The Medium is the Message - Are your books running hot or cold?



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Welcome to a very special POST LABOR DAY edition of SEEKERVILLE.

Read all the way to the bottom for a chance to win two DIFFERENT BOOKS by two DIFFERENT WINNERS.

and find out how to sign up to get your name in a contest with a prize, a Kindle HDX.

Now, welcome to Part 2 of my series on emotion.

Find Part 1 here: Putting Emotion on the Page

I’m going to talk about a book I studied in college.

(No the books were NOT printed on papyrus scrolls, shut up)

I studied a book by Marshall McLuhan and, well, this was long ago, so I’m not going to go look at what he actually said and wrote about, instead I’m going to talk about what I remember, what I took away. I wonder now if I completely missed the point, but I’m doing it anyway.

What I remember from that book is that he described different types of information delivery. He called it the Medium. And he talked about Movies and TV and Radio and Books.

I was a broadcast journalism major so that figures, right?

And what he said was the fewer of our senses required to be involved with gathering information, the hotter the experience.

So by that standard, a movie or television is supplying the sight, supplying the sound. It requires very little from the viewer.

Something on radio is supplying the sound so it’s a little hotter than television.

And books supply nothing. A reader has to supply it all.

Because of this reading is an extremely hot medium.
We have to conjure the image.
We have to hear.
We have to taste and smell.

I can’t encourage an author enough to include the five senses and that’s for a very good reason. These things touch a reader, who is in a very hot environment while reading. All their mental energy engaged to be in the book. And senses are familiar. They are touch stones.

You talk about smelling and tasting a chocolate cake and your reader knows what that means. They are there with you, smelling and tasting.

And here’s where emotion comes in, because a reader isn’t a distant, detached, cold participant in your book. They are running hot. They are in your world.

They aren’t watching a fist fight on TV, they are in there swinging, they smell the dust of the frontier town street as your hero is slammed face down on the ground.

They feel the pain of a blow. They taste the blood.

That’s one of the reasons we talk about writing that stops the action dead. Or author intrusion.
These things draw the reader out of the world they are so engrossed in. It's like throwing a bucket of cold water on someone.

You don’t want your reader to see the heroine kissing the hero. You want them to feel his lips on theirs, feel his arms go around her, feel her own hands slide up his chest, hesitantly because she knows she shouldn’t but she can’t resist. Feel her reluctance, her desire, her love. 

One of the things I revise for is emotion words that leave me cold.

I hunted around for a scene in Tried and True that shows Kylie, who climbed on the roof to fix a lose shingle and now is caught in a rainstorm and frightened and struggling to get down to safety.

Tried and True

She had to get down off this roof.

One more inch. Still no toehold. Her weight shifted and she slipped. A screamed ripped from her throat and she clutched the pipe with only her fingertips. The pipe groaned under her weight and began to bend.

Finally her toes touched the chair, but her feet skidded on the wet back-ladders. She flailed with her feet to get her balance and managed to kick the chair. She heard it fall to the ground.

Her fingers loosen . She lost her grip with one hand and felt her nails scraping on the other and lost her hold and fell.

Hard arms closed around her legs. “I’ve got you, Miss.”

She slid over the edge.

The rock solid hold on her legs stopped her. Whoever had her rapidly lowered her to her feet. Her knees buckled. She sank toward the muddy ground. He swooped her into his arms and carried her up onto the porch out of the icy rain.

Shining blue eyes met hers and echoed with strength and kindness. Looking into those clear, brilliant blue eyes, she felt safer in that moment than she had since she was eighteen and had put on her britches, sworn her oath and picked up a musket with her fellow soldiers. Fellow being a particularly important word.

She threw her arms around his neck. The only solid thing in the whole wide world. And she cried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s so easy to just tell what’s happening, much more difficult to make Kylie come alive on the page. While Kylie is struggling I want the reader to be on that roof with her, clinging, frightened, so alone. I want them to be screaming (well, maybe internally, we don't want to frighten the children or cause the neighbors to phone 911).
I want her tears to burn your eyes. I want her rescue to be a wave of relief, gratitude and glory.

 
No escape.
No excuse.
No cooling off.
Give the reader no excuse for being allowed to escape from the hot medium of your book.

TWO GIVEAWAYS TODAY
Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a copy of Cheryl St. John’s Writing with Emotion, Tension and Conflict.
And winners choice of any one of my books (that I have a copy of!)
All except Tried and True. I'd really appreciate it if you bought that one, which you can do by clicking HERE.

AND
Go HERE to send an RSVP to a Facebook party, September 23rd for the launch of Tried and True.
Prizes include copies of Tried and True, gift cards and the grand prize, a Kindle Fire HDX.

Lots of fun. Lots of prizes. And judging from the word WEBCAST,

I'm supposed to record myself again.

(May God Have Mercy!)