When we have emotions, they are accompanied by a range of mental and physical feelings. As authors, we should try to explore all the feelings (even the bad ones) in order to inform our writing and ensure it really reflects reality as closely as possible.

By becoming skilled at translating our own feelings into words that our characters experience, they feel more genuine and real.

Analysing and naming feelings

The first stage is to try to identify each feeling and emotion as exactly as possible.

At a most basic level, you could say that each feeling is good, bad, or neutral. But of course, each of these types can be split into many different variations of emotion, which don’t all sit on a flat sliding scale.

For example, under good we might have: happiness, joy, delight, relaxation, contentment, excitement and anticipation.

Under bad, we might have: sadness, anger, frustration, impatience, depression, discontent, irritation and rage.

Try to label your feelings as accurately as you can as a first stage of identifying the range of emotions and their tones.

Investigating the feeling tone

Once you have started identifying the vast range of emotions in your palette, you can start to look at them more closely in order to notice the tone and physical feelings associated with them. The more you do this the better you get at it and the more detail you notice, which you can then use to inform your writing.

Here are some examples:

Anger

 

Anger is energetic and speedy. It’s hot and explosive and doesn’t pause for thought. It makes you feel tense

and hot. Your heart and breath speed up to feed the energy usage. It often comes with a tightness in the chest.

Next time you’re angry, try to step out of the anger for a moment and experience it as if you were your own character. How would you describe the feeling to a reader? Which part of your body can you feel the strongest? How does it feel?

Delight

Delight is a particular facet of happiness that has an innocent, childlike quality to it. It is usually caused by outside stimulus and leaves us feeling light and buoyant. Our faces feel relaxed and ready to smile and our lungs fill with delicious air. We can feel giddy and lost in the moment and sometimes we might feel like the barriers between us and the rest of the world are not as thick and certain as they usually are.

Next time you feel delighted, try to identify the sensations in your body and mind that make up such a feeling. Notice how your relationship to the world around you changes.

Emptiness

Emptiness is a dark, grey feeling which is hollow and heavy at the same time. We lack energy, and everything seems pointless. Our limbs feel thick and clumsy. Sometimes we may feel unsteady, ungrounded. Our minds feel fuzzy, our thoughts trying to move through thick liquid. Emptiness often feels like it will last forever.

Next time you feel emptiness, try to analyse what makes it ‘emptiness’ and also how the feeling evolves. What immediately preceded the feeling of emptiness – did it come on suddenly or gradually? What happens as the feeling leaves?

Summary

By getting to know our own emotions and feelings and how the sensations affect us both physically and mentally, we expand our toolbox and prose writing depth and range. Bring your characters to life with descriptions of their feelings that really resonate with the reader, because they have their basis in real experience.

As the title suggests, this is the second part of an article about first lines in popular novels. You’ll probably want to take a look at the first article to check out the first lines we’ll be looking at, and see the general conclusions we’ve drawn so far.

In this article we’re going to look at the first line of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1870), Charles Dickens

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The first thing that strikes me about this first line is that it’s so long. These days you would be extremely unlikely to see any sentence that long, let alone a first line. I mean, it’s an entire paragraph. The first phrase is interesting and intriguing, but in my opinion it would be far stronger if it just stopped there. Instead it waffles on repetitively until the reader is bored, and then finally confused.

I’m sure there will be hundreds of people who will throw their hands in the air for me being so sacrilegious as to criticize the great Charles Dickens, but as far as I’m concerned, nothing should be sacred, because that can only lead to blindness. And you can say I’m simply uneducated and don’t ‘get’ it – that’s a valid opinion. Just as mine is valid.

So, I’m going to say that I think while there are strengths in this line – the juxtaposition, the strength of the opposites, something like this would never be acceptable in modern times.

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I would love to hear other people’s opinions on this.

Writing is usually a very solitary experience, and therefore writers can become quite isolated. But joining a local face-to-face writing group is one of the best things you can do as an aspiring writer.

A lot of people are reluctant to join a writing group; it seems quite daunting to meet a group of strangers and even show them your work. However, it’s well worth manning up and getting out of your comfort zone to go along to one, because there are so many benefits.

The first benefit is that of sharing our experience and learning about how other people work. It can be very enlightening to see how other people have gone through the same process as you, or alternatively, how they approach things completely differently. You can pick up useful tips on how to beat writer’s block.

The second major benefit is getting feedback on your work. Most writing groups hold critique sessions, where members read each other’s work and give feedback and comments. This input should always be given taken in a positive manner – the purpose is to be constructive and help a member improve their skills – not find fault. Receiving feedback from other writers is so much more helpful than you might imagine if you’ve never done it, and it’s infinitely more useful than getting non-writer family and friends to try to give you constructive criticism.

A third benefit is that you can find out about writing competitions, writing related events in your area and even get special offers for writing related products such as books and writing software. This beats trawling the web for hours on your own, and still not finding out about half of it.

Finally, a writing group is a great place to meet useful contacts. This is exactly the kind of place where you’ll find successful published authors, who may know people that they can introduce you to help you launchyour writing career.

So, if you’re serious about becoming an author, but haven’t yet attended a local writing group, I urge you to overcome you reluctance and try a few out!