Kring has recently published her first novel, and the article had a lot of thoughtful comments about the process. She wrote about attending a workshop and being told that she wrote from an 'emotional distance.' The instructor told her: “If you want to be a writer, you have to learn to spill your guts on paper.”

One of the things I've noticed here on Hatrack is that the stories that DON'T hook me often don't hook me because the writer is keeping too much emotional distance. I've also noticed the same thing while doing critiques; the writer tells of some scary or horrifying event yet the character has no emotional reaction to it.

Here on Hatrack we talk a lot about the importance of POV, tense, and dialog. I think the need to engage the reader emotionally is of equal importance.

When I write, I feel it's sort of like improv acting. I visualize myself in the situation, and try on the emotions. Then I describe them. But it's not always enough to describe the reaction; I've critiqued stories where the character's physical reaction is described but still there is no indication of distress going on inside his or her head.

EDIT: My post was lengthy and boring. I felt I should spare you the displeasure of reading though it, so I cut it in half...well, maybe a little more than half.

Similarly, it's a common saying for film and tv that if you show a person crying, the audience doesn't have to cry because it's being done for them.

In my opinion, one should describe as little of the physical reaction as possible. Instead, go with the circumstances, the thought process, the emotional reactions, etc. The reader will fill in the proper physical response. If you have developed your character well, the reader will know how that character would respond physically to such events/feelings.

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I'm curious as to what other people do to engage the reader emotionally, and how much attention you put into this detail? How do you grab people by the heartstrings? How do you spill your guts on paper?

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I agree wholeheartedly that you have to be willing to bare your soul to engage the reader. How to do it? That's hard.

The only way I got to that point was the moment when I stopped worrying about the reader and started writing for ME.

I was doing book reviews for a free newspaper at the time, and it suddenly occurred to me that if no one was reading them it didn't matter what I wrote.

The only way I got to that point was the moment when I put a knife into my stomach.

I've found it to be an interesting dilemma for me (well, and all writers period, I suppose) to do what this thread calls for. Frankly, I'm not sure if I've accomplished it. I'm especially having difficulty with a certain character who's supposed to be stoic and emotional at the same time (heh, try that one for size, would you? )

I'd like to add one comment here, and it's that you have to be careful when dealing with emotion. Why should the reader care that Bob is sad when they don't even know who he is yet?

What I mean is, you don't come out and say "Bob was sad." You don't even say "Bob wiped the tears from his face", as common creative writing show don't tell doctrine suggests to inexperienced writers.

Instead, you tell the reader why Bob is sad. After that, it's all about the POV. If Bob is a character who's really in touch with his emotions, go ahead and describe them (hopefully a lot better than the two examples above). But maybe he's not sure how he feels. Maybe he's bottling things up (which of course to him feels like he's just not feeling anything at all).

And anyway, I like to avoid flowery descriptions of emotion unless I've really earned them. It's too easy to lapse into melodrama, and that's a death knell at the beginning of a story.

If it's from Bob's POV, I expect a clue as to whether he's upset, annoyed, or ecstatic at such news. If it's the cop's POV, I expect him to wonder at the emotions Bob is displaying.