So apparently my big weakness is evoking the proper emotions in a given scene — all my characters are too wooden and bland in scenes that, well, calls for them to be feeling something. Here’s an excerpt of what I mean: *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Merkarth was back. In my mentor’s body. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the twisting Aura. Master Thaari... The chanting continued over the loud roar. Don re-quistr du, M’nyr ve kulthu! The other Auras stood back, gathered together as the Aura in the center maintained her posture near Mylo’s writhing body. Then, a guttural moan. The sorceress took a step back, her hand still lingering in the space between her and Mylo. “My lord...” she said soothingly. “You have returned.” The writhing stopped. For a moment, Mylo’s Aura was completely still. Then he turned around, raised a hand. A soundless scream caught in my throat as I felt something icy clamp over my back, pulling me up off the ground. I kicked and scrabbled at the slippery rocks but it was useless. I felt myself move closer and closer to the two Auras before the grip released me to smack painfully into the dirt. I felt blood in my mouth, something loose danced around my tongue. I spat out something small and hard. A tooth? I sucked in air, feeling a cold draft near the front and center where a tooth had been. “What have we here?” the sorceress mused as I pushed myself onto my elbows. Laughter was heard in the distant, coming from the other Auras. “A little girl playing hero?” I lifted my head up to them. Their Auras loomed over me, I could feel their eyes boring at mine. Mylo said nothing, but the sorceress chuckled lightly. “Tell me, child. What is your name?” “M-Mishu...” I said through clenched teeth. The pain in my leg throbbed, the fall had aggravated the wound. Please.... Please, Gods... Help me... Anyone... Help me... *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ The context is that Mishu and her mentor, Mylo, had failed in their quest to stop the return of a dark god. Horribly. Mylo is now under the god’s control and Mishu is surrounded by a few dozen members of the villain’s cult. She is royally screwed in every way possible yet outside a small prayer for someone to save her, she...doesn’t seem to show emotion. My feeling was that #1- there’s only so many ways I can describe how terrified she is, and #2- I didn’t want her to come off as too angsty/edgy. Thoughts? How do you evoke the right kind of emotions without going too overboard, or making the characters feel wooden?
My first though is that I’m not getting some of the scary facts. I didn’t realize until “What have we here?” that the POV character was hiding and had been discovered. Now, the hiding may be evident in the material before this scene, but you could be more explicit about the discovered part. “...blah blah and I realized that I had been discovered/captured” “In my mentor’s body” is a good scary fact, but you could ramp it up a little. A semi-angst example: “The man I trusted most in the world, the man who knew my secrets, was gone, filled with the creature that (horrible thing). Did Merkarth know those secrets?” The tooth is a fairly prosaic detail that seems to take more attention than it earns. There are a lot of specific details of how she’s moved, but not much in the way of surprise. You might be better off with more shock and breathlessness and disorientation, and less specific detail. “Laughter was heard” distances you from the character—presumably she’s hearing it, so why not “I heard laughter” or “...sorceress spoke over the laughter of the Auras...” “aggravated the wound” has a clinical vibe. “My wounded leg throbbed...” is less clinical. Instead of “a soundless scream caught” maybe “I tried to scream...” But I’d do the grab before the scream—in this case, having reaction before action is reducing the impact. There’s a lot of “I felt”. I think you’d be closer to the action without it. “Something ivy clamped...”, “I was dragged closer...”, “...the taste of blood in my mouth...”, “...their eyes bored...” You could also go with the physical/behavior indicators of fear. Dizziness, a frozen struggle to answer the question, a desire to quail instead of getting to her feet.
See, that’s where I stumble :3 I keep doing the “I did/felt xyz”. I think to make the readers more grounded, describe what’s happening to her without the “I”? Instead of informing the readers she hears laughter, just have the laughter while Mishu struggled to keep from retching? When is it good to use “I”? By prosaic, you mean attention to a needless detail? Instead she just spits out the tooth without angsting over it? So instead of having her wax lyrical about her emotions, just show the visceral physical emotions like trembling legs, retching, and the like?
Well, just describe what the character's are feeling. At the moment you're describing only actions. For example, when you write "I kicked and scrabbled" , just add something like: "I desperately kicked and scrabbled" and that will show desperation (duh!).
