Hack Your Reader's Brain: Bring the power of brain chemistry to bear on your fiction by Jeff Gerke

Author:Jeff Gerke
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: fiction writing and neuroscience
Published: 2016-11-30T22:00:00+00:00

Exercise: Make the Oxytocin Flow

Write a scene in which an innocent is harmed. That’s the most basic way to say it. Show someone who isn’t doing anything wrong and yet becomes the victim of some negative act, some injustice, or something that wounds him. Or you could show someone wanting to be noticed and liked and is feeling vulnerable, and yet that person doesn’t receive the hoped-for response but rather something that leaves him feeling devastated.

I’m guessing you know what makes you feel empathy for someone. When I teach this material to teen writers (most of whom are female) and I tell that story about the little boy dying of cancer and his father hiding his grief to give the boy a last fun day at the zoo, an audible “Awww!” sweeps the auditorium. That’s the sound of oxytocin, the sound of empathy.

What makes you say, “Awww”?

Write a scene that would do that to you, and you can know without doubt that your reader will instantly engage with that hurting character.

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