emotional (heart of the story)

[huxley]

I think I'm lacking the emotional aspect in most of the stuff I write.

I can come up with good plot driven stories, but I know I need to learn how to write emotional stories (the heart of the story)

any helpful suggestions or just comments?



what I'm talking about is stuff like : character arcs, or connections between chracters , drama. characters that are stranges then fall in love. more a character based story. I write more plot driven stories.


but I want to learn how to write drama character driven stories. I need to practice that. any suggestions or comments?



I want to improve the emotional layer of my stories. I need to learn how to do that. so , I need to start reading stories that have aspects like that. Learn by observing. Stories that touch the heart.

[Bruin]

Hi Huxley,

In my (somewhat limited) experience the stories that touch the heart and by their very nature are ones which are easy to reflect on and learn from are the ones that happen to you.

When I was much younger the stories that I penned were very much black and white, wham, bam and thank you mam items. As time has passed however I've (as have we all) experienced "stories" in our own lives. From a personal and self indulgent view I've had to "deal" with my Mum who is now in the final stages of Alzheimers and a divorce which to be honest I probably helped bring about. As I've said in another thread my life is generally very good but it's these "bad" experiences which have definitely given me food for thought and my writing (I hope) a deeper and more emotional side.

Hope that this helps.

[magician2magici]

hello huxley , how are you ?

well , imight not of great help here , but i'll try to give you some of my limited experience..

first of all you must decide one important fact , your story is fantasy one or not ? it's so important , as for my point of view , stories like these ones don't need so deeply relations , or so complicated ones like at romantic ones..

from what i read , i understand that you face soem trouble , well , for me i do simple thing that really help me..

the story consists of characters , bad ones , good ones , each are subdevided into small groups , friends for each . here you must stop..

for you , you have to know each character age , shape , background , then from this point you strart to make relations , not only love , also friendship relations , hatred relations , normal relations , parents and family relations..

when you catch this part so well , you will see a deeper world inside your story , as if you noticed , all of these are away from fantasy , here comes your rule trying to mix everything up..

for love relations , you shouldn't use direct straight way , you can make the two lovers always argue each other , but at dangers they defend each other even to death , also some scenes of jeolousy may add good taste to the meal , lol..

well i guess i talked alot , which means so many mistakes in the language , sorry for any of them ..

i hope you good luck at this way..

salam>>
el-saher..

[The Curious Orange]

Easy answer: It depends.

Take Robin Hobb's Assassin Trilogy. I cried at the end of Assassin's Quest. Seriously, that is one emotional book. Hobb makes you love those characters and then breaks your heart.

If you want to write stuff that affects your reader like than, then yes, you do need to know how to write character and drama. If my writing has a tenth of the emotional impact that Hobb's does, I'll consider it a success.

But then there are a thousand fantasy epics populated by wafer-thin cyphers. These stories are about events and plots. Fully-rounded characters are not necessary here.

[flynx]

On another site I was recently asked, out of the blue, if a story that I had posted could be used in a print anthology. Obviously I said yes, even though there was only a nominal fee of $10 (it was for a fund raising project.)
Previously, another story had been requested from me to be used in a very similar project, but I missed the deadline for giving permissions and details etc, although I did write the cover blurb for that one.
The main thing about both those stories was that they were about people rather than events. How they thought and reacted, their motivations, their fears and fancies. (not a great deal of plot in either but they were short stories)
So if you're writing about head over heels love then concentrate a little more on how each person feels and thinks, rather than what they do. In general most people have to carry on with their lives whatever emotional involvement they're going through, but that involvement often affects their routines in daily life. And these entanglements will certainly affect whatever plot you're driving through.

So for character involvement you have to look at each character's motives and emotions as they are affected by the plot and circumstances.

Ordinarily this is what we call character development. It's nothing unusual and it draws your reader into sympathy, disgust, love and ambivalence about why things are happening and especially to whom they're happening.

Go into their heads. (but not at the expense of plot.)

[LloB1]

hi Huxley

I dont know if you have been doing this already but what i suggest is that you have characters with varying beliefs and ways of thinking or similarities between each other. For example your main character 'Z' could be misunderstood or not listened to because of the powers they hold or because they lost a parent when they were younger. They have a close friend, 'Y' who can sympathise with this because they too have lost someone close or have powers they are keeping secret from everyone else.
Then you have another character 'X' who dislikes your main character 'Z' because he/she feels they are using this loss to gain affection or attention. Character 'Y' disagrees with the way 'X' is treating his friend 'Z' and he challenges 'X'
As you can see already you have many emotions you could conjour up in this scenario. feelings of sadness, lonliness, acceptance, hate, anger, comradeship. The list goes on. Its up to you to weave the majic in between.