feeling, as long as it remains believable and bearable, will greatly intensify the reader's feelings - whatever they are."

As explained by Ron Rozelle, in Description and Setting, "Sometimes you'll be nudging your readers toward what you want them to feel when they read your fiction, so they can associate a feeling that they might never have experienced with one that they probably have."

Many times the reader's emotional response will mirror the character's emotions, but sometimes not. For example, a viewpoint character may enjoy torturing a victim, but the reader might be appalled. A character may enjoy a tender love scene, but the reader may be horrified because he suspects that one of the characters is a serial killer.

Orson Scott Card notes that "You can't control everything the reader feels, and no two members of your audience will ever be emotionally involved in your story exactly to the same degree. Still, there are some things you can control, and if you use them deftly, without letting them get out of hand, you can lead most of your audience to intense emotional involvement with your characters."

CONCLUSION Faith Baldwin (1893-1978), in an article reprinted in The Writer (March 2008), summed up the value of emotion: "The quality in a book or story that most impresses and interests me as a reader is sincere emotion." She also observed that, "Any book or story worth the paper it's printed on must have genuine emotion, communicated by the writer to the character and by the character to the reader."

Emotion is one of eleven fiction-writing modes, arranged below in order of the anagram D-A-N-C-E S-I-S-T-E-R:

* DESCRIPTION is the mode by which people, things, or concepts are described.

* ACTION is the mode of describing things happening, in detail, as they happen.

* NARRATION is the mode by which the narrator addresses the reader.

* CONVERSATION is the mode of presenting characters talking.

* EXPOSITION is the mode of conveying information.

* SUMMARIZATION is the mode of restating or recapitulating actions or events.

* INTROSPECTION is the mode of conveying a character's thinking.

* SENSATION is the mode of presenting the five senses, or maybe even six.

* TRANSITION is the mode of moving from one place, time, or character to another.

* EMOTION is the mode of conveying how a character feels.

* RECOLLECTION is the mode of describing a character recalling something.

Find more articles about fiction-writing modes by searching with the modes as key words.

Learn more about this author, Mike Klaassen.
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