Emotional Punch in Your Writing--Why Setting and Show-Don't-Tell Deliver Emotion

A memoirist in my writing workshop was refining a passage in her story about the effect of her father's early death on the family. She wanted this passage to be especially impactful for the reader--convey the emotion of this difficult day.

After her father dies, she is in the kitchen with her aunt, watching breakfast cleanup and trying to absorb the grief that's descended on everything. "It's a really important moment in my story," the writer pointed out to us, "so why do I feel like I'm writing it from another room?"

Since the passage wasn't delivering the emotional punch she wanted, we started analyzing her description of her aunt that morning. "Well, her hair was messy, her clothes didn't match, and she picked at her fingernails while we ate breakfast," the writer said.

Our class agreed these were good details to describe the upsetting moment, and they were specific. But we were still not getting the impact of grief. It wasn't a "felt" emotion, only a thought. The writer wasn't yet putting us in the container of the story.

"Is it because you're telling us about her," one student asked, "and you need to show us?"

For a Reader, Emotion Comes from Demonstration, Not Description

Showing and telling are familiar terms to many writers. But what do they exactly mean? The writer in my class selected a key emotional moment to demonstrate the family falling apart. She felt the bewildered grief because she had been there, watching. But we didn't, as readers.

That meant that she hadn't yet succeeded in demonstrating the emotion. She'd only described it.

I asked this memoirist to close her eyes and put herself back into that scene, if she could. What did she notice, what small details came forward now? "Watch your aunt move around the room," I suggested. "Is she cleaning up from breakfast? What do you notice--smells? sounds? anything odd that stands out?"

Setting Details--Small but Essential Transmitters of Emotion

The writer jotted down four things:

A rotten smell came from the garbage can.

Her aunt's lilac sweater is buttoned funny, and she was usually the fashion example in the family.

Her aunt's hands shook--they were so unsteady she dropped a glass in the sink.

She didn't clean up the broken pieces.

The writer looked up from her page. There were tears in her eyes from that final image of the broken pieces of glass in the sink.

I asked her why.

She said the glass pieces remained in the sink all morning--and sun from the window made them sparkle enough to catch the attention of anyone coming into the room. But nobody did anything. It was a touchstone for her from the emotion of the day, one she'd forgotten until now. It demonstrated the disorientation the family felt.

Bingo. She got it. She rewrote the scene and it sang.

We all felt the emotion now.

This bit of "shown" story--via a setting detail--transmitted (demonstrated) the emotion of grief and loss directly into the hearts and minds of her readers. She'd been unsuccessful with description, but demonstration succeeded.

This Week's Writing Exercise

Read a passage of your writing where you want to convey emotion, where you want a punch. Now close your eyes and put yourself in the scene (if writing fiction, imagine your character in the scene). What setting details, tiny ones especially, do you notice? What smells or sounds?

Make a list, as the writer above did. Add one to your passage. See if it helps! Let me know.

Necessary Boredom--Why Nonstop Rainy Days Actually Help Creativity

Dorothy Allison is the author of Bastard Out of Carolina and many other novels and short stories. Unusual in someone who has had a very dramatic and traumatic life, Allison spoke in an interview about "necessary boredom." If it's present, she has enough intensity in her head for writing.

As I thought about this, I realized the truth of it: when I have too much going on in my outer life, there's no internal space to dream. My writing process suffers.

Writing process asks you to put aside the tendency toward drama in your outer life and put it into those pages. Writing is a priority in your life, you are committed to starting/finishing your book, and you are able to disengage from the outer drama enough to find the inner stillness to capture original ideas.

Lately, I have had to work hard to find this inner stillness. In the past month I got married at my home with 70 guests present, my family began packing to move to another state, my teenager graduated and is preparing for a month-long cross-country trip, I squeezed in a visit to see my elderly mom, and I helped open a cabin belonging to my family. Exhausting just to write about! And that's not counting normal work--teaching writing classes and coaching writers each week. Where, I've wondered, is there time for necessary boredom?

