To add emotions to your story, make your readers care about your characters, show their feelings instead of naming them, put the characters through hard challenges, feel the scenes yourself, let dialogue carry the emotion, and make every detail count.
Have you ever read a novel that drew you in so deeply that you could feel what the characters were feeling? It takes a lot of practice to write a novel that good, so do not be discouraged if you have not got the hang of it yet. These tips will help.
6 ways to add emotions to a story
Here are six simple ways to evoke the emotions you want from your readers. Try all of them for the strongest effect.
1. Tell readers why they should care
Readers care about your characters when they can relate to them. Even Superman, an alien from a distant planet, becomes relatable when he mourns the death of his adoptive father, Pa Kent.
You can make your readers care about your characters by giving them flaws and hard choices. Make your characters long for something. Whether they get it or not is up to you.
2. Show, don't tell
Let your readers paint the scenes in their minds. Instead of telling them that a character is scared, show them what makes the character afraid, and describe how the character reacts to the situation.
Sensory words are a great way to show a scene in writing. You can learn more about them in how to use sensory words.
3. Break your characters
A story in which all the characters swim calmly through life is easy to forget. You need to add sharks that tear the characters to pieces. Well, you do not need to be that drastic, but you do need to add challenges so hard that your characters can barely handle them.
4. Be emotional
You, the writer, need to feel emotions too. If you write with a straight face while your characters are betrayed by their loved ones, chances are your readers will read it with a straight face as well.
5. Use dialogue
Dialogue is an excellent way to make readers feel an emotion. How angry is your main character at her cheating boyfriend? Does she scream, call him names, cross her arms, or throw the furniture? A character's actions can add so much emotion to a dialogue. For more on this, read the tips for writing dialogue.
Do not forget facial expressions, either. Write while looking into a mirror if you have to. What expression does your character wear when she is about to explode, or to cry her heart out?
6. Make the details matter
Say you are writing a romantic drama about a love-struck couple. All the buildup of their relationship is thrown away at the end, because one of them dies after being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A tragic death like the one in Bridge to Terabithia, which can make big, burly men cry, is fine. But if the death feels flat and has nothing to do with all the dialogue and the twists and turns before it, your readers will be very disappointed.
Check your story before you share it
These are the basics of evoking emotion in your writing. If you need words for the feelings themselves, see 50 feelings you can portray in your writing.
Last but not least, always double-check your work before you share it with the world. Even famous novels have gone to print with typos, but yours does not have to. The Spell Checker helps you find spelling and grammar mistakes in your story quickly.