Emotion Exercises

I received in the mail today the October 2008 issue of the Writer.  I love this magazine, and when I get it I take time to flip through the pages, looking at what each issue has to offer, marking pieces I want to read with more attention and pieces I may want to clip and add to my quick reference file.

I'm always happy with the contents of the magazine, and this month is no different.  In fact, there's a bit of article I'd like to share with you.

Michael Knight wrote an article called "Get REAL EMOTION onto the page," which contains two exercises to help develop emotion in fiction.  Those exercises are what I'd like to share with you.

Exercise #1

Describe the view from a window--bedroom, barroom, bus, wherever--as seen by a character who has just received some very good or some very bad news.  Have some specific news in mind but don't even hint at it in the exercise.  The reader should be able to deduce if not the exact nature of the news, the tenor of it, whether it's good or bad, simply by the way you describe the view.  The object is to give the reader a sense of a character's internal life by relying on meaningful imagery alone.

Exercise #2

Write a scene, lots of dialogue, lots of body language, lots of concrete detail, and so on, in which one of te characters is keeping a big-time secret.  She's pregnant.  He's got cancer.  Like that.  Don't mention the secret in the scene.  Instead, focus on how keeping such a secret affects your character's behavior, how he or she reacts to the environment and the other characters.  No, this is not an exercise in withholding information.  The point is that the secret itself is less important than your character's reaction to it.  Even if the reader isn't privy to the secret, we should be able to sense the tension it causes, its emotional effect.

I'm always excited to find new writing exercises.  Even if they aren't exercises I keep in my bag of tricks, they're fun to try, and if nothing else, it keeps me writing.

As soon as I read these exercises I thought of ways to write them.  I think I'm going to take some time tonight to do these exercises and see what happens.  Maybe a coffee house book scene will develop.

How have you learned to convey true emotion in your writing?