Schedules help. As much as they hamper the creative flow for me, they also create space for it. I sat with my family and went over schedules. We blocked in time for doing nothing. Sounds strange, backward, but it worked. Each family member got nothing time, alone in the house if possible, or alone at the fun places he or she likes best. We're all creative people. We all needed this necessary boredom.

The rain helped too. New England has had rain 19 out of 21 days in June, and many are experiencing what the New York Times called "rain rage" but I took it as a sign from the Universe that necessary boredom was being fostered.

Today's my morning. As soon as I post this blog, I'm taking myself into a spare bedroom with books and journals and ideas. I'm sitting and staring, getting bored with myself and my life. Out of it, I hope ideas will come. I'll be there to write them down.

This week's exercise: get bored. Stop running the wheel for two seconds and do nothing. Schedule it if you have to, as I did. Let yourself slow, slow, slow down enough to where the original thoughts begin to surface. Where you let go of all those other people's voices and begin to hear your own.

Self-Assignments and the Writer's Notebook

Years ago, I read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and got the idea of self-assignments, based on writing prompts or seed ideas. These "freewrites" are simply set-aside moments when you write about something, anything, and stir up the creative juices. In book-writing, freewrites are where the "inner story" comes from--the theme, meaning, subtler levels, unconscious connections that delight both reader and writer as they emerge onto the page.

My self-assigned daily freewrites came out a bit self-conscious when typed on the computer. When I read in another writing guide about having a writer's notebook to scribble notes and ideas, I decided to use it for my freewrites.

I lived in France, so I became addicted to Claire-Fontaine's graph-paper-paged notebooks, spiral bound and thick, with bright colored covers. At Prisunic in Paris they cost less than $2.00. I would buy them by the dozen and load my suitcase on the way home to the U.S. Now they're available on Claire-Fontaine's website, although they cost more than $2.00 each. I'd date the beginning page, paste in photos or sketches, make lists of topic/island ideas for my book, craft the openings of short stories or essays. Each week I read over my notes and typed the most interesting ones into the computer.

Begin a New Notebook for Each Book Project

I began a new notebook whenever I started writing a new book. When the notebook was filled, I combed through its pages once more, then shelved it. Often, months or years later, I'd remember something neglected in its pages and I could retrieve a passage I liked for a story or chapter that needed a hole filled.

My daily self-assignments came from the lists I kept going in the current notebook. When I finished the notebook, I photocopied the lists and pasted them into the new notebook. The lists became the front or end pages, easily located.

Why Have a Writer's Notebook?

The muse speaks at unexpected moments. How do you capture her ideas, which can disappear as fast as a dream on a busy morning? You take notes.

I'd love to take a survey of published writers, since I know many have these writer's notebooks. One colleague said it was the main way she scribes her interior landscape. If the muse begins to funnel ideas and there's no place to get them written down, over time the ideas stop coming.

I've learned that by making myself available to the muse, the inner vision, more ideas come. It's as if I'm forging an agreement. You give me the idea, I promise to pay attention.

This week's assignment: Get yourself a writing notebook. Claire-Fontaine or thrift store or local bookstore, small or large, spiral or perfect bound or loose-leaf pages, lined or plain. Enjoy the process of finding one. Write the date on the first page, then spend 10 minutes starting an "idea" list of topics you're interested in writing about someday. Create this list on the first or last page of your notebook. Practice this week carrying the notebook around and scribbling down ideas whenever they come.

How to Balance Structure and Exploration in Your Book Writing Process

I've just spent a few intense days reading the galleys for my upcoming novel, Qualities of Light, which will be published this summer. My editor is wonderful, and I love how the book has come together.

I began it almost nine years ago with a short story about a complicated family of artists who live on a lake in the Adirondack mountains. Through many twists and turns, dozens of rewrites and moving over half the manuscript to be in another book, I finally got my story. Who was telling it, what it was really about.

Now that it's going to be published, I'm working on its sequel. These characters won't leave me alone, and that's a good thing. But it's as if I've forgotten everything I learned on Qualities of Light. I'm once again agonizing over that balance beam a novelist--and any book writer--must walk between structure and exploration.

