Practical Emotional Structure: an easy to understand plain-English guide to emotional theory and the transformational character arc (Plain-English Writing Guides) by Jodi Henley

Author:Jodi Henley
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2013-12-09T18:30:00+00:00

Part 7: Emotional Arcs and thru-lines

What is the difference between an emotional hook and emotional structure?

A narrative hook is that one line/one page/one paragraph piece that goes at the beginning of your novel to hook your reader and intrigue her enough to make her keep reading. An emotional hook is the feeling you create to keep her emotionally invested in your book “and” reading past the first page.

What “are” emotions and how do they work?

Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano suggest that emotions are influenced and caused by events which in turn mess with your attitudes and behaviors. It’s called effective events theory.

Something needs to happen to trigger an emotion and your characters need to react to it. There is no such thing as a non-reactionary character. Everyone reacts. People don’t just—out of the blue—do something totally random that isn’t connected to something else, at some level, even if it’s buried in subconscious motivation. In other words—it’s the stuff that should go into your manuscript before your editor hits it with “So how does she feel about that?” How “does” your character feel about it, and why should we give a damn? If he or she is unsympathetic, is there a reason we shouldn’t just chuck your manuscript across the room?

In a movie like The Big Sleep there are lots of unsympathetic characters. Some of them, like Marlowe and Vivian, are largely closed off. Others, like Geiger, are simply bad. When Geiger is killed taking advantage of a drugged out nymphomaniac it's good riddance to bad rubbish—and that's the key.

The Big Sleep isn't Casablanca in the same way Oprah isn't The Maury Show. What people feel and the investment they sink into watching Oprah isn't the astounded, appalled, and totally fascinated butt-in-chair involvement of someone who makes groaning noises, widens her eyes and screams, “Oh no you didn’t!” at “My Baby's Daddy Just had a Sex Change and Refuses to be a Mommy to Our Child.”

The Maury Show is a guilty pleasure, but if I watch even two minutes of “The DNA test results show Rory, you ARE the father!” It’s a good bet that I'll still be sitting there fifty minutes later wondering what happened, which goes right back to emotional hooks.

Everyone in The Big Sleep reacts to story events—Vivian taking care of her sister after Marlowe finds her, Marlowe by being racked with guilt after Canino poisons Harry Jones. And I watch because I'm emotionally hooked. There's a lot to be said for the part of me that loves to gossip and turns to look at accidents. Carmen is a drug addict, involved in a pornography ring as an unwilling dupe or is she?? Why does the butler get all up in Marlowe's face? And why does Lundgren take care of Geiger's body? Is it what I think it is? Oh no, he DIDN’T!!

As long as the character's story emotions are true to the story (in Janet's case, what she's trying to prove, or her belief that she's

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