How To-9: "How to Add Emotion to a Story"

How to Add Emotion to a Story

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Ever write a story, but find it's still missing something? Like you write a sad story, but still no one cries. You write a comedy, but still no one laughs. Or, you just write a story, but no one really can see what you're trying to describe. If so, this article is for you!

Steps

1. Understand Keywords or Key Phrases. Key Phrases are phrases in a story that triggers the waterworks. They are sentences that make people cry. Such as, a pet dies. You could write, "Goodbye, Old friend." A Key Phrase could also be an action. Such as, there are two pets. One pet dies. The other pet tries to sleep with the other one by cuddling up to the dead body.
   
2. Add a lot of relationship between the one who dies and another character, whether that is a human or an animal.
   
3. Add comedy to the story. You can find several joke books at book stores or at your local library.
   
4. Do some research about your audience. Find out what makes those particular people laugh. A guy who slips on a banana. Kids may not get adult jokes, and adults may think kid jokes are crude. Either way, research whatever makes the person the books intended for (children, teens, or adults) laugh.
   
5. Add a couple of twists to the plot. Make something seem like it's going to turn out bad, but doesn't. For example, someone's grandmother is in the hospital, and the doctors think her life is over. Then, by some miracle, or just by luck, the grandmother turns out OK. That, or she recovers. Be creative, and never give up hope.
   
6. Paint a picture with your words. Visualize the scene you are describing. Be there. Taste, feel, and sense everything around you. Now open your eyes. Try to describe that picture. Make sure to sprinkle your sentences with plenty of word tools, (examples: Metaphors, Similes, Personification, Alliteration, hyperbole, and onomatopoeia). Instead of saying, "The wind blew through the trees." You could say, " The biting wind howled and moaned as it rustled through the tree's icy limbs, and shook the tree straight down to the core." Make sure it's not a run on sentence either like "Sally went to the mall and shopped for shoes and then for a dress, that was a total of 13 inches in length and then she went to mcdonald's and ate a burger with fries and then met a girl named Jinny who had a dog named frisky who liked frisky dog biscuits and peed on the couch and then went home." Draw a word picture. The text of a book is a portal to an imaginative world.
   

Warnings

• If you just try to use cliches or things you've read to make people feel emotions, your story may fall flat. It's hard to make other people feel something if you don't feel it yourself. Think about times when you've felt happy or sad in real life, not just when reading other books. The more you put yourself into your story, the more real emotion it will have.
  

Things You'll Need

• pencil/sharpener
  
• paper
  

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