When Exploration Starts a Book

When you begin a new book, you enter via one of two doorways. If you start via exploration, it feels like an expansion inside. You're following a winding river, not sure where it's going to lead.

You get a direction, a glimmer of light, and you follow it. You may overhear a snippet of conversation and it intrigues you. Ideas float into your writer's vision. You're pulled into these ideas, and they take you somewhere. One writer said, "It leads to a moment. I write to that moment."

Writing a book from this doorway is expansive and playful. You may wonder, Am I really writing a book? (Or, Am I really a writer? Both worries surface for me, with each book I start from exploration.) But the gathering of images and words on paper is too much fun to stop. It brings you insights, it can change your life. You may also look as many book writers do--distracted. A conversation in your head is occupying most of your attention and nobody else can hear it.

But there's a point when you start to lose your way. Writing expansively is fun, but it just creates more and more ideas. Eventually, you need to structure them. You need to get serious, as one of my teachers would say. Fish or cut bait.

How do you do that? Coming from exploration, you use tools like outlines, storyboards, and character/plot lines--the structuring place where some writers begin.

How Structure Begins a Book

I began some books (the two novels mentioned above) from exploration. My nonfiction books were all begun from structure. I had an idea, yes, but I outlined or storyboarded it immediately. The structure formed the book-writing journey.

Structures are reassuring to many writers. They create the outline and it's like a good map--or so they feel at the beginning. Structures can take you far. But most structures only represent part of a book: the plot, the action, the outer thread of the story. To get deep into character, emotional truth, insights that surprise both you and the reader, you have to go back to exploration.

Moving from structure into exploration is a wild ride, especially for very linear thinkers. I recognize these writers (I are one!) when they come to my class, outline tightly in hand, and refuse to deviate from what they've already decided. No matter that their book hasn't sold, that agents or editors have told them "it needs depth" or "it's a bit dry." Exploration would give them exactly that depth and juice, but it's too scary.

I learned this when I fell into fiction. I learned how to explore. Because much of the good stuff came from places I'd never been as a writer.

The goal? Balancing these two. Exploration writers move to structure, to get their books grounded in form that a reader can follow. Structure writers explore, to give their stories juice and energy. It's a lovely dance. If you're feeling stuck, it may be because you're not welcoming the other part of the process.

Writing Exercise for This Week

This week's exercise asks you to freewrite for 20 minutes about where you are with your book or your writing in general. What are you craving right now? Do you long for wild rides or more sense of direction? What's your next step--more exploration or more structure?

Toggling between the Arts--Refresh Your Writer Mind

Do you pursue more than one art form? How does it help your writing? Are you toggling between the arts to good effect?

Most days, I write. But when the writing dries up, when my chapters feel old and tired, I switch to painting. Susan Hodara from the New York Times interviewed me about my artistic multi-tasking--click on the link at top of right column above my photo to read it. I'm certainly not alone.

Joni Mitchell was a painter first. Steven King plays in a band. There are hundreds of other examples out there--who can you name?

Benefits of Artistic Multi-Tasking

Having another art form lets the writer mind play. Images, for me, lead to better writing. My painting feeds my books. A well-loved writing mentor told me she has dry spells that last for months. She's well published, prolific--from poems to novels to plays to even an opera. This used to worry her but no longer. She realizes a renewal time is necessary between efforts. Whenever she finishes a big writing project, publishes a book for instance, she lets her creative self lie fallow. Eventually, the ideas begin to bubble up. I often do this in summer, for one month.

When summer comes to New England where I live, when my garden bursts with iris and peony, I become slightly disinterested in my book and my painter's eye wakes up.

Another Way to Do Artist's Dates?

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, calls this "filling the well." Cameron recommends a weekly artist's date, solo, away from your work, to get renewed. I do it with my painting. Slop on some color, daydream over images for a while, and the writing ideas begin coming through again.

