SFRB Recommends #79: The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass #writing #craft

While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you.

Topics covered include:

• emotional modes of writing
• beyond showing versus telling
• your story's emotional world
• moral stakes
• connecting the inner and outer journeys
• plot as emotional opportunities
• invoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language
• cascading change
• story as emotional mirror
• positive spirit and magnanimous writing
• the hidden current that makes stories move

Readers remember books that make them feel. A good romance novel needs to make sure it evokes the right feelings at the right points in the story. How do you make the HEA satisfying? How do you convince the reader that the leads love each other?

Maass goes through many different techniques to up the emotional punch of a scene, character, or overall plot. Some may apply more to your work than others. There are enough of said techniques, though, that most writers should be able to find some effective.

This recommendation by Lee Koven.