Emotions: Mad, Happy, Sad, And All That CrapA Lesson by TopHatGirl Putting emotion into your character. Emotions. It what makes your character have a certain, mood, tone, and attitude. No emotion=robot. And unless your writing about the hardships and upsides of a robot,(if you are, tell me, because I totally want to read that book), then you want your character to have emotion. Never, EVER, EVER, write,"I'm mad." You want to create the right atmosphere to let the reader know that, yes, your character is pissed off. Example: Jason slammed his fist down on the table. "Don't tell me what to do, b***h!" he screamed, causing his drinking glass to fall over, spilling its contents. Carol casually strutted over to his desk. "Honey, call me that word one more time, and I'll make sure they find you headless in the gutters." she said sweetly. "Oh, so now she's all tough b***h on me." He said back. Carol frowned, and punched him. A tooth went flying, and blood trickled down the side of Jason's mouth. "Do what I say, or the next time I'm using a knife." Carol whispered in his ear, then stomped out the door, slamming it behind her. A lot of emotion there. Tension, anger, mistrust, all without saying the words: mad, angry, pissed, or enraged. A character can have a permanent emotion, such as talkative, hot headed, or optimistic. Let's use those three permanent emotions in an example: Marie stared at the dead body. "Well, that's crazy. You know, I know of this one story about a skeleton, my grandomother told me it, she's a great story teller, and it goes once there-" She kept rambling on. Penelope kneeled next to the bones. "At least it wasn't us. I mean, we're still alive, and we'll have a great story to tell our kids someday, if we have any." Penelope said brightly. "What, you saying I won't have kids?" Clyde said loudly. "No I-" "That I won't get married or anything? That I'm too ugly to meet a nice girl? Or that I'm gay? You wanna go?" he said even louder. Marie kept talking. "And then I went shopping, which was weird because I don't really like shopping-" she said. See what I mean? Marie was talkative, Penelope was optimistic, and Clyde was hot headed. It's good to have a permanent emotion, but not always. Again, don't overdo it. In comical writing, permanent emotions are gold, especially bossy, talkative, or negative. Emotions always change based on the situation the character is in. If you lost your favorite book, you would be sad. If you had a really bad day, you would be depressed. If you someone close to you just died, you would be miserable. Setting can always set the emotion, if the character doesn't. She looked out the foggy window, and watched the rain drops fall to the ground. The bleak sky meant she couldn't play today. You could tell that the emotion was gloomy from the setting. Uh, it's late, so I have to wrap up this lesson. Have no clue what the next one will be! Comment and subscribe! Note: Thank you for all of the positive feedback I am getting for these lessons. It really brightens my day. :)   Comments
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TopHatGirl[Redacted], NVAboutHi, I'm TopHatGirl! If you're here about my character lessons or to get some advice, email me instead of messaging at [email protected]. This is because I don't go on this site as much anym.. |
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