The Emotional Craft of Fiction presents a new way of looking at story. It goes beyond the handling of characters' emotions. It treats the emotional effect of novels on readers as a craft, not a lucky accident, and makes practical the many methods that cause deep feelings in readers. | This book is different than others on emotions in fiction. Books like James Thayer's Show or Tell? (Kindle single), Cheryl St. John's Writing with Emotion, Tension and Conflict, and Angela Ackerman and Beccca Puglisi's The Emotion Thesaurus all focus on the limited issue of handling characters' emotions.

Karl Iglesias's Writing for Emotional Impact is a screenwriting guide that (somewhat incorrectly) states the obvious: that all story elements produce emotion. Indie editor Jodi Henley's Practical Emotional Structure (Kindle single) grasps the emotional effect of plot developments, but is self-published upon closer look a repackaging of familiar story structure principles. Elizabeth Lyon's Writing Subtext and Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext each explore an artful but limited aspect of style.

The Emotional Craft of Fiction is altogether different. It's a new way of looking at story. It goes beyond the handling of characters' emotions. Indeed, it cites psychological research to show that what characters feel has little to do with what readers feel. Showing and telling are important, sure, but frequently do not work as imagined. This book explains why and what works better. But that is only for starters.

The Emotional Craft of Fiction shows how an emotional world is built with me-centreed narration, emotional scale, characters' emotional makeup, the stirring of higher emotions, and the creation of moral stakes. It shows that character arcs are made up of events that have meaning. It explains how outer plot and inner journey become fastened together. It re-envisions plot points--openings, mid-point, failure and defeat, catalyst and catharsis--as essential emotional opportunities.

This book also reveals what's really happening in riveting scenes in which nothing overtly is ""happening"". It uncovers the emotional map that secretly orients readers' expectations. It explains how to affect readers' emotional journey through a novel with high moments, symbols, sentences and paragraphs with emotional wallop, transformational moments, and evoking feelings without names.

The Emotional Craft of Fiction, finally, explores aspects of the author's emotional journey in writing by looking at emotional tone, pathos versus compassion, positivity, goodness, magnanimous spirit and the hidden current pulls us all (or not) through novels: hope.

This book winds up by asserting that the instincts, eyes and heart of great storytellers are gifts that every fiction writer has. Why? Because they are human. Owning the mandate to write with emotional force is as simple as owning your own feelings, and as terrifying as accepting the heroes and monsters inside you. Emotional craft is methods, yes, but most of all it is the gracious gift of your own loving heart.