Five Top Tips for Bringing Emotion Into Your Characters and Plot

As writer and reader, I want to feel what’s happening to the characters, to be moved by their story—left uplifted or devastated, to feel resolution or understanding. As important as the physical and mental journey from beginning to end, the emotional journey is vital—if we didn’t feel enough as we read, we wouldn’t care so much what happens or if the story reaches its climax or resolution, we wouldn’t find something valuable in the pages that we bring back to our lives. It’s the pull I feel on the first page that makes me pick up a book I want to read. And it’s the stories that have moved me most, chimed to something deep—that make me feel understood or the world and life itself make more (or less) sense or that I endured and survived or battled and won along with them—it's these stories that linger in a special place in my heart long after I’ve read.

So, here are my top five tips for bringing emotion to the page:

1. Think about emotional arcs and varying intensity.

However you write and plan a novel, think about where each character starts in their outlook, mental and emotional state, what the plot does to this through the story, and where they end up. There should be twists and turns of emotion along the way—rising and falling as we follow the plot. Avoid remaining too intense for too long (exhausting) or too low (without enough for us to care about). Build to an emotional climax or resolution (see 5. below).

There’s satisfaction going from a place of peace to agony to resolution and acceptance, or from confusion to understanding, from feeling fear to feeling safe. It brings the plot and circumstances to life, and keeps us turning pages with hope and fear.

2. Get the right balance of dark and light.

Depending on what your story is, is there enough dark or heavy emotion, enough light? Do they need to be balanced? Or does one need to outweigh the other? Even a story with heavy arcs, though, needs moments of reprieve, or a precious arc of hope, resolution or levity. Where in the plot should darkness be heightened? And lightness?

3. In what ways can you show that emotion?

In the way your character touches the counter where a coffee cup was once set down for the last time, or the way they keep walking, holding tight to a small hand, even when injured. I think we don’t always have to stick to ‘show don’t tell,’ but, show the character holding back tears, and we will feel how that feels; stating that they’re upset doesn’t invite us to imagine it quite so much. Look at an ‘Emotions Thesaurus’ or popular psychology books for how emotion is felt and presents in body language, expression, internal and mental responses etc.

Think about how the setting, the plot, and the way things are described add to that emotion. The world of Not Alone is always autumnal—beautiful but decaying—there’s something about that that is bittersweet, sad, poignant, raw, but still hopeful in its beauty, still fighting to survive, that mirrors Katie’s suffering, desperation and hope.

4. Pour some truth and honesty into your work.

I don’t mean share personal and private experiences or your real life necessarily, but open yourself up to the experiences of your characters and pour in something honest and raw, from your own insight, yes, or from what you have researched into, real expressions of joy, happiness, pain, grief, suffering and what lies beneath them. I think there’s a reason Hemingway (or whomever) said to bleed over your typewriter, though I go back and forth on whether it has to be truth from a deeply personal place. We just need something honest on the page—fully explored—otherwise I find the words don’t penetrate, don’t hit and move or immerse me, they feel too shallow, too flimsy. But, this, I suppose, is part of the subjectivity of art—your honesty won’t connect with everyone.

That’s ok.

But I think there’s beauty and purpose in pursuing vulnerability.

5. Because, what is it you have to say? What is the underlying emotional message of your story?

This is closely tied to the purpose of the plot, the unravelling whatever circumstance, mystery, or quest etc that your characters are going on. But what is the point of the plot, the emotional climax of it? If all that mattered was Frodo physically dropping the ring in the fires of Mordor or Harry Potter defeating Voldemort or the saving of a child, it would just feel functional, but not really satisfying or moving. In Lord of the Rings, friendship and sacrifice reaches its climax, and in Harry Potter, there’s a full circle notion in the power of love and friendship, of coming to terms with your own mortality, and of finding light in the darkest of moments.

In Not Alone, Katie’s suffering illustrates and cultivates within her the strength it takes to keep hold of hope and resilience, to make peace with the life you have and mortality, and to never give up on yourself or those you love.

Recommendations: What We Ache For by Oriah, Bittersweet by Susan Cain, and talks by authors whose work you connect with.

Not Alone by Sarah K. Jackson is published by Pan Macmillan and available to buy now 

Sarah K Jackson is an author and an ecologist, who grew up in the Midlands and now lives in Hertfordshire. She studied Psychology and Criminology at Cardiff University and Conservation Ecology at Oxford Brookes University and has worked as an ecological consultant for twelve-plus years, specialising in botany and habitats. Not Alone is her first novel – a post-apocalyptic story of survival and fierce motherly-love and hope – published by Picador in the UK and Doubleday in the US. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @SarahKarenne