(The sound of a pen scratching.) LOGO.
Hellooo everybody! The hardbacks and paperbacks for The Savior’s Sister are officially available for presale!
Right now! A lot of you have been asking how you
can pre-order physical copies, and now you can do
just that! All the links are in the description below!
Pre-order it, I support you! On a similar note,
everyone who pre-orders any version of The Savior's Sister, whether it's ebook,
paperback, or hardback, is welcome
to enter my presale giveaway. I am handing out over thirty-five (35) prizes! One of those prizes is a
signed hardback of Divinity Falling by Nour Zikra. If you're not familiar with
Nour, she is a fellow fantasy writer and YouTuber.
You should DEFINITELY check her out! I have her information
linked below. Not only is she super talented, but she's literally one of the
nicest people I've ever met in my entire life!
And that's a fact! Someone is walking away with her debut novel Divinity
Falling at the end of this video, so stay tuned!
First, I am tackling one of your most popular requests, and that is how to
evoke emotion through your writing. Evoking emotion is one of the most
important things an author can do, because it keeps your audience reading.
If they don't feel anything, they're gonna get bored, and if they're
bored, they're gonna put the book down. Not only have you guys been requesting
this topic, it was also requested by one of my patrons over on Patreon,
Matt Hollon. Matt is an amazing guy, he is also one of my beta readers for TSS,
and just one of my favorite people overall. He wanted to learn more about
how to write emotional scenes without laying it on too
thick. I've covered this in the past, but I have a TON
more to say on the topic. So much so, that I have way too much information to
fit into one video. So we're gonna make a few! Today I'm
breaking down my first ten (10) tips for evoking emotion through your writing.
We'll cover the rest of ‘em another time. And if you want to hear more of my
writing tips, or if you just want to enjoy my beautiful face,
subscribe to my channel and ring that bell! Because I said so, damn it.
Tip Number One (1): Show, don't tell. Bet you saw this coming!
There are definitely places where telling in fiction is perfectly
acceptable, but when it comes to the emotional shit,
it ain't gonna work. If you simply tell the reader, “she was mad,”
that's gonna do nothing for ‘em. A much better option is to show the character's
anger. If you state, “the moment was sad,” the
reader is going to feel nothing. But if you convey the sadness through
tone, pacing, and dialogue, it's going to have a much more evocative
effect. Most of the points on this list are essentially different ways to show
the emotion as opposed to telling the emotion,
because showing has a much more transportive effect on the reader.
Number Two (2): Use the five senses. One of the easiest tricks to show as opposed to
tell is to rely on your five senses. The reason the five senses work is
because one (1), most of us have ‘em, so they're super relatable,
and two (2), our senses are deeply tied to emotion. Look at the sense of touch.
If your character is touching something soft and silky,
this can create feelings of comfort, tranquility, or
sexiness. If your character is touching something sharp and jagged,
this can create feelings of fear or worry. The taste of salt can be panic
inducing, if you are licking sweat off of your
lips during a gruelling battle. But the same exact taste could be super arousing
if you're licking the rippling abs of a man you're about to bone.
Consider the five senses as a shortcut to tugging at your reader's heartstrings...
or horny strings. Number Three (3): Nix filter words.
Filter words are words that filter the reader's experience
through the main character. Feel, heard, saw,
realized, wondered, thought - all of these are filter words.
Like all words, there is a time and place for them, but nine times out of ten,
filter words are gonna distance readers from the emotion of the story.
They remind the reader that they're reading as opposed to experiencing the
story firsthand, and you don't want that. You want them to feel as though
they are living the story through the character.
Eliminating filter words is easy once you learn how to recognize them.
For example, the sentence, “She heard the crash of thunder in the distance,”
can be rewritten as, “Thunder crashed in the distance.”
Simple, effective. Number Four (4): Speak through the character.
I recently read a book that followed a woman who had been kidnapped and
shackled to a bed. In the exact moment she realized she was
being held against her will, she looked out the window and paused to
muse about the weather and how it would be a perfect day for gardening.
I was instantly sucked out of the scene and all emotion from the moment
completely disappeared. What the author did was
fail to speak through the character. Sure, the character was the one who was
supposed to be talking in theory, but it was very clear that we were
getting the author's thoughts in that moment.
Why? Because no one who's discovered they've been kidnapped is gonna muse
about gardening. They're gonna be afraid, or shocked, or
confused. There are a ton of emotions they could be experiencing.
Serene wonder over tomato plants is not one of ‘em.
Never lose sight of the fact that this is not only your story, it's the
character’s story. And if you convey how they'd realistically feel in that moment,
it'll be a lot easier for the reader to emotionally connect to them.
Number Five (5): Keep it moving. The longer you stay in the same moment, the less
impactful it'll be. That's not to say that you should keep
all scenes short and sweet, give ‘em the attention they deserve,
just don't stay there forever. Think of it this way:
we all know a person who cries over everything. If they get a bad grade,
they cry. If they watch a movie, they cry. If they see a baby, they cry. It's their
prerogative to express their emotions however they like, but the fact is since
they're constantly crying, we become numb to it. We are so used to
that reaction that it stops having an impact on us.
