Empowering Characters Emotions

“And don’t underestimate the importance of…body language. Ha!” - Ursula the Sea Witch from Disney’s The Little Mermaid

Aha! Epiphany time! I have made a breakthrough in my idea cluttered mind thanks to Margie Lawson’s first lecture on Empowering Characters Emotions, the online class she’s teaching this month through the College of Felony and Intrigue (COFFIN) of the Kiss of Death RWA Chapter. Yeah, that’s a mouthful, so just click the link. I have been struggling recently with the question: What is good writing? Like porn, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. I know when I read a book if I liked it or not. I can tell when the book is well written but the story sucks. I can tell when the story idea is good but the writing sucks. But how do I translate this innate knowledge to creating good writing in my own story?

I had my Aha! reading Lawson’s first lecture in which we learned what all those authors mean when they say SHOW DON’T TELL and avoid adverbs. It comes down to non-verbal behavior, which is an actor’s main tool to communicating emotion to the audience. Why is this a breakthrough for me? Acting was my first love. This writing thing is new – a new medium of communicating ideas, emotions, and stories. It’s a struggle to learn how to translate those things in Words, but it shouldn’t be, because I already have the tools I need from my acting experience. I can become my characters and ACT OUT my scenes. Automatically I start using non-verbal clues to communicate the personalities and emotions of the characters in my head – I don’t even have to think about it. Bingo! I know what my heroine’s body will do when she’s trying to convince her ancestor that she’s from the future. How she will translate that urgency and energy. I know how that ancestor, being a shy and cautious person, will react to this unbelievable pronouncement. Whoot

Lawson put into words something that my brain knew but that I wasn’t using effectively in my writing; I had been stuck recycling cliche statements: heat pooled low in her belly (how many times have you read that in a romance novel? TONS!), she winced, she grinned, her eyes were wide, he clenched his fists, he raised his eyebrow… There are so many other things we do unconsciously that communicates our feelings to the world. Suddenly I find myself studying the people around me, looking for their ticks and mannerisms. My husband sometimes plays with his shoes when he’s on edge talking to someone he doesn’t know very well. In the instance I’m thinking of he was wearing teva sandals and throughout the conversation was strapping and unstrapping the velcro. He wasn’t aware he was doing it.

Lawson is going to cover the following topics in the course

Proprioceptive Stimuli: physical representation of emotion, visceral cues
Facial Expressions: emphasis on eye movements, lip messages, love signals and sensuality/sexuality cues
Kinesics: body language, gestures, posture, self-touch, cues of deception, ideomotoric shifts
Paralanguage: vocal cues, tone, inflection, pitch, quality, rate
Haptics: touch, manipulation, anchoring
Proxemics: spatial relationships, hierarchical implications, perceived psychological comfort and discomfort based on distance

I already feel like I got my 30 bucks worth with just the first lecture. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Explore posts in the same categories: Writer's Cramp

Tags: COFFIN, Margie Lawson, non-verbal behavior, writing

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