This week, your writing exercise is to play with color. Get out some markers, crayons, oil pastels, watercolors, collage materials. Paint your story, your book idea, your frustration, your glee with your writing process.

It only needs to take 10 minutes out of your busy schedule, and it'll pay you back many times over in renewal of creativity. See if toggling between the arts affects your writing the next time you face the page.

God--and Emotion in Your Writing--Is in the Details

Striving to get more voice, more emotion in your writing? One of my favorite nonfiction writers, Rick Bass, shares an important clue on how to do this. It goes back to the old saying, God is in the details.

"All of the smallest elements," Bass writes, "the direction of a breeze one day, a single sentence that a friend might speak to you, a raven flying across the meadow and circling back again--lay claim to you, eventually, with a cumulative power."

We're all after creating that kind of cumulative power in our writing. It's like the moment of seeing a completely developed perennial garden in full bloom--the sight of all those flowers, shapes, and scents in the summer light can take your breath. How do we get this in our writing--this synergy, this emotional effect? I think the clue is in the details, as Rick Bass suggests.

How Much Detail Is Needed?

In my writing classes, we labor over this: how to bring in the small details, not get bored with our own writing in the process, add just enough and not too much.

Most writers add too little. I think it might be born from our sped-up lives. We move so fast, it's literally hard to stop and smell the roses. But we need to, in our writing, because the reader will want this emotional punch, this moment of truth, to come through. And if the writer doesn't experience it, the reader won't either.

I'm not talking about painstaking details. One writer thought I meant this when I talked about putting in more details: "I put my hand on the doorknob, turned it slowly, pulled the door toward me, stepped over the threshold." No, it's fine just to write, "I walked into the room." But whenever you want emotional punch, effect, a moment of truth, you need to linger in detail.

Externally Felt Senses--Keys to Effective Detail in Writing

My tried-and-true way: adding senses. I can almost hear my writing classes groan. That again? Well, yes. It's vital. How many senses are used in the paragraph above, from Rick Bass? I count three. Touch (the breeze), sound (the friend's voice), and sight (the raven). It brings home the emotion, doesn't it?

This week's exercise: Pick a random page of your writing-in-progress. Make sure it's random, not your best or worst page. Count the number of times you use the senses on that page. Where do you use them--when there's need for emotional impact? When you want a message to come across? Then brainstorm a list of sense details you could add to that page.

I realize, for some of you, this will be boring, feel like too much detail. Usually if you have that reaction, you need more of it. It's been way too long since you slowed down enough to even notice the roses, much less smell them.

Make sense? Agree or disagree? I'd love to hear your thoughts and your experiences if you try this exercise.

Building Just Enough Fire in Your Story to Attract a Reader

A writer in my Loft Literary Center book-writing class was working on her memoir. She asked a really good question during the weekend workshop. "How do I keep enough personal fire or passion in my story, since it's about me? Yet not be too big a presence? If I'm there too much, interpreting and being the narrator too obviously, my reader can't connect with the story herself. It becomes a three-way conversation--not ideal."

This writer is smart. She wants to understand a very basic book-writing challenge. How do we add just enough of our own passion to ignite the story for a reader--but not hang around warming our hands on the blaze?

Have you ever read a story that had too much narrator presence? Beginning book writers often feel they must interpret for a reader--tell why something happened, give too much background, rather than let the story tell itself. It's indeed like buiding a good campfire. You get it going. It lights up the dark. The reader approaches, tentatively at first. If your fire is blazing and inviting, maybe they'll linger.

Don't stand there talking the reader's head off, telling them about what wood you used and why it's so hard to build good campfires in this particular spot. Just let them enjoy the warmth. Let them inch closer. Otherwise, you're overwriting.

Are You Overwriting?

Your job, as the author, is to feed the fire, not worry it to ashes. You let a fire blaze on its own, after it has enough oxygen, kindling, dry wood. If you keep poking it every few seconds, the blaze will probably die out. Publishers, agents, editors--and readers!--look for stories that stand alone, fiery and bright, burning without any interpretation from the author. And it's not easy to keep a fire burning. Keep your passion for your story alive but take out your desire for interpretation.

