by Kay Geiger

Created on: February 03, 2010

Human beings are emotional creatures! Our characters should also be emotional considering they are the people populating our story. We relate to others emotionally and when we pick up a book and begin to read, if we are not soon emotionally involved with the people in the book, we will discard the story for another.

In order to encourage readers to continue with our story, we need to involve their emotions. The character who suffers pain invokes our sympathy, while the character who inflicts pain makes us want to see them pay for what they are doing. When our character suffers loss, we want to cry with them. When they win we want to celebrate. In every situation in your story where emotion is involved inspect it and decide if you can make the emotion stronger. Sometimes your character has to make a choice between two things. Perhaps he must decide between something he really wants to do and something he really wants in his life. He will have to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice may be in order to have something better. Has he sold tickets to a concert he really wanted to attend in order to buy an engagement ring for his special lady? He sacrifices the concert tickets (momentary satisfaction) in order to spend a lifetime with his lady love. Be sure though, that if he sacrifices the concert tickets, you show that there is no other alternative. If your reader knows that the character has a good paying job that would allow him to attend the concert and also buy the engagement ring, they will not understand why he had to give up the concert.

Our characters must become people to us. They should feel like old friends or even enemies. If we relate to the characters in the book then we are definitely involved with them emotionally. We are hoping that the boy and girl get together, however to build the tension between them we know that there will be a misunderstanding and separation before they finally come together at the end of the story.

The building tension between the couple in our story may be mirrored by the weather – a storm building outside. This will give us the subliminal message that what is happening between our lovers has far reaching effects.

So plan your story in advance and know how your character will react emotionally in the situations he finds himself. The emotions that your character displays, will trigger emotional responses in the reader. Enhance and intensify the emotions of your character and you will engage your reader, who will care about what is happening to the character.

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