Writing with Emotion

[shadowkat]

As you know, I'm an emotional writer online with few exceptions. But at work, I bleach the emotion from my writing. My emails, my justifications and memos have no emotion. It's gone. Formal. Perfect. Clear. Business like. And it's succinct. My emails at work are barely more than three sentences.

I think fiction written without emotion is a waste of time. It is my problem with Neil Gaiman's writing and Erin Morgenstern's THE NIGHT CIRCUS and Susannah York's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel. I understand the absence of emotion in academic journal writing or legal memos or business writing or non-fiction - which is why I find non-fiction so difficult to read.

But writers who focus on technique or plot over the emotional resonance of story, who lack a true feel for poetry. Who can't find the emotional pulse. Who tend to use the third person distant pov - distancing the reader as well in the process - so that we feel as if we are reading the story from a distance of 5,000 miles, never close enough to truly care if the characters live or die. I might as well be reading a dry journal article.

When I read a story...I want to feel the characters. I don't want to watch them objectively from a distance - with a sort of analytical air. That's for numbers not characters.

It annoys me when people put technique before passion. Slang is about passion. It's an emotional release. People don't smush words for speed, but to convey emotion. Feeling. I play with grammatical rules for emotional effect. As did James Joyce.
He wanted the reader to literally sink inside of Leopold Bloom to walk with his feet not in his mocassins. And the amazing thing is..you do. Just as in John Green's magical The Fault in Our Stars...you find yourself walking with Hazel Grace and August Waters feet. To fall inside someone else is magic. To be able to communicate emotion, pain, love, remorse, guilt - to make the reader feel these things - that is what lies at the root of fiction and why I prefer it to non-fiction.

Work is non-fiction. Work is bleached of emotion. Work is dry and numerical. Prices.
Bleaching rage and anger and sarcasm from my prose. Bleaching the poetry from it. The best writers care little for the technique the pristine plot, and the clever plot-twist. The best writers pull you so deep inside their work, that you laugh and cry buckets. You want to write fanfic about their characters. Their stories live inside your head not as meta, but as raw emotion. The best stories are those that we feel in our gut, in our heart, in our blood...not in our heads.

[PS: Please Don't hurt me if you vehmentally disagree. Mileage varies and all that. And this is in regards to a book I'm reading - it is NOT directed towards anyone on my flist. ;-) ]

Comments

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I think I have more the opposite feeling towards art, I need a bit of distance to better appreciate it. I'd rather have the big emotions come at me a bit sideways or be built up in layers. I was just writing the other day about seeing the play War Horse and how I felt the distancing effect of the puppets and staging actually allowed me to connect more than pure realism would have. I understand how things can sometimes be too dry but I do like the head with the heart, I think some of favourite bits of writing have those odd lines that I sometimes have to puzzle over, like a worry stone in your pocket to turn over and over. It's neat how everyone looks for something different in art.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder if it has a lot to do with what one does for a living? My work is so dry. What I read daily is very dry and very technical. You can't get drier than engineering techspeak or financial analysis. So, for outside reading - I want and need the opposite.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think I responded to this incorrectly. Sorry about that.

Been thinking about your response today, and I agree it's fascinating how people find different things to love in art or look for different things.
And I keep trying to figure out why. But I don't think there is any one answer.

I was just writing the other day about seeing the play War Horse and how I felt the distancing effect of the puppets and staging actually allowed me to connect more than pure realism would have.

I want to see the play over the film. Because..I don't think a film version will work quite as well.
Because...the emotion is too obvious? Or too manipulated? Spielberg unfortunately...is not subtle or I just know all his tricks and as a result feel distanced by them instead of engaged?
The puppetry may actually move me more..than a real horse would. I know it did when I saw it on the Tony's. War Horse is a case where "how it is performed" is more emotionally effective than "what the story is". Hard to explain, so not sure that made sense.

I understand how things can sometimes be too dry but I do like the head with the heart, I think some of favourite bits of writing have those odd lines that I sometimes have to puzzle over, like a worry stone in your pocket to turn over and over.

Oh, I do need both as well. If there's no heart, I lose interest. If there's no head...I grow bored.
Just finished this book, Fault in Our Stars - which melded both so beautifully. There were odd lines that you find yourself puzzleing over long after the book is completed. And interesting metaphors...like a children's playground with a huge skeleton in the middle of it that they use as a jungle gym. Or Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who tale - The Doctor's Wife...that long after it was over played with my head. While other stories...are too much head..too plotty, the characters feel lost somehow or barely there - distanced. I'm struggling a little with Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, it's a wonderful idea, but her main focus seems to be the "idea" of a magical circus and the people involved. It's told in a manner that is distancing at times. And gripping at others. A mixed bag.
While Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games much like The Fault in Our Stars - a first person narrative, holds both heart and head in its hands. It may be the narrative structure? First pov sometimes can be more emotionally affecting than third person distant, omni.

