Emotional Storytelling | Writing Characters Readers Can Connect With

welcome to cc rights my name is cece lepke and today i am going to help you learn how to use emotion to tell a story even if you personally have the emotional range of a teaspoon [Music] your command of plot action and timing leaves people on the edge of their seats you've been praised for your high octane thrillers and heart-pounding suspense but your readers keep complaining that they don't feel connected to your characters or maybe you're just getting started and need a little bit of help to give your character some emotional weight if that sounds like you then there are probably two specific elements that you're missing basic psychology and strong prose so you're probably not a therapist don't worry for what i'm about to teach you a deep understanding of human psychology isn't necessary at all unless you're as socially inept as i am in which case you might want to study up on how to people for everyone else what you do need to understand is how people grieve a story happens when a person who's comfortable in the world she lives in suddenly loses what's most precious and embarks on an adventure to try to get back what they lost i cover this in more detail in my video about storytelling so feel free to check it out if you need a refresher in terms of psychology what your character has experienced is called trauma and the journey that your character takes to make her world comfortable again is called the stages of grief and no the stages of grief are not a delightful theater experience where shakespearean actors play out dramas for our delight in entertainment the stages of grief are a series of emotions that we experience before we're finally able to come to terms with our trauma there are 5 7 or 12 stages of grief depending on who you ask but for my purposes i'm going to use the seven stages of grief they are shock denial anger bargaining depression testing and acceptance look at that it's pretty nicely on my plot circle doesn't it that's because the basic plot for a good story actually mimics what real life people go through when they're mourning the loss of something when you're writing a section of your plot you should actively think about what stage of the grieving process your character inhabits and how that would affect their actions and decision making your character is in denial they should struggle with the changes that are happening and actively deny that anything is wrong they're in the bargaining stage they should make a deal that will make things go back to normal following the grieving process and your plot will give structure to the emotions that your characters experience it will make the flow of emotions throughout your plot feel more grounded to what people actually experience or at the very least it'll make it recognizable as some kind of human experience but just knowing how somebody is supposed to feel doesn't necessarily mean that you can write it well for that you need prose and a lot of writing practice but for simplicity's sake we'll say it just needs prose creating strong emotional prose is the hard part no matter how much structure you have if you're bad at writing prose you're going to struggle and risk boring your readers unfortunately there aren't a lot of good guides on how to write beefier prose that everyone will love mostly because i haven't made that video yet but even if you don't know the basics of writing good prose you can still make this work by using my threefold prose checklist perception behavior and memory i'll show you what i mean let's say you wrote a sentence where a man visits a grave hector looked down at the headstone and wept for his dead wife sure it conveys some emotion but it lacks the legitimacy of hector's perception of the gravestone when people experience things we either have positive or negative associations gravestones for most people have a negative association for hector in particular this gravestone belonged to the wife that he loved so let's add how hector perceives the headstone the headstone stood as a rose gray monolith that weighed as heavily in hector's chest as it did on the dry patched soil of the graveyard he looked down at his wife's grave and wept great that changes the feeling quite a bit now we can look at how hector acts when he sees the gravestone in the original sentence he looks at it and cries but we want hector to be more active in his grief the headstone stood as a rose gray monolith that weighed as heavily in hector's chest as it did on the dry patched soil of the graveyard he reached out a shaking hand to trace his wife's name on the cold stone his breath hitched and he quickly covered his mouth bowing his head as his chest heaved and tears spilled out onto the ground in front of him wonderful lastly we want to add memory sights smells sound feeling taste they all trigger memories and loose associations if we want the audience to feel as if they know what hector is going through triggering a memory at this point will make the scene feel all the more tender and raw the headstone stood as a rose gray monolith that weighed as heavily in hector's chest as it did on the dry patched soil of the graveyard he reached out a shaking hand to trace his wife's name on the cold stone his breath hitched and he quickly covered his mouth bowing his head as his chest heaved and tears spilled out onto the ground in front of him when they first met hector had struggled to spell her name correctly in every message he'd ever sent she teased him mercilessly you don't know who i am she'd pout and look at him with those bright eyes shaded by long lashes and she'd smile and kiss his cheek it's okay i'll teach you the memory of those bright eyes was tarnished by his last day with her don't let them spell my name wrong she grasped through her dry throat a weak smile tugged at the corner of her chapped lips all her hair was gone including those long lashes make sure they know who i am i made sure of it princess i made sure grunted like a wounded dog and turned away from his wife's grave in this example we went from one simple sentence conveying a man's tears to a three paragraph segment detailing the complex emotional turmoil of a man who had lost his beloved wife to cancer we know how he feels about the grave we can see his grief in a tangible way and we can logically understand what's causing his tears when you put it all together in practice you can create stories that are rich with emotion and logically grounded and how people actually experience their feelings you know unless they don't actually have feelings but those people probably read your book for the action anyway that's all i've got for today but thank you so much for joining me today on cc rights i hope you enjoyed our time together if you'd like more lessons on character writing from me check out the top video if you want to know a bit more about plotting then click on the bottom video until next time i will see you later

Channel: CC Writes

Views: 596

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Id: J1UtfqvhIs8

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021