Connecting With Your Reader's Emotions
We’ve all read a book or story that captured our hearts and made us feel things very deeply. It’s a superpower writers have, but it isn’t something we’re born with.
Connecting with your reader’s emotion happens when you’ve practiced writing. It becomes easier after each rough draft, each great draft, and each terrible draft.
But—if you want to save yourself some time, these are a few perspectives you can use to sharpen your writing tools.
1. Display Your Protagonist’s Inner Emotions
Your readers want to experience a character’s journey by connecting with them emotionally. We pick up books to feel things while learning something or just taking a break from life.
Displaying your protagonist’s inner conflict could look something like: She saw the ghost in the hallway, which scared her.
Your reader will feel more engaged if you describe how fear makes your protagonist feel instead of them feeling fear generally: She saw the ghost in the hallway and fear shot through her body like lightning.
You don’t need tons of flowery language to make your reader feel the same things as your character. Sometimes a minor descriptor or simile can do the job.
2. Show Your Protagonist’s Feelings Through External Reactions
Emotions don’t solely exist inside our hearts and minds. We also have external reactions to them. That could be nodding in confusion, shifting uncomfortably in a chair, or bending over laughing.
“I love your laugh,” Anita said to Alice. “It makes my heart skip a beat.”
Heat spread through Alice’s cheeks as she smiled.
“Oh, you don’t mean that.”
You don’t need to mention how it feels to receive a compliment from a crush or why flattery is nice to hear. The physical reaction of blushing is something the reader can relate to and understand.
3. Make Your Reader Feel Something Your Character Doesn’t
This is a fun one. Sometimes characters have to figure something out, but the reader already knows what’s going on.
This could happen when you’re writing a horror story that is supposed to teach the reader about the joy of recognizing your own strength. The protagonist has the skills in the beginning to defeat the evil antagonist, but must reach rock bottom before cheering himself on. The whole time, the reader knows they can beat the antagonist and survive because they have the brains/strength/creativity, etc.
You could also write an enemies-to-lovers arc where it’s obvious to the reader that both characters are in love with each other long before they realize it. The reader should want them to embrace the scary feeling of falling in love, because that’s what you’re trying to teach through your story.
Consider Your Story’s Purpose
Writers have a purpose behind every story. What do you want readers to learn, consider, or experience through your own? You can use these methods of connecting with your reader’s emotions to make your plot’s purpose that much more powerful and engaging.
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