Avoid Melodrama by Writing Deeper by Martina Boone

by S.P. Sipal

If you’ve ever read one of our own Martina Boone’s books, you know that she rocks emotion. So, who better to listen to if you’re seeking to add more emotional depth to your writing. We’re revisiting one of Martina’s old craft posts today that will help you do just that. Read how Martina will take you from bland writing to something deeper…even with zombies!

Writing Deeper: A Craft of Writing Post by Martina Boone

“Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés
that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well
as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of
conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are
clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.” ~ Geoff Dyer

Books
are about what happens and why. But what keeps us turning pages is our
desire, our need, to know how the protagonist feels about it and how
those emotions will make her respond.

Think back to
when you were a kid. What books kept you up with a flashlight under the
covers? What books lately have kept your heart racing long after hubby
was snoring happily beside you? Chances are, it wasn’t just high-action
and shoot-em-ups. For me, at least, that compulsion to find out what
comes next isn’t the result of chases or explosions, it comes more
from emotional resonance, from an MC whose response is honest and
prompts her to make decisions that lead to new complications and new
decisions. That’s when I fall in love. THAT’S when I connect.

Unfortunately,
that’s also the kind of thing that’s hard for me to write. Emotionally
resonant scenes demand honesty from me, the writer, not just from the
characters I create. In these scenes, I have to spill myself, bloodied
and aching, onto the page. I hate that, but the more I write, the more I
realize that as I go deeper into my character, I can tell the story
better and start to do it justice. Are you the same way?

So
how do we go deep? Let’s start with a fictional character–I’ll call
her Penelope–and look at the different ways we can show her emotion in a
scene.

Dig Deeper

First,
there’s the old standby: Penelope felt X. Or Penelope was X. Replace X
with any overused adjective here: sad, happy, disappointed. Disappointed
is a great word to end with, because that’s exactly what the reader
will feel with this approach. It’s a cheap cop-out, and it’s weak. Let’s
dig deeper.

Peeling away an extra layer, we find the
physical response: Penelope’s stomach clenched. Her teeth chattered as
her hand tightened around the knife. Okay. A little better. I don’t know
about you, but I wrote that off the top of my head a second ago, and I
already want to know why Penelope is holding a knife and why her stomach
is clenching and her teeth are chattering. Is she scared? Is she cold?
Is she angry? Now *I* want to go deeper.

Present Conflicting Emotions

Experts
tell us there are really only twelve universal emotions: interest,
surprise, excitement, joy, love, sadness, fear, shame, guilt, contempt,
pride, and anger. Most of the time, we feel some combination of those.

In
fiction, producing conflicting emotions is good. That’s when we’ve done
our jobs and created inner tension. At the very least, by combining
more than one emotion, we are making the character’s response more
interesting and original. And we’re giving ourselves room for deeper
exploration.

Think Beyond the Present

To
capitalize on the opportunity created by Penelope’s physical response,
as a writer, I need to think beyond what’s happening in the present
story to what has happened in Penelope’s past that would affect her
response to the present situation. What makes her afraid? What memories
does she have involving a knife? Why would she be holding it instead of
calling the police? And we want to think about the future. What does she
want? What’s her secret emotional need?

Knowing a
character’s emotional triggers and memories not only lets me further the
needs of my plot, it lets me pull in snippets of memory to deepen how
she feels. Now her stomach clenches, her teeth chatter, and her hand
tightens on the knife, because all she can think is how when XXX
happened to her, she swore she would never let herself be XXX again.

Breathe It to Life

Once
I know something more about Penelope, I can deepen the emotion in the
scene further still by involving her senses. What does she see, hear,
feel against her skin? What key detail can I use to symbolize or
underscore what she’s feeling and what I want the reader to take away?
What metaphor ties into the emotion and adds greater meaning? A spider
spinning a web? A locket that reminds her of her mother?

Seven Ways to Show Emotion

Ingrid
Sundberg did a phenomenal post on ways to show emotion based
on From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler. Paraphrasing and adding
to the techniques Ingrid cited, I can put my example in context. To
convey Penelope’s emotion convincingly to the reader, I can include:

an unseen or physiological response (stomach clenching, breath coming faster).
a visible or external response (teeth chattering, throwing something).
a thought about future goals, dreams, or consequences.
internal or direct dialogue questioning or responding to the situation.
a memory connecting to deeper emotion in the past.
a detail that symbolizes memory or emotion in the present.
a physical response to indicate a decision or acknowledgement of future action (hand tightening on the knife in decision).

