You read that right. Happiness should be used sparingly, precisely, and deliberately. In this essay I’m going to talk about the structural components of happiness: how and where you use it in your story.
Desire is the most fundamental of feelings. We all want things. We all want things that we can’t have. Showing our character’s trying to get the things they want but can’t have is what makes good storytelling: and it is done best when we don’t ever explicitly state what they are feeling.
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Eventually you’ll finish your first draft. Now you must sit and read your work.
Maybe you’ll think “this is fantastic, it does exactly what I want!” Great! Correct spelling/grammar mistakes and move on. Your readers can disillusion you later.
Sometimes the manuscript will feel okay but not great. This is a very difficult situation, because how do you pin down ambivalence? The answer is skill and experience. We’ll be looking at techniques to identify why your story doesn’t feel right in this article.
Finally, you may find yourself experiencing a strong negative reaction to your work. Don’t press the panic button. This reaction shows your writing skills have advanced enough to identify problems. Having a strongly negative reaction is not the time to quit. It is when you can really begin. Let’s talk about how.
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When Jude is 7 years old her parents are murdered and she and her sisters stolen away to live in the High Court of Faerie by the true father of their oldest sibling. Faerie is a cruel and dangerous place at the best of times, especially for mortals, but by the time she is 17 Jude is determined to belong. But she is surrounded by enemies, and in particular Prince Cardan, the youngest and hardest of the High King’s sons. She will have to risk her life and form dangerous alliances to survive and find her place in the High Court.
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Emotion is the principal vehicle for storytelling, and we only feel the story through the experience of the protagonist: we feel what they feel, and if we don’t know what they’re feeling then we don’t feel anything at all (except, perhaps, bored). Thus, the reader must always know how the characters or feeling. Lets look at how we achieve this.
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Links: Amazon, Goodreads. Price: £8.27
Jen may hate her job marketing sanitary products but it lets her keep control, keep control over her relationship with lawyer Robert, keep an eye on her younger sister Lydia who lost a leg in the accident that killed both her parents, and keep her life in spreadsheet perfect order so that she has time to follow her true passion: craft brewing. An unexpected proposal, followed by an even more unexpected kiss, throws her order into chaos and forces her to ask: how is it that she really wants to live?
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