Friday Feedback with Selene Castrovilla: Emotions in Motion

  

Selene and I doing a Freaky Friday
this past spring. 

You guys!!!!

This post doesn't need me blathering on with a long intro keeping you from the awesomeness that is about to abound... Suffice it to say we were lucky to have Selene Castrovilla HERE last summer doing a post on voice, and now she's back with more awesomeness that we need to let you get to.

Quickly, if you don't know Selene, she is the award-winning author of young adult fiction and children's nonfiction -- seven books and counting. 

SIGNS OF LIFE, Book Two of the Rough Romance Trilogy, has just been released. I've read the first in the trilogy, MELT, and I cannot wait to get to Signs of Life!

In fact, MELT was the recipient of six honors including the SCBWI Spark Award, the IndieReader Fiction Book of the Year, and the Bronze IPPY Medal for young adult fiction. Here's a link to the guide On Reading and Teaching MELT. 

So, without further ado, I give you Selene and Emotions in Motion. And please check out and order Signs of Life, Melt and the rest of her BOOKS!!

Through the years, and particularly when I was starting out as a writer (long before publication, when I was getting used to the idea that I didn’t need anyone’s permission to write), I attended many writing workshops and conferences. I have a stack of notebooks filled with sage advice from writers and editors.

One person’s words stick on my brain like a wad of chewing gum under a desk. . . "Did you go far enough?"

One person’s words stick on my brain like a wad of chewing gum under a desk. Patti Lee Gauch — a renowned Philomel editor — delivered a lecture titled “Did You Go Far Enough?”

She said sure, you could write something adequate. Something that fills in the blanks, does the job, meets the requirements of “writing.”

But: Did you go far enough?

You know. We all know. It’s the difference between “meh” and goosebumps.

It’s the difference between “That book was alright” and “I stayed up all night reading even though I had to work the next day.”

I’ve contemplated that question:

Did I go far enough? 

swirling and churning it with each book I’ve produced.

And for me, going far enough is always a question of emotion.

I’m never done until I’ve milked every drop of emotion from a scene. It’s true in my picture books as well as in my novels, and the more I write, them more I see opportunities. It’s not what’s happened, but your character’s reaction to what’s happened that creates emotion. IMHO.

Emotions add:

• Tension
• Clarity
• Depth

Tension:

Why do we decide to turn that page and start reading a new chapter? Because we’re worried about our character. We must know what happens next to them.

It is possible to add tension to any setting 

by amping up the emotion.

Your character wakes up to a bright sunny morning. All is good in the hood, right? Mais, non. Instead of just pushing back the covers and plunging from the bed:

He bites his lip.

or

He clutches at the covers. (Maybe he crawls under them.)

or

He shudders.

or

He refuses breakfast.

or

He vomits all over the covers.

You just conveyed that your character is nervous. (Okay, the vomiting may indicate a virus or a hangover — you may need to clarify with other cues/tells.)

He wakes up to that same sunny morning and he:

sneers

or
snickers

or
rubs his hands together and laughs in a disturbing way

or
he has cold eyes,

You just conveyed that he has contempt. Better hope there are strict gun laws in his state.

He wakes up yet a third time to that sunny morning and:

his eyebrows gather in

or

he squeezes his eyes shut

or
his posture is bent with slumped arms, the shoulders pulled low.

Maybe he even mutters an apology into the air, or up to God.

You just showed up that your character has regret. Are the gun laws strict in that state?

The emotions do not explain anything here. They make us wonder: what the heck is bugging this guy on such a sunny day? He should be jumping out of bed singing, “Oklahoma! Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!” (Maybe his problem is that he lives in Oklahoma and hates getting his hair messed up in the wind.)

Once our character gets out of bed you can compound the emotion, or you can turn it around. You can create an unexpected twist; you can make the day go even worse. But all this great stuff happens only if he doesn’t simply “wake up to a sunny day and gets out of bed.” Because that’s the default setting, folks. Change it.

Emotion can also illuminate our story, clarifying how we’re supposed to feel . . . within the context of our story. 

Clarity:

Emotion can also illuminate our story, clarifying how we’re supposed to feel about a certain situation within the context of our story. Often, something which happens can be good or bad, funny or sad — depending on how the character feels. If you want to play around you can use multiple characters and have them feel different ways about a situation. For example, I write about the Revolutionary War. So if something good happens for the British, it’s going to upset the Americans. I never just say “so and so won this battle.” Who cares, anyway? We care about the emotional reaction to the win or loss.

This is also good to define moral character: how your character reacts to something tragic or even just a little upsetting shows insight into him. Maybe he’s happy, because he hates the person it happened to. Maybe he has good reason. Maybe they’d bullied him in the past. Or maybe your character is the bully. 

Really, emotions can change the course of our story entirely -- without altering the plot.

Depth:

The difference between the kiddie pool and the deep end is depth. 

