writers tend to overlook and not understand about what we have to do as writers is that we have to experience the emotion in order to convey it.
Of course, we have all felt a wide array of emotions, but the best way to make it believable is to tap into it while you're in your text.
You have to feel as angry as the villain.
You have to be as in love as the two main characters.
You have to draw on what you feel in order to convey the emotions, and the best way to describe a feeling is to describe it as it takes place.
Sometimes, that can walk a dangerous line.
My entire life, I've struggled with rage. Give me one wrong look and I'll blow up like stepped-on hand grenade. I've tried to calm that down as long as I can remember, and the emotion of anger became what I focused on the most in Immortality Awaits.
The one thing I've learned most:
It is okay to feel any kind of emotion, as long as we do not lose ourselves to it.
In that regard, The Two-Factor or Cognitive Appraisal Theories are, in my opinion, the best ways to write about emotions.
We must find out who we are as real, centered human beings before we can enhance the emotions of our characters.
Just as we cannot love another until we learn to love ourselves, we must learn how to control the thoughts and emotions that drive us, and pave them into the path we want to take the reader on with us.