It's the same in fiction. If your main character is in the same exact scene
featuring the same exact emotion for chapters upon chapters,
the reader's gonna get over it. They can only sit on the edge of their seat or
mourn the character for so long, and the emotion is gonna stop
feeling real and start feeling melodramatic.
Number Six (6): Vary the emotion. Just like my previous example with the person who
always cries, if your character is always scared
or always sad, it's gonna lose impact. Your reader is going to become numb to
the emotion, it's gonna feel overdone and melodramatic, but most importantly
it's gonna feel unrealistic. Human beings are complex! We experience a wide range
of emotions every day, and the odds are your character should
do the same. The easiest way to achieve this is to constantly put your character
in new situations or expose them to different stimuli
that will affect them in different ways emotionally. This will make the reader
feel a variety of emotions alongside the character, and it will eliminate - or at
least decrease - the presence of melodrama.
Number Seven (7): Dialogue. A lot of people here use
dialogue to convey emotion, and then have their character explicitly
state how they feel. This may work sometimes, but how often do
you get into an argument with a person where they evenly state, “I am angry for
the following reasons.” I fucking wish, right? Emotion is often
verbalized through tone of voice, the flow of our sentences,
word choice, and sentence length. If someone is extremely excited,
they may ramble on and on with hardly any pauses.
If they're angry, they may swear or yell. If they're nervous, their speaking
may be fragmented or disjointed. These are all clear signs of how a character
is feeling, which will create a visceral reaction in your reader.
Number Eight (8): Body language. Body language is one of the easiest ways to convey
emotion. It's also one of the easiest writing
tools to forget. If a character is feeling skeptical, they can raise an
eyebrow. If they're feeling petulant, they can pout.
If they're sad, they can stare at the floor. If they're nervous,
they can fiddle with their clothing. If they're angry, they can ball their hands
into fists. All of these actions create a very
distinct visual, and these visuals are a lot more
impactful than simply stating, “He was sad.” “He was nervous.” “He was angry.”
Pay attention to how your character's emotions manifest in their body, and it
will take your writing to the next level! Number Nine (9): Pacing. Pacing can have a
huge effect on the emotion of a scene, provided you use it correctly. A faster
pace - which typically constitutes shorter sentences - creates a sense of
urgency, whereas a slower pace - which is usually
made up of longer sentences - creates a feeling of slowness. This means
if you're writing a fight scene, you'll probably rely heavily on shorter
sentences, whereas if you're writing a thoughtful
conversation between two characters, you might be using longer sentences.
Please don't automatically assume that a slower pace equates to boring.
There are plenty of situations where a slower pace is preferred.
A perfect example is a kiss scene. You want the pace to be slow, because the
character, and thus the reader, is savoring every
sensation. Know the emotion you want to convey in a
scene and pace it accordingly. And last for now, Number Ten (10): Word choice.
Word choice will absolutely make or break the emotional tone of your story,
because words themselves carry a shit ton of emotion.
I've talked in the past about powerful verbs and this is where the idea
comes from. Certain verbs pack more of an emotional punch than others.
For example, a character could wave their arms, or they could thrash,
or they could flail. These verbs are essentially synonyms, yet they each
carry their own visual and emotion. Waving your arms could mean a lot of
things - maybe you're dancing, or waving hello.
On the flip side, thrash implies fear, danger,
or panic. There's an undertone of violence. Make sure you're using the
words that best convey the emotion for that moment. Otherwise, readers are
going to be pulled out of the story because the words aren't meshing with
the tone. So that's all I got for you today! I'll
hit you with the rest of my tips for evoking emotion some other time.
Right now, we got prizes to hand out! One lucky winner of my TSS presale giveaway
is walking away with a signed hardback of Divinity Falling
by Nour Zikra, and the winner is... this person! A huge thank you for
pre-ordering TSS and supporting my presale! It means
the world to me! And a huge thank you to Nour for participating in my giveaway
and donating a copy of her book! She is ABSOLUTELY amazing! If you'd like
the chance to win one of over thirty-five (35) prizes, it's not too late
to enter. Pre-order TSS right now and enter my giveaway!
You can get it in ebook! You can get it in paperback! You can get it in hardback!
And it's available all over the place. I have the links
listed below. Thank you to Matt for requesting today's topic! If you'd like
a chance to have a video dedicated to you, or if you want access to tons of
other rewards, check me out on Patreon! We've got our
own exclusive writing group, you get early access to videos, there's a monthly
live-stream, there's signed merch. It's awesome! Check it out!
Don't forget to subscribe to my channel! I post new videos on Wednesdays, and if
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Bye! (Male Voice) You've read Tobias’s story. Now, it's time for Leila’s. The Savior’s
Sister, coming soon...