So I spent the majority of the day strolling through the internet and found a true story that really irked me. It was about a young couple who decide to go to college together across the nation (California to be exact). These new students get their dorm rooms and find out that they don't life close together.
The story takes a downturn from here, as the narrator (the boyfriend) says the girl's Residence Assistant was an attractive male. The story continues its rage-filled fall with events that sum up to the narrator finding he had been cheated on and thusly beating the snot out of the attractive male RA.
Now, when I finished reading this I felt my blood boiling and put myself in the narrators shoes. I certainly felt the desire to beat the asshole within an inch of his life. But I also looked passed that and saw a lonely and regret-filled path that awaited when the rage subsided.
It wasn't a good feeling.
So what if the attention was turned to the girl? Maybe to win her back, or reason with her? Well, the evidence was there when the now ex-girlfriend rushed to the aide of the pulverized hot-shot RA. It was the final blow to the emotional cocktail that had been brewing since I had started to read the story and it spoke the truth to me in a single, defining moment:
The only thing the boy could do was survive the agony and move on.
Now, I don't know if he did do this, or if he went on a violent rampage instead, but what I do know is that the people who posted responses all agreed that tearing the asshole a new, well, asshole was the most satisfying choice. (Notice how I didn't say best, but I digress.)
What got my gears grinding even more was how this simple story rang true for all those different people who read it. In other words, there had to be a common denominator with everyone who read it to react in the same rage-filled way. For me, it hit hard because I felt the loss the man felt, and was drawn into sharing those emtions with him. The question, then, is how did I understand and sympathize?
The answer is pretty simple: it was because I, along with every other man that read the story, had at one point in their life known loneliness or feared their lover would be taken away by a better man.
So how does this relate to writing? Pretty directly, in fact.
Every story wants to inspire an emotional reaction in the reader -- to feel what the character is feeling. Its pretty impossible to do this when the basis of the emotion is something no one can relate to.
In the case of this sad story, the foundation of the emotion wasn't rage, but a concentrated dosage of a fear becoming real. Of course there was sadness in there, but that was after the boy had lost the girl.
So, when writing, think about the emotions that should be emmenating from it (if its genuine then they'll be there but sometime we emulate it). Even in the most distraught and cataclysmically destroyed person, the emotion will still have a logical flow to it. Does your story make sense emotionally?
Do what I did with the rage-worthy story: put yourself in the character's shoes and feel the emotions. How would you react? Does it match your character's reaction?
If not then it might be time to fix up the story because when you feel the emotion then so will the reader.
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