Using the above options, I can turn my pitiful:

Penelope was scared and determined not to let the zombie touch her.

Into:

Penelope’s
stomach clenched. Her teeth chattered, but her hand tightened on the
knife. No way was the zombie going to touch her. She wasn’t about to
become one of them, one of the soul-sucking monsters that stopped caring
about their own families and started hurting them, killing them,
instead of loving them.
She couldn’t bear to
look at the zombie’s face. Its features were too familiar. Even the
scent of it sickened her, the mix of sweet perfume and decaying
flesh. Waving the knife out in front of her, Penelope hooked the kitchen
chair with her foot and pulled it skittering toward her to use in
self-defense. But then the light glinted on the locket around the
zombie’s neck, and Penelope remembered picking it out at the jewelry
store with her sister Amy–remembered Amy’s small fingers later, cutting
the photo to put inside it and, even later, dangling it on the chain
and saying, “Put it on, Mommy, Penope and I picked it special for you.”
Through the tears that blurred Penelope’s eyes, the single word ‘Mother’ etched on the locket was clear and awful.

“Mom, please,” Penelope whispered. “Please don’t make me hurt you.”

Now, that isn’t a great example. I deliberately picked a zombie because it was the thing I could least relate to emotionally. But you get the idea. The deeper you dig, the more emotion you can raise.

Eschew the Cheap and Easy

The
trick with emotion is that it’s easy to go overboard. Melodrama has
many definitions. In it’s simplest terms, I think of it as the drama
that comes as a result of taking the easy way out. Something in which
the emotion isn’t earned or justified, or where a semblance of emotion
comes from situations or words that have been used so often they have
become cliché.

What is or isn’t cliché is also difficult to define. It’s another of those I’ll know it when I see it
situations. Personally, I usually find I have to throw out the first
thing that pops into my head when writing a physical response. For
example, the stomach clenching? Probably needs to go. What do you think?

It’s also important to remember that we rarely need
to use every tool in our emotion arsenal. Overwritting is another sure
way to go from drama to melodrama. In writing emotion, less is almost
always more. The deeper the emotional response, the more time and more
tools we can use to show what the character is feeling, and the reverse
is also true.

Keeping this Side of the Line

To keep melodrama from creeping into your manuscript, try to avoid:

cliché’s or responses that we’ve all read before in many other books.
scenes and characters we’ve all seen before with only the names changed to protect the writer.
characters who are too clearly good, facing situations or characters who are too clearly evil.
situations where we can’t understand what’s going on enough to feel for the character.
writing that tries to drive emotion using words or pacing instead of showing us an emotional situation.
broadcasting the characters emotion at every stage of the story until we’re so bored we don’t care anymore.

The Gold You Only Find By Digging

Digging
deeper for emotional response has multiple payoffs. Not only do we
connect to the reader, but we discover fascinating things about the
story and the characters. Thinking deeper is when the alchemy happens
that turns writing into magic, and words into life.

What
about you? Do you find it hard to write emotion? Do you have any tips
that got you over the hump? If so, please share! Oh, and do jump in and
critique my example. That’s what it’s here for! Or write one of your own
and share it with us.

Happy writing,

Martina

For more information on writing emotion:

Books:

Orson Scott Card, Characters & Viewpont
Nancy Kress, Characters,
Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic
Characters and Effective Viewpoints (Write Great Fiction)
Bijoy H. Boruah, Fiction and Emotion: A Study in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of the Mind
Robert Olen Butler, From Where You Dream
Ann Hood, Creating Character Emotions

Articles:

S.P. Sipal

Published in fiction and non-fiction through essays, short stories and a novel, Susan Sipal lives in rural North Carolina with her husband, two children, one dog, three cats, and too many squirrels for the dog to keep up with. She has presented multiple workshops, both at home and abroad, to help writers develop their craft as well as analyze the mysteries of Harry Potter. You can follow her on Twitter @HP4Writers, or on her blog at HarryPotterforWriters.blogspot.com.

Post © S.P. Sipal and/or Adventures in YA Publishing. All rights reserved.