I responded last night on my phone. Now on my my laptop, I'll try to be clearer. In addition to my previous points, and clarifying one or two: "I did" in actions like the "kicked and scrabbled" is fine--that is, you don't want to do it over and over and over, but that's mainly about not having the same structure in every sentence. Things like "I felt", "I heard", "I saw" are often referred to as filtering--I say that just to give you a word to potentially Google for other people's views on the topic. They take the character's reality and filter it through the layer of their senses. That tends to distance the reader from what's happening. There's more impact to, "The couch was burning" than, "I saw that the couch was burning". Filtering isn't a Bad Thing, any more than, say, "telling" is a Bad Thing. But it has that cost, so if you're going for maximum closeness to the experience, it can be best to avoid it. I tend to avoid it unless the senses are actually a factor--for example, if you're straining to hear a sound, it may make the most sense to say, "I heard" or "I could hear". Or if the sound is somewhere where you can't see its source, "I heard" may make sense. But "...could be heard..." suggests that someone else is hearing it; it adds extra distance. "Prosaic" was the wrong word for me to use. I'm suggesting that you make full use of all of the emotion-driving facts of the situation. Someone she trusts has been taken from her, transformed into someone she's afraid of. She was hiding from dangerous people, and then she was detected and captured. Those are simple straightforward facts, but they have the potential to drive emotion. Everything that distracts from them has the potential to dampen emotion. For example, there's some scene setting that, IMO, dampens emotion. You may need for us to know that the Auras are gathered together while the one in the center... but in that case it may be good to "pay for" that scene setting with emotion. For example: The other Auras stood in a pack, watching with eager readiness. The leader moved closer to Mylo's writhing body, smiling at his struggles. Her hand still lingered--can you make that creepy? Is it there to suppress Mylo? What's it for? Is there any ominous emotion to be squeezed from it? "I felt myself move closer and closer" has little emotion. Compare it to, say, "The invisible hand sailed me across the cave, slowly, as if taunting me, giving me more time to struggle. When I reached the two Auras, close enough for them to touch me with their bony fingers, it dropped me at their feet." Or...something. I don't like that much, but my goal is to demonstrate more emotion. And do you need the tooth, maybe for a plot point later? I feel like it grabs focus and reduces emotion; if you don't need it, maybe you could lose it. If you do need it, yes, I'd make it smaller. "pushed myself to my elbows" has good emotion. It's almost lost by being used as a sort of "beat" for the sorceress. "Mylo said nothing" has the opportunity to be expanded for emotion--her mentor, or at least his body, is watching her coldly without helping. Maybe he's wearing the same focused look that he uses when reading a book intently, or the same amused expression that he wears when watching a child play. Familiarity turned to horror. So I'm suggesting that rather than a lot of specific statements of emotion--"I was horrified", "I was terrified", etc.--you find the elements of the situation that are frightening or disquieting and focus on them. You may still end up needing some expression of emotion ('Through the terror, I managed to gasp enough air to say, “M-Mishu...”'), but it gets a lot of fuel from those other things.
There is a lot of distance between the character and the reader that I think is hampering the scene. The reader is now looking at this character, looking at something else. Everything written is from the MC's perspective. So, if you want the reader to feel like the MC is stuck looking at it, I think it is more effective for the prose to dwell on it. Try: Her aura twisted. Shifting patterns of blue and red were stained green by the spell. A tentacle of vampiric energy, black as night, wormed through the inner shell, sucking the light and leaving dark spaces that twisted like a whirlpool. (then on a later draft I'd kill the repetition of the word "twisted" because it is ugly) ^now the reader is experiencing what the character is--they are both staring at an aura. Try: Their eyes bored into mine. Try: I sucked cold air through the gap where a tooth had been. ^ now the reader is feeling the cold air with the character, instead of looking at him feeling it. When you move in this close, you can put thoughts directly into the exposition, to show his feelings. Try: I sucked cold air through the gap where a tooth had been. I used to be so pretty.
Also, when it comes to feelings, it isn't always the case that you are trying to get the reader to feel the same thing the character is feeling. Sometimes, sure, but that's hard to control. I think the better target is to give the reader an emotional experience. So if a character is lustful, you don't have to make the reader horny. Maybe the reader can be melancholy or wistful. Maybe a character is murdering the villain with a hammer in blind rage. The reader might be disgusted or interested or satisfied. Maybe the character is hurt and frustrated, and the reader feels sympathy or hope or anger. It's hard to control that, but if you put the reader there, with the character, hopefully they will feel something. If they like what you make them feel, then they will like the story.
I think I'm beginning to understand it. The key is instead of having the POV character come off as reporting the event, have the readers experience it through the MC. I slammed the door, the vibration causing the picture on the wall to fall This is a bad example. I slammed the door, breathed heavily as I ignored the crashing behind me. This is somewhat better, right? As far as experiencing what someone is seeing, hearing, or doing, the same concept applies? I heard Gregreo cough and he lifted his drink. "Excuse me, swallowed the wrong way." Gregreo coughed, a heavy glass dragged along the table. "Excuse me, swallowed the wrong way." Which of these are better?
