A Short Introduction & Writing Emotion

Hi everyone, Winnie Griggs here. First let me say how absolutely thrilled I am to be joining the Seekerville line-up! This has always been one of my favorite blogs to visit so I was incredibly honored to receive an invitation come on board as an official Seeker.

I gave a lot of thought into what I should write about for this, my first post, and I suppose I should start by telling you a little about myself. I’ll keep this part brief.

I grew up in SE Louisiana, right across the river from New Orleans in a decidedly rural area.  I’m the oldest of five siblings, though we are spread out in age – my youngest sister is 20 years younger than me (Imagine getting the news that your parents are expecting when you’re in college!).

I met the man who would become my husband while I was in college and we celebrated our 42^nd anniversary just before Thanksgiving. We have four children, the youngest two are twins. I always thought three was the ideal number but I like to say that the Good Lord knew better and gave me two that last time around and they have been a joy to us ever since.

Professionally, I worked for an Electric Utility Company for 35 years as an IT professional and a Project Manager and I am now very happily retired. 

On the writing front, I made my first sale to Dorchester Publishing’s Leisure Books line in 2000 and published four additional titles with them before moving on to Love Inspired where I sold sixteen titles. I've also made several sales to small presses in the interim. And, with the closing of the Love Inspired Historical line, I’m facing yet another change in my career. I can’t see what the future holds for me and my writing at this point, but I have faith that it will all work out as it should.

So that’s me in a nutshell. On to the more important part of this post.

I’m developing a new workshop I’ve titled Delivering Emotion. Below is a short excerpt from my WIP that I’d like to get some feedback on. So here goes.

When depicting character emotion, the cardinal rule is - Don’t tell me what your character is feeling, SHOW ME.  Here are a few ways to do that:

Use the five senses
The senses, and how they influence and trigger thoughts, can be a powerful emotion indicator. Look at the two passages below. 

As he tended to her cut finger, she felt a deeper connection between them.

    vs.

Reggie stared down at her hand in his.  A tiny rivulet of blood seeped out from the shallow slice, curling around her finger and onto his, like a narrow ribbon binding them together. Amazing that such large, work-callused hands could feel so warm and gentle without losing their sense of strength… she stared down at his bent head, so close she could smell the scent of soap and cigar smoke and night air.  So close her breath stirred his hair.  So close she could press her lips to his temple without moving much at all.

Use Internalization
What a character is thinking communicates emotion to the reader even if the other characters in the story don't see it.

His words made her happy

    vs.

She could hardly believe it—he’d supported her over Ava. That had never happened before. What a wonderful way to begin their vacation.

Use body language

Body language is another powerful indicator of a character's emotional state. It's a tool that can convey a whole lot, both to the reader and to the other story characters without one bit of dialogue being exchanged.

He was angry

   vs.

He slammed his mug down, pushed away from the counter and stormed out of the room.

Use Subconscious ‘tells’

This is one of my favorite ways to convey emotion - using little tics and unconscious habits to betray what a character is feeling. But be careful, a little goes a long way when using this method.

Alice could tell he was lying.

  vs.

Uh-oh, he was twisting that signet ring on his finger. He always did that when he was lying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So that's as far as I've gotten.  The examples obviously need a little more work, but hopefully they convey what I'm going for. The other topics I intend to cover in the workshop are:


Showing emotional growth

* Discuss key steps along the character’s emotional arc that should be highlighted for greatest impact


Layering it in

* How to weave it in without hitting the reader over the head


Knowing when to punch it home

* Discuss a structure for those big emotional pay off moments


Being aware of the emotions you want to elicit in your reader

* These may or may not be the same emotions you are putting your character through.

* Viewing it with a reader’s eye

                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now it's your turn. What do you think? Am I hitting the right points? Is there some aspect of this topic I'm missing?

Anyone leaving feedback for me today will be entered into a drawing for their choice of any book from my backlist.