Posted: Feb 5, 2016

Category: Imported from AYAP

Tags: Craft of Writing | Martina Boone

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The first slide is an animation of a science/magic room in a castle. A cartoon character of a mad-scientist looking man in in the foreground says: “Hello! Dr. Frankenstein here to say, Well Done on kid lit zombie week! I’m an expert at reviving the dead, and let me assure you, with a little spark, you can bring dead projects to life. Especially if you dig up parts from other dead things. I’ll even let you have a sneak peek at my laboratory’s store room to consider potential parts for your dead project. If you see something with a yellow glow, that means you should click it. Have fun!”

He points to the right side of the screen and a new scene slides in of a castle science/magic storage room. There are various cartoon Frankenstein body parts scattered around. Some of them have a yellow glow. If you click on them, the images below appear (I’ve added alt text to them, so I hope it works).

The Heart of your story is the main character. The protagonist is the beating core that truly brings your story to life. If your MC doesn't make kids (and their grown-ups) care within the first few pages, your story will flatline. </p>
<p>Your main character needs to be:<br />
• Relatable enough for kids to see themselves<br />
• Unique enough to stand out in the slush pile<br />
• Active enough to drive the story<br />
• Memorable enough to survive multiple readings at bedtime</p>
<p>Where do you find this amazing donor heart? It might be the very thing you loved so much about the manuscript you want to revive. It might be the younger sister from your shelved YA novel. Or maybe it’s the hilarious kid you blogged about meeting at a school visit. Find a character beating with potential and place it in the center of your story.<br />

The Brain of your story is the theme or central message. The theme is the big idea that controls everything else. Picture books are more than stories - they're tiny life lessons disguised with humor and heart.</p>
<p>But your theme needs to be:<br />
• Subtle enough not to trigger the dreaded "didactic" rejection<br />
• Clear enough for a four-year-old to grasp<br />
• Universal enough to speak to both kids and adults<br />
• Fresh enough to prevent agents and editors from responding with "Not another sharing/bedtime/first-day story!"</p>
<p>Check your other dead manuscripts to see if there is a recurring theme, something that really seems to be speaking to you. Find the bit of poetry you scribbled on the back of a receipt to see what theme inspired it. Reread the pep talk you texted your critique partner at 1am. Pick the theme that will drive your story, giving it purpose, direction, and deeper meaning.<br />

The Legs of your story is the plot. Not to be confused with a grave plot.🤪 The plot is what keeps everything upright and moving, as well as providing support for all the other elements. You have very few words to use in a picture book, so you need to do a lot with each plot point.</p>
<p>In general, your plot should:<br />
• Hook readers fast<br />
• Build tension that a child can follow<br />
• Create page turns that feel natural<br />
• Wrap up in a way that satisfies</p>
<p>You can borrow a plot twist (a leg) from one manuscript and the opening (the other leg) from a different manuscript. Consider if the subplot of the middle grade novel you trunked would work better as a picture book. Or maybe your Facebook post about a disastrous camping trip could become a story for kids. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you have your storyline.

The Arms of your story are the side characters.

The Torso of your story is the setting. Setting helps a story breathe and connects all the elements of the story. It isn't just where your story lives, it's what makes your story ALIVE. It's the difference between "this happened in a park" and "this happened in that park, the one with the twisty slide that burns your legs and the creaky swing that sounds like a baby crying.”</p>
<p>Your setting should:<br />
• Make your character's world feel real<br />
• Contain your story in a way that makes sense to young readers<br />
• Connect different scenes and moments organically<br />
• Give your illustrator enough room to add visual subplots</p>
<p>Half-finished manuscripts are a great place to dig up settings, since you worked out the place details before the plot petered out. Or maybe you had to cut a second fantastic location from your chapter book. You can also revisit the detailed caption from your Instagram carousel documenting your tour of that delish candy shop. Disinter a robust setting that can house all of your story's vital organs.

After you press the Click When Done circle button, the lights flash with the sound of electricity buzzing. Then the screen goes black and lightning zaps across the screen with the sound of thunder.

The screen then lights up to show the storage room, and all the Frankenstein pieces have been assembled into the whole monster. An upbeat song plays in the background. Then a speech bubble pops up with the words, “I’m alive! I’M ALIVE!” Then the screen goes to black.

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