Lit Hub shares an excerpt from Leonard Mlodinow’s new book, Emotionial: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking. In the excerpt, Mlodinow suggests that certain emotional reactions developed only after early humans became more social and in fact, contributed to our development as a species. These “social emotions” – guilt, shame, jealousy, indignation, gratitude, admiration, empathy, and pride – arise when humans are in closer proximity and rely on each other to abide by social norms.
“Indignation, for example, often arises when one observes a person transgressing social norms,” Mlodinow writes. “Gratitude and admiration arise when we experience someone fulfilling or exceeding them.”
Read the excerpt and consider how you can use this background knowledge in your writing. Naturally, your characters’ emotions and emotional reactions will help drive your plot. But how can this theory enhance your character web? How do your characters rely on these social emotions to get what they want? How necessary are these emotions to your character ecosystem? If you remove jealousy or shame, what would change about the ways your characters behave and interact?