Both get you wet, one immerses you.

The difference between the kiddie pool and the deep end is depth. Both get you wet, one immerses you.

Immerse your readers. Shove ‘em right into that deep end — over-priced clothes, over-priced shoes, hideously over-priced purses and all. They'll never forget you.

This brings us back to: Did you go far enough?

Examples of how emotions made the difference in children’s/YA books:

1.     The Catcher in the Rye:  Pencey Prep would be just a rich kids’ boarding school if Holden hadn’t been so damn depressed. Frankly, the whole book is one big emotional breakdown.

2.  Charlotte’s Web: What if Fern cared more about what was for breakfast (extra bacon?) then where Pa was going with that axe?

3. Harry Potter — What if Harry’s mother hadn’t loved Harry enough to sacrifice herself for him? (It’s kind of interesting that Harry himself is a fairly passive-emotioned character, compared to the others surrounding him. Look at the passion of Snape!)

4.Lord of the Flies — What if the boys decided to band together to survive, treating each other with respect and concern?

5. The Chocolate Wars — What if Jerry felt inclined to sell the chocolate like everyone else?

These are just some from the top of my head. Why don’t you apply your favorites to the emotions test as well?

As you can see, emotions not only show us the internal working of a character, but they also determine the tone, outcome and depth (as previously mentioned.) It is emotion which lends gravitas.

Of course, the master of emotion was Shakespeare. Think about how essential emotion is in his plays! They would be utterly meaningless without them. There’s a man who went far enough.

So how do you go about showing emotions in your stories? Many of us first try to use dialogue for the heavy lifting, but this can leave us with hackneyed, tired lines. Yes, use strong, biting dialogue that delivers a punch. But don’t flail wildly, or your story will be down for the count.

Here’s where you can cultivate:

1.     Your word choices count. A word carries a feel, a connotation. An emotion. So never have a character “walk.” Have him plod, trudge, skip or shuffle. I HIGHLY recommend the Flip Dictionary by Barbara Ann Kipfer, Ph. D. It’s a thesaurus on steroids.

2.     How you describe your setting provides emotion. Run-down or pristine?  Cheerful abundant or bare? It’s not just how it is, but how your characters perceive it.

3.     How your convey the weather also provides emotion. Again, a sunny day may be greeted with dismay. Or a happy character might whistle as he walks through the rain.

4.     Body language. Oh, yes. This is rich indeed. I own a book called The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, and it is priceless. Not since I laid eyes on my Flip Dictionary many years ago have I loved a writing resource so much. If you want to get into character traits and how they are revealed emotionally, Angela and Becca have also created The Positive Trait Thesaurus and The Negative Trait Thesaurus. I own these, but haven’t referred to them much yet (though perusing them now, they do seem inspiring.)

5.     You can even use pacing to convey emotions. In my latest novel, I chopped up the narratives and discovered a much tenser emotional trajectory — without changing a word. Your novel is like a potato: slice it, dice it, make Julienne fries.

I hope you find this useful!

Remember: A mediocre story is one filled with missed emotional opportunities.

One more thing about writing. You must give it some priority if you want to experience growth. I always say: “Tonight, we can cook a fancy dinner, or we can write a novel!” What do we have left when we’re done eating?

My kids grew up thinking that when it’s dinnertime, the Chinese man brings it.

(I am convinced my son loves broccoli with garlic sauce because I ate it with one hand as he nursed nestled in my other.)

Let’s get to work!

I suppose we might try for passages which convey emotion today — if you have them. But please, share whatever you’d like feedback on. I can’t wait to read your work!

For mine, this is a section in Unpunished, Book Three in the Rough Romance Trilogy. I have many points of view in this one.

Dorothy’s Mom

I didn’t even know what was happening. My daughter was alive, eyes open! I screamed, I couldn’t stop screaming, at the sheer horror of what I’d done. And the baby was pounding, pounding inside me, as though she were screaming, too.

One of the nurses who rushed in grabbed me, yanked me out of the room. I didn’t resist, but I didn’t help either. I was like a lead weight, not on purpose, but because I couldn’t function. It was like my mind wasn’t even in my body, I was just observing.

I was still screaming, and she shook me hard. “Dr. Fields!” she scolded. And that stopped my scream. She had no right to scold me.

“You said it wasn’t possible,” I roared. “You said she was dead. Already dead, though breathing. Oh my God, that doesn’t even make sense! I believed you, I believed you all!”

She didn’t say anything. Her arms dropped. She was a mess, how could she call herself a nurse, what did she know? It was just this big mess, everything was this colossal mess, I’d colluded in the attempted murder of my daughter and God help me I couldn’t go in there and face her what the hell kind of a mother was I? And then water gushed out into the floor, I was standing in a puddle and I stared down wondering where the hell that came from and then I realized — it came from me.