How to evoke emotion from your reader

The better writers tend to be those who are able to evoke an emotional response from their readers, whether it be intense pleasure, empathy with your fictional characters, or rage at their sheer disagreement with what you've written about, it is being able to evoke an emotional response which will make your work popular.

So how do you evoke this emotional response with your writing?

You infuse your story's characters with emotion. Consider how Shakespeare brought his characters alive, with their unique personality traits and fragile ego's and displays of jealousy, pride, rage, lust, grief etc. He painted an exquisite picture for the reader/viewer and demonstrated that he himself had great insight into people's psyche.

Whatever plans you have for your character in your story, be aware that their actions are guided by emotion. You can draw from your experience of yourself and other people you know and have known to create 'emotional characters'.

Ask yourself these things about your character:

Are they naive or worldly?
Are they mature/immature?
Are they sensitive/robust (and everything in between)?
Are they leaders/followers?
Are they experienced in matters of love, business, parenting, travel etc? Life experience may effect ones emotional development.
Are they depressed?
Are they happy?
Are they sociable/reclusive?
Are they bookish/sporty?

And so on and so forth.

You must of course also consider gender, age, cultural/religious background, country of residence and anything that will help build a comprehensive picture of your character and make them 3 dimensional.

How to write with Passion

Aside from relating to my own experience, which is a case of if you feel it, write about it, you can try what I have seen actors do when being tutored. If they are required to 'act passionately' they are advised to relate to their own experiences and to conjure up memories of particular events that provoked passionate feelings for them. They were then told to use those memories and that emotion which was freshly recreated, for their acting performance.

For example, an actress required to cry might recall a time when her pet died and when the memory is recalled, so too is the emotion experienced at that time and the tears may begin to flow now as they did then. I would suggest trying this same technique with your writing. BUT of course apply the memory to the situation you desire to write about.

Alternatively you could try writing with passion by thinking about it. Perhaps watch a particularly passionate drama on TV or read some passionate literature. Get yourself in the mood!

Leah Gray aka creativeblogger is an Internet Writer/marketer, Problogger, Dating eBook author and Relationship Columnist. She is also a Qualified Stress Consultant and Character Analyst MASC, AMANF. She is available to hire for various Internet writing/blogging projects. For more details of those visit her home page here: http://www.creative-blogger.com