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.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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.