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Thursday, August 21, 2014

"Feelings"



"Steps for Writing Feelings"

You decide what's good and what's bad
You give your reader a character for a compass
You create a story world
You inject an element of change
You draw motive power from cause and effect
You pin down development to motivation and reaction
You make motivation-reaction units shape emotion
You measure copy length with tension (D. V. Swain)




So, my question today is how do we decide whether a thing is good or bad? Everything is good and bad, in varying degrees. Is a rainstorm bad or good? How about a bombing raid? A strike? A divorce?  A marriage? A cigarette? A chocolate bar? A job? A baby? A weed?

Because we're human, we measure each instance with cause and effect, pushed together with our feelings of the world we live in. 

You, the writer, decides how significant a rainstorm, a marriage, a chocolate bar or a divorce is to your fiction world. Whether we have a hand full of facts or three barrels full, we humans judge and respond with our feelings.

Happy Writing,
Sherry L White 









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