How to Effectively Show Emotion in Characters and Evoke Emotional Response in Readers
Who is this course for?
- Fiction writers and writers of creative nonfiction of any level
What you’ll learn
- The 3 key ways to show emotion in your characters and which one is the most powerful
- What the action-reaction cycle is all about, and why you must understand it to be an emotional master
- Why you need to manipulate your readers' emotions, and why that's a good thing
- How to recognize complex emotion and transfer that onto the page
- What microtension is and why it's essential for emotional mastery
- Ways to craft mood that will evoke emotion in readers
- How to work at the word, phrase, and sentence level to masterfully convey emotion
- How to find the perfect balance of showing and telling emotion in your characters
- How to deconstruct masterful writing that evokes and shows emotion and emulate the effect in your own scenes
About the course
To be effective writers, we must master the emotional challenge of our stories. It won’t do to hope we will move our readers in some way. It won’t do to hope we get across our characters’ emotions.
If we want to be masterful writers, we have to become a master of emotion.
This is what this course is going to examine. There is no magic formula to mastering this skill. Being intuitive and sensitive can help. Being in touch with your own feelings can help.…
To be effective writers, we must master the emotional challenge of our stories. It won’t do to hope we will move our readers in some way. It won’t do to hope we get across our characters’ emotions.
If we want to be masterful writers, we have to become a master of emotion.
This is what this course is going to examine. There is no magic formula to mastering this skill. Being intuitive and sensitive can help. Being in touch with your own feelings can help. Studying great novels to see how other writers pull emotions out of hats can help.
But it takes even more than all that.
In this course, you’ll be given tools to show emotions in your characters. You’ll be given techniques to help spark emotional response in your readers. What is going to bring it all together for you is practice. Study and practice. And you’ll have exercises in this course to help you put into practice what you learn.
There are two facets of emotion in fiction: conveying what your character is feeling and evoking emotion in your reader. We’ll look at these two facets separately and in depth. Yet, they are intrinsically connected.
Emotional mastery requires writers to set up the dynamics of a scene in such a visual, textural way that readers can’t help but feel what they are meant to feel. Understanding that emotional mastery requires a twofold approach—the emotional landscape of both the character and the reader—is the first step.
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Course Content
Go-at-your-own pace course, with more than six hours of instructional videos and dozens of scene passages deconstructed. Plus lots of handouts, worksheets, and exercises to help you become an Emotion Master!
Lesson Name & What’s Included
Introduction: Writers as Emotion Manipulators
19:01
Section 1: Showing Emotion in Your Characters
Module 1: Understanding the Action-Reaction Cycle
38:51
Module 2: Emotion by Degrees
18:46
Module 3: Method 1 - Using Physical Tells to Convey Emotions
28:33
Module 4: Method 2 - Naming Emotions
34:26
Module 5: Method 3 - Emotion via Your Character's Thoughts
39:39
Section 2: Evoking Emotions in Your Readers
Module 6: Mining Your Feelings
41:58
Module 7: "Surprisingness"
42:10
Section 3: Technique and Practice
Module 8: Microtension
26:40
Module 9: Inner Conflict and Transformation
34:29
Module 10: Wordsmithing - Mood and Mechanics
30:59
Module 11: Wordsmithing - Imagery, Metaphors, and Similes
32:28
Instructor
C.S. Lakin
C. S. Lakin is the award-winning author of thirty books and blogger at Live Write Thrive, a top-ten site for writers. She works as a copyeditor and writing coach in the book publishing industry, specializing in manuscript critiques. Her writing craft book series, The Writer's Toolbox, teaches aspiring and experienced novelists how to write terrific stories. She loves nothing more than to help writers craft stellar novels and experience success and joy in their writing journey.
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