This is called "overwriting," this is when you decide the dialogue isn't enough alone--you have to tell the meaning behind it. Some examples I've read of overwriting and author interpretation (beginning students' writing--used with permission):

The trashcan smelled really bad, like a million rotted apples.
Jason's hands shook and fear raced his throat. He felt scared.
I longed to be outside, smell the trees and feel the spring air. Nature always gave me strength. I loved the great outdoors.

Can you pick out the places where the author is standing too close to the fire, talking to the reader instead of just letting the reader enjoy the story that's being woven?

Here are how these sentences could look, without the overwriting:

The trashcan smelled like a million rotted apples. (We know rotted apples smell bad--why interpret?)
Jason's hands shook and fear raced his throat. (These are already signs of being scared--why add it?)

I longed to be outside, smell the trees and feel the spring air. (We'll read further to find out why--and the action itself will demonstrate that nature gives the narrator strength. The "love of the great outdoors" is implied--no need to restate.)

This week, as an exercise to hone your fire-building skills, read two pages of your recent work. Look for any place where you restated the obvious, added more background or feeling or information just in case the reader didn't get it. Strike through those sentences and read the paragraphs without. See if you don't feel a stronger blaze.

Marrying Two Things That Don't Go Together--A Book-Writing Exercise

When I was in the deepest struggle with my novel, Qualities of Light, I took a one-day workshop from author Alison McGhee. Alison has won awards for her fiction and my favorite of her novels is called Shadow Baby. I was truly stuck in the shadows of my story, not knowing where to go next. I thought she could help.

Alison gave us a writing exercise that changed the way I look at story-making. She wrote two lists on the blackboard. One list had five people--a six-year old boy, a seventy-five-year old woman, a teenager, etc. The other list had objects--a birdcage, a water glass, a jackknife. We were to pick one item from each list and write a scene using them both.

I picked the six-year-old boy, since one of my main characters fit that age, and the jackknife. I stared at my writing notebook, hoping for magic.

I don't know much about jackknives. I know they are precious to boys, especially if they belong to someone revered. I decided I would have my character steal the jackknife that belonged to his father, a war-era relic very precious to the older man, and the jackknife would be subsequently lost. When I began writing I didn't know all this, but I trust freewriting, automatic writing, stream of consciousness, for developing scenes.

The writing time was much too short. I was literally silenced by the scene that emerged. Sammy, the six-year-old, steals the jackknife on the morning of his birthday. Molly, his older sister, is badgered into taking Sam for a dawn boat ride, even though her father has forbidden use of the ancient motorboat. Sam, leaning over the side to watch ducks, drops the knife in the lake and falls in after it, hitting his head on the boat. That accident became the "triggering event" for my story. And because the trigger happened on the lake, I could then imagine the next twist: Molly falling in love with her water-skiing best friend, even as her brother lies in a coma in the hospital. The story became her story--what she does as her family blames her and copes with their loss, whether she can accept the amazement of love in the midst of her guilt over her brother. All because of a simple writing exercise.

Qualities of Light is now being typeset and the cover designed. It's going to be published by Spinsters Ink/Bella Books in August, the same month as much of the story on Cloud Lake takes place.

I have to write Alison a thank-you note sometime, send her a copy when the novel is printed. I love her writing exercises, and I think you will too.

To try it: make yourself two lists, one of people and one of items. Marry two things that don't go together. Shake them up, see what happens. Set a timer for 20 minutes for this writing session. It's bound to be a productive one.

Your Ideal Reader--Advice from Kurt Vonnegut

My ideal reader is a confused teenage girl; she feels like an outcast because her best friend just moved to Montana and nobody understands her at school or at home.

My ideal reader is crazy about fixing old cars. He's got three in his backyard, if you could call it a backyard.

My ideal reader is forty-two, a discouraged mother and homemaker who is looking for the spark in her life that disappeared too many years ago.

