Over the years I have spent writing novels, I have encountered several components that the average reader might tend to gloss over. Even I fall prey to traps in the profession that I have evaded in the past, but that is the life of a writer. Roadblocks and speedbumps are common occurrences and it is something we should all anticipate.
Yet one thing that no writer (or even any reader, for that matter) can ignore is the presence of Emotion within the words of the page. And there are two sides to this simple addition to our writing. The easier side is the side of the reader and it is as you might expect, with the key points I find listed below:
- Emotion is pivotal to reader engagement
- Characters need to show emotion
- Apathy kills a novel then and there
Reader engagement is perhaps the most important aspect of the emotion of a novel. If the words contained within the first page cannot retain the attention of the reader, then there is no purpose to the rest of the novel. Or so I have been told through my formal training. I prefer to think of it a different way:
Emotion, in the confines of a novel, is a powerful tool used to generate empathy for not only the major focus characters, but also for the minor characters, the people in the background who receive no screentime because it is not their story. The villains, too, deserve reader empathy. Without a reason to care for why the villain performs their actions, then there is no antagonist in the story. Even the world itself deserves emotion put into it.
It is hard to convey how much effort went into the creation of a story, but the way they writer describes specific things shows what generates the most emotion in them. It could be anything from food, to the shape of a snowflake, to the intricate shape of a building, or even a detailed explanation of something uncommon.
Of course, the emotion put into the words ultimately means nothing if the characters being written about are flatter than an ant crushed by an anvil. Without that emotional, real-world connection with a character, then we do not care about them. The way a character speaks helps a reader see the emotion they carry with them. Does the character speak hastily? Methodically? Ironically? There is so much to convey that cannot be conveyed in words, but a writer MUST do such a thing. After all, as a writer, I firmly believe that we can make the impossible seem possible. It’s a phenomena called The Willing Suspension of Disbelief. And without that, then all novels are meaningless. A reader is not supposed to take a novel with any form of sincerity, but the novelist should strive to make them.
Which is where the trap comes into play. Apathy. When a novel contains any kind of apathy the reader can pick up on, then the story dies right there. But there is a fine line between intentional apathy, which is a quirk of character writing, and unintentional apathy, which is the novel killer. It is easier to write unintentional apathy because writers do grow bored of their own stories after a time.
So, even though emotion is a key aspect of a story, the whole aspect of it as central to a novel is a double-edged sword. Having too much emotion leads to apathy, and not enough emotion leads to apathy. A clever writer generates a specific emotion in a very specific scenario for a specific reason. It is the difference between saying “Someone is cold,” and saying:
“The wind of winter raged all around them, biting their rosy cheeks with enough force to send an unnatural chill up and down their spine. And it would only grow worse the longer they remained in the petrifying temperatures. Perhaps they had an hour. Maybe two. If their coats kept them insulated enough.”
Fenrir's Lair 