[caliente-uk.livejournal.com]

The best stories are those that we feel in our gut, in our heart, in our blood...not in our heads.

Yes!

I think you and I are on a very similar wavelength when it comes to reading. When I read I become completely immersed in the characters and the story. I feel what they feel. I live and breathe the story with them, and their world becomes real to me. If I don't feel that connection? Then the story isn't working for me.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I need some connection with the characters. So while I do need the head bit, I also need the heart.

Fault in Our Stars is one of the few books I've read that melds head and heart very well. You get both. And you don't feel manipulated by the writer. Rare that.

[spikesjojo.livejournal.com]

Funny - I feel the same way, and yet one of my favorite writers is Neil Gaiman. But I have this problem with Terry Pratchett. Discworld is fun sometimes, but I can put it down and forget it ever existed. No investment - no emotional commitment.

I don't know if this *means* anything, but it is kinda interesting!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

No, I had the same response to Terry Prachett. (I've actually read most of Neil Gaiman's works and enjoy him, and he has engaged my emotions from time to time. I remember being moved in sections of American Gods, Caroline, Neverwhere, The Doctor's Wife (was very moving), and
Sand Man. Also Blood Orchid is an amazing comic book. But he also will distance me at times. His blog actually is more relatable. It depends. )

But Prachett...I can't quite get into. I blame the footnotes. Footnotes take me out of the story - too similar to an academic journal. Also the constant puns...they pull me out of the story as well.

Satire, parody, and puns will make me laugh, but distance me from the characters...so I don't really care that much about them. It's one of the problems I have with that type of comedy I think?

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of all over the map. I can enjoy the structure of something, or key into a central idea that interests me, and get quite a bit of mileage out of that. I do sort of cringe away from things that are strongly sentimental without a balancing intellectual component, though. I have a friend who is a film critic, and I've seen him cry his eyes out at a movie, and then turn around and pan it. His explanation is that for something to be truly great art, it must touch the head AND the heart. I'm okay with some stuff that's directed at the head, less okay with stuff that is all pointed at the heart, but get really excited when it does both things.

It's all so subjective, though.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's all so subjective, though

Very true. And it has a lot to do, at least for me with my mood and what is going with me at the time.

What may seem like sentimental treacle to one person, may be moving and beautiful to another.
What may seem brilliant and thought-provoking and emotionally resonate...may seem pretentious and self-indulgent to another.

A perfect example is the film Tree of Life. Some
people are moved by this film, it plays with their minds, and they find it beautiful. Others
find it unwatchable sentimental treacle and pretentious in a very off-putting way.

Another? Moulin Rouge - some love it to pieces,
others consider it akin to being stuck with
a marachi band in a small elevator.

It fascinates me why one person will love something and another hate it. I'm still trying to figure out why my flist thinks Breaking Bad is the BEST!SHOW!EVER! and I found it unwatchable and dreadfully dull and insanely violent after the first season. Is it what we do for a living? Is it our backgrounds? I worked in criminal law for a bit, and defended people who were put away for much lesser violations than the characters in Breaking Bad, who happened to be black not white. And have had close relatives die brutally of cancer. Also know that area of the US fairly intimately.
I don't know.

Same deal with the flick The Departed - film critics love it to death, and I thought...this is boring, obvious, and cliche. Yet it won the Oscar. (shrugs)

[wildtiger7.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I wonder if this explains my problem with both Gaiman and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel. I liked the books but I felt there was something missing that kept me from being fully involved.

On the other hand, I love history books. Though the best history books most certainly engage my emotions.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Both Gaiman and the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel..utilize a third person distant writing style. And write a bit "formally" in a style, I like to call "Victorian prose". It's formal and distancing.
Focus more on the world than the characters, and often the characters feel like cypher.

Reading both reminded me a lot of reading some of the writers of the early 1900s, like Edith Wharton. Good prose stylists...but I always felt as if..I was watching them write? Or too aware of their prose. That may be it - aware of the words on the page, of the writing. As opposed to falling inside the story, and forgetting that I'm reading it. If that makes sense?

I struggle with books that make me too aware of the process of reading them. This is beautifully written, a perfect phrased sentence. But.
I'm seeing the sentence. Not feeling it.

Historical fiction and histories can be written in such a way in which you become enraptured by the story...and are not aware of the words.
I've been studying this lately, and have noticed that best-selling writers, books that appeal to a broad readership...are more simply written. You are less aware of the words. The book is more about the story and less about the technique of writing it.