My ideal reader manages an art gallery; she's fascinated with Renaissance art. She wants a new system for managing exhibits.

My ideal reader is gay, single, and loves helping others. He volunteers at hospice and soup kitchens. He really wants to learn how to balance his life, though. It's too crazy...so he thinks my book will help him.

Readers wait for your story, like a group of beautiful still life objects in an artist's studio. They wait for your attention, your interest in their particular shape and size and need. When you start thinking about them, your art changes. In a good way.

As I write this, my class of twenty-seven book writers at the Loft Literary Center is exploring this question. They are busy researching this aspect of book-writing, one they may not have ever thought about. As they ask about their readers, the answers will shape their book journey--how the chapters are structured, what is added or omitted, what benefit (take-away) they present. Why would anyone read this book? Who is this "anyone" anyway?

Write to Please One Person
Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” When I heard this writing advice as a beginning writer, I couldn’t imagine what it meant. He’s a funny guy, but I didn’t see what was funny in this. Now that I’m an experienced book author, Vonnegut’s advice makes all the sense in the world.

Many professional writers talk about this idea. Some visualize their ideal reader—maybe modeling her or him after someone they know. As they work on their book idea, they imagine asking that reader, What would you need here—more time to digest the idea or more information? More character or more plot? It’s not so far-fetched to begin this kind of dialogue. It’s, again, another guidance system to keep your book on track as it develops. You can also watch your reader’s profile change, as you discover more about what you really want to write.

Vonnegut also said (both of these quotes are from his book, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1999), “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”

This is another reason to consider a reader from the get-go. It’s unreasonable and a bit self-absorbed to think that a total stranger would take time to read your book, even if it’s fascinating to you, without being invested in its story.

This week, think about your reader. Who will read your book, who will get the most from it? Spend ten minutes describing your ideal reader--what you know about him or her, what you'd like to know.

Being Stuck--Ideas on How to Work with Your Inner Critic

A reader wrote: "I'm sure you hear this often--I'm stuck! I am great at first drafts, in fact I'm submerged in them. They never get anywhere. I found your site online and performed the "Ophra" asks exercise and it helped. I would love to attend your classes however geography does not permit. The internet may. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks so far--it worked."

Being stuck. How familiar that feeling is. Like trying to pass through a high-walled canyon. No way to travel easily.

It happens to most of us, no matter how many books we write. I've published 13, and I still run into the frustration of writer's block with every new project. The difference is: I know it's happening. I prepare for it. I have a bag of tricks.

Inner Critic
In each stage of writing your book, you’ll meet a most unsavory part of yourself: the Inner Critic. Single-handedly, the Inner Critic causes more cases of "I'm stuck!" than anything else.

Some find themselves stuck in too much structuring, too tight a focus, and the book journey loses freedom. Others are stuck in the opposite arena--too much writing and no way to organize it. As you explore and plan your book, the Critic can even help you worry that you don’t have a good enough idea--so your writing never even gets started. Later on, it will hint you are seriously lacking in the skills to pull it into a book.

And here's another one: As you write your book and form the chapters, it will convince you the draft is definitely good enough to show your best friend—right now, today! (This, of course, is a not-so-subtle sabotage attempt, made real when your friend asks about missing parts and you crumble with the realization that you have omitted half your story.)

Even as you revise, the Critic will get bored with your book's inner story, theme, pacing--those essential fine-tuning steps each book writer must implement. It will begin to say things like, "Edit out this part; all your friends and relations will shun you when they read them."

I'm at the final stages of the book journey with my novel which will be published in August. I'm still facing this Inner Critic. Now the message is: Everyone will know what your life is like, what you are! Hide now!

Writers beware. Get to know your own particular Inner Critic and how it delivers its sabotaging self-talk. Learn to feel the fear and write anyway.

Here's a first step. Write a letter to the Inner Critic. Get to know it, what guise the Critic takes, how it stops you. Name it, describe it. Make a sketch of it. We'll tackle more Inner Critic tools in future posts. But let me know how this one worked for you.