Please welcome our guest Margaret Brownley

Margaret Brownley

Let’s Get Emotional

Margaret Brownley

Think back to your earliest childhood memory. You were probably three, four or perhaps even five at the time.  Now think about how you felt. You might have been scared or hurt. Perhaps you felt giddy with joy or maybe even lonely and confused.  Whatever the emotion, it was strong enough to make a deep and lasting impression or the memory wouldn’t have stayed with you all these years.

The same type of emotional response that fuels our memory banks is also what makes characters memorable. Think back to all your favorite movie and book scenes.  Characters that make us laugh, cry or tremble with fear stay with us long after we turn the last page or walk out of a theater. I was only ten when I read Little Women but I still remember feeling sad when Beth died.   

Readers choose genres for emotional reasons.  They read romances to experience the joy of falling in love. They expect thrillers to excite; horror to shock; mysteries to surprise. If a book disappoints, it’s generally because it fails to meet a reader’s emotional expectations.  Readers don’t want to read a story, they want to feel it.

Here are some tips for giving your story an emotional lift.

Make Us Care

There are many ways to reach a reader’s emotional core, but first of all you must make readers care about the character. Melvin in As Good as it Gets was one of the most flawed and unlikeable characters you’d ever hope to meet. Melvin’s gruff exterior wouldn’t have worked without the lonely and vulnerable man inside who made us care.  

Make Us Bond

Another way to reach readers emotionally is to make them bond with the character through recognition and familiarity.  I’ve never lived in the ocean depths, but I’ve known loss and I know how it feels to be a concerned parent. That’s what made me identify with and care about an overprotective clownfish named Marlin in Finding Nemo.  Write about werewolves if you want, set your story on Planet X, but it’s the humanity of your characters that will keep readers turning those pages.

Make Us Feel

Readers are also affected emotionally through theme. Theme is the emotional base beneath the story. We are told to write what we know.  Better advice would be to write what we’re passionate about. What’s important to you?  What are your passions? Is it love, freedom, salvation or injustice?  The passion of your theme will strike a chord in readers.

Be Specific 

Don’t just state an emotion, show it.  I don’t want to know that Paul is angry.  I want to see him tighten his lips and pull down his eyebrows. The seven basic emotions are anger, contempt, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise.  These basic emotions have been proven to produce certain facial expressions.  Learn them and use them.

Show Motivation

A four-year-old I know was on a quest to find a spider.  When asked why, he replied “I want it to bite my grandmother.”  He then went on to explain that Spider Man got his super human powers from a spider bite. Since his grandmother was having trouble with her eyes, he figured that a spider bite would help her see again.  The driving force behind that little boy’s actions was his love and concern for his grandmother and his desire to help her.  His motivation was simple, yet compelling, and I admit it made me teary eyed.  That’s the kind of response we want from readers.

Write the Truth

Emotions spring from truth; Loss is sad, war is tough, love is grand. Write about truth and your readers can’t help but respond with emotion.

www.margaretbrownley.com

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Waiting for Morning (The Brides of Last Chance Ranch)

If Molly Hatfield’s purple attire doesn’t blind you, her dazzling smile will. She doesn’t just sing to the cattle, she puts on a whole show. If only she wasn’t so stubborn about her brother’s care. Or so distrustful of a certain handsome doctor...

A Bride for All Seasons is in bookstores now!

Novella Collection with Margaret Brownley, Robin Lee Hatcher, Debra Clopton and Mary Connealy.

A Bride for All Seasons blurb

It All Started with an Ad in a Mail Order Bride Catalogue…

Melvin Hitchcock of the Hitching Post Mail Order Bride Catalogue isn’t dishonest—not exactly. If he tweaks his clients’ applications a bit, it’s because he’s looking out for their best interests.

This charming bouquet of novellas introduces four Hitching Post prospects in the year 1870, each one eager for second chances . . . and hungry for happiness. Year in, year out, they’ll learn that love often comes in unexpected packages.
After Tom's brother is murdered, Mary-Jo shows up claiming she's his brother's fiance. Could Matt be desperate enough to accept Bible-thumping Ellie? Luvena is a singing sensation, and Clay owns an abandoned theater---a perfect match? And when Megan responds to David's ad, she doesn't realize he's a dying man!

About Margaret:

Thrills, mystery, suspense, romance: Margaret penned it all. Nothing wrong with this—except she happened to be writing for the church newsletter. After making the church picnic read like a Grisham novel, her former pastor took her aside and said, "Maybe God's calling you to write fiction."

Margaret doubted this was true, but she wasn’t about to take chances. She’s now a New York Times bestselling author with more than 30 novels to her credit. Her latest story can be found in A Bride for All Seasons: a mail order bride collection written with Mary Connealy, Robin Lee Hatcher and Debra Clopton.  Gunpowder Tea will be the next book in her Brides of Last Chance Ranch series and is scheduled for October. Not bad for someone who flunked 8^th grade English.  Just don’t ask her to diagram a sentence.