In a post on Writers in the Storm, Lisa Wilson-Hall offers her perspective on writing your character’s emotions. Interesting, Wilson-Hall says emotions serve three purposes – to inform, protect, and warn – and that we can use those purposes to write what our characters are feeling and to dive deep into why your characters feels and acts as they do.
There are a number of challenges to creating authentic emotion on the page. First, we have to understand our own and second, we have to understand our character’s. Further, emotions aren’t logical or well-ordered, and sometimes they can’t be trusted.
Wilson-Hall imagines emotions as a meeting of your character’s various minds – the aspects of your character that developed in childhood, their teen years, etc. “They have all survived/lived through/experienced something that caused high emotions,” she says. “Each of those kids has a concern. And when that concern is raised will propose the solution that saw them through. Because remember, the purpose of emotions is to inform, to protect, to warn.”
One aspect of your character’s emotional personality might worry about money and security, another about physical safety, and yet another about appearances and reputation. All of their concerns are valid, but not every one can win out in every situation. In fact, they might come into direct conflict with one another, creating an avenue for you to portray rich internal conflict in your character.
To experiment with this idea, find an emotional high point in your story and decide which parts of your character’s psyche have come to help. What are their concerns and solutions? Which voice is the strongest and which wins this scene? If your character ignores the concerns of one part of her emotional committee, that emotion isn’t going to simply vanish. It’ll keep nagging until it gets the attention it craves.
Wilson-Hall also suggests some questions to ask yourself as you expand on this exercise, and some additional resources.
