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struggling with your memoir?This free class can help.Follow a seven-step path to constructing your memoir. Receive your first video right after entering your e-mail address.
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Hi Guys! Last week I discussed why using emotion words—happy, sad, confused—don’t convey emotion. Today, I cover the bad advice of using bodily sensations like, “my hands were sweating and my heart started pounding,” to express emotion. I think of it as a cheap way to show emotions. Writers often make the mistake of assuming that if their heart is racing, readers will automatically understand their fear. But physical descriptions aren’t an effective way to show emotion. A better way to do this is to put us inside the narrator’s head, like you’re reading their thoughts. Romance novelists love using bodily sensations in their books. Here’s a sample from Highland Treasure: Gasping with relief as she made it off the last step, Elysande collapsed to the cold stone passage, every muscle in her body trembling with exhaustion. Elysande swallowed the bile rising in her throat and nodded grimly. She would walk if it killed her. Cold creeping down the back of her neck, she let her skirt drop and straightened, ears straining. At first there was nothing. While you get a description of Elysande’s physical state, you don’t get any introspection. And as a result, you, as a reader, aren’t affected emotionally.
While romance novelists love using bodily sensations, you’ll find them used very sparingly in the works of respected authors. To help you understand the difference between cheap writing and Nobel-prize-winning prose, first take a look at the following text: There were butterflies in his stomach. He looked around for a mirror so that he could see his own face, yet a twinge of anxiety caused his hands to tremble. His breath was shallow and his nerves were on edge. Finally, he gave up and lay back in bed, his heart pounding. What you just read is the “romance-novel-writing version” of Toni Morrison’s prose. Did it work to affect you emotionally? Here is the original version from the novel Sula, which has no bodily sensations. Instead, Morrison puts us inside the character’s head: Laced and silent in his small bed, he tried to tie the loose cords in his mind. He wanted desperately to see his own face and connect it with the word “private”—the word the nurse (and the others who helped bind him) had called him. “Private,” he thought, was something secret, and he wondered why they looked at him and called him a secret. Still, if his hands behaved as they had done, what might he expect from his face? The fear and longing were too much for him, so he began to think of other things. That is, he let his mind slip into whatever cave mouths of memory it chose. *** Hopefully you feel the difference. Don't you think what Morrison did was so much more effective? I’m not saying to completely get rid of bodily sensations in your writing, but avoid excessive use. There's a limit to how many heart poundings and stomach clenchings your reader can take before your writing falls flat and lacks impact. Instead, put us inside your narrator’s head. Wishing you lots of productive and emotion-filled writing. 🙂
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AuthorA Random House author offers tips on writing your own memoir. Archives
February 2025
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