they know not for what they listen

"It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this earth; and many of the children of the Iluvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen." -J.R.R. Tolkien

It can be hard to write emotions in any sort of fiction. Emotion is so colorful and yet unseen. So gossamer-threaded and yet shadowed. But it is seldom harder to write than in children's fiction. Because, let's be frank: children can't put words to their grief or anger. They only know that it hurts and it aches and tears momentarily cool the burning passion raging in their breast. But often children find expression for their emotions by other means, and it is up to the writer of children's fiction to familiarize themselves with the ways a child may view the world, and to write their emotional scenes in this way so that the children reading the novel may identify with the characters.
Take Nicodemus Murdoch, nine years old, and hero of Scuppernong Days. His mother died of the fever, and his father at sea. How does he process it all?
First in memories...

But now that he had arrived at the real site of it all, he felt very much ten years old. Never had the tall-ships seemed so massive—hull and masts and yardarms penciled insidious black against the grey morning fog. When Nick had visited the docks as a younger lad he’d felt king of all Salem, seated as he was on Father’s shoulder. The sailors had looked up at him then, their jovial, sun-crisped faces tilted at Father—six feet tall—with jolly recognition.
“What say you to a pint of rum, Sam?” they might ask. Or, if the day were fine: “How ‘bouts we row out to the harbor and see what the India Queen brung in?” And Father would laugh down his briny, brawny laugh and shake his head. “I’m spending the day with my first mate.” First Mate. That’s what Nick had been to Father in those happier times before.

....then in association.

It must be a very great and powerful God who had made the oceans. Nick wondered what language they spoke—what words the Lord had used to tell them this far they could come, but no farther, and here their proud waves must stop. It was a great thought—so great it made Nick feel too small and insignificant, so that he had to whistle his jaunty tune again to remember himself by. Still the sea kissed green against the dark bulwarks and Nick could see it down the cracks in the dock from his vantage of the coil of rope. That same water that slapped quietly against the piling might have come from China. It might have come from China or beyond, perhaps to a place yet uncharted. It might have come from father, from the place it had burbled around his head and shoulders and finally swallowed him up.
Then Nick knew why he had never taken Imperia to the harbor, and why even now he drew his feet closer to him, high up on the coil of cordage far as he could from any latent spray of the brine.

Tangling with Emotion

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."

-James Michene

As a writer, I can tell you that for me, writing emotion is one of the hardest parts of the entire process. We are in the habit of description--if we go out to the store and see something interesting, we always come home and describe the scene or item to someone else--it's ingrained in us. Dialog is easy too--after all, we speak all day long every day, and it is not too difficult to transfer those conversations to the page. [Especially if you are in the habit of speaking to yourself in your mind as well as audibly. :]

But emotion! Emotion is the vapor of a moment--elusive, shadowy, abstract, yet so very important. If we had no emotion, there would be no reason to write. What a sorry world this would be if the writer put no emotion, no heart, into her words, and the reader took no interest, felt no quickening of his pulse, as he read. We would have lost the very keystone of a novel: to transport the reader to worlds, adventures, and stories not his own, but indelibly connected to him through human sympathies and emotions. Ah, there we go again with that emotion.

There must be some level of emotion in each scene you write--if it is overdone, you run the risk of being labeled melodramatic. If it is underdone, your reader will have no interest in turning the page. After all, he could gain more satisfaction from picking at the dry toast-crumbs on the tablecloth than reading yet another heartless description, or soulless dialog. Emotion is defined as "A state of feeling." As writers, it is our duty to conduct the feelings of our readers with our words so that the reader becomes the character in the book. As Emily Dickinson said, "There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away..." That phrase is our missions as writers. We work to craft our words until our readers forget they sit on a prosaic sofa in a shabby room, and believe--nearly--that they are the ones wielding the sword, slaying the villain, winning the maiden, waiting to be rescued, etc. It's a labor of love, for it is not easy, this passage to "lands away."

So we see the need for emotion, and the frailty of it. What now? How can we describe something that we ourselves often can't even put a finger on in our own lives? I would say, put on the part of an observer. Watch other people, and pay attention to your emotions, that you may learn how to write emotion into a scene. One mistake many writers make is thinking that there are three emotions--that is as false a statement as saying there are three legs on a centipede. (unless the said centipede is a veteran of a very cruel buggy-war...) But there they stand: Sorrow, Anger, Joy, and everything in-between is void and without form. This class of writers borders on melodramatic. After all, how many of you only feel those three emotions? Does it then make sense to subject your poor characters to such extremes? There are so many precious feelings in the midst of those three pillars. We can no more disregard merriment, or shame, or amusement, or wistfulness, or pride, or embarrassment, or yearning, or contentment than the centipede could walk as a three-legged bug.

Find a place for these emotions and learn how to write them in such a way that they are palpable. Your readers will thank you, and your characters [if they were real, and I'm not that certain some of them aren't. ;] will thank you. And, if it must be known, I will thank you. ;) ~Rachel

       "...These earth-people, always striving over something. And writers were the worst of the lot. Cecily wondered what they found quite so intriguing about the process. They could not be content with their own lives, but had to go poking about making more trouble for perfectly self-respecting characters who did not want to be bothered with kidnappings and murders and wars over kingdoms. She ought to know."

~The Scarlet-Gypsy Song by Rachel Heffington

P.S. I found a most astonishing development in The Scarlet-Gypsy Song: Cecily's story is the scribbling Mr. Macefield has been working on, and so when he writes that she is banished, she arrives at the Macefield Home, but then his children get into the story and he has to write them out, but he gets a fearful case of Writer's block in the meantime and they are stuck there, battling with Fitz-Hughes and trying desperately to set things straight with no way out but their father's pen. :) No, I'm not excited at all.

A Bit of Wool-gathering ;)

When ideas float in our mind without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call revery, our language has scarce a name for it.  ~John Locke

I am discovering that my pen, like an artist's brush, is limited in the things it can portray. It is my firm belief that there are some things that are so achingly beautiful they cannot be put into words. There are some emotions and sensations that are entirely unwriteable, even to the best of authors. There are some things that--were it even possible--should not be put into words for fear we'd break their fragile existence. I speak out of experience--Have you ever looked upon something so gorgeous it hurt, and then tried to capture the moment in words, only to find at the end that you have put something down on paper that is but a shadow of reality, and yet the reality has conformed to the words on the page and in your memory it hangs there, but a dim reflection of what Had Been? Sometimes we try too hard to describe the indescribable. There are some thoughts that are better left "void and without form" because they are too young and tender to be real thoughts yet. I have some of those reeling around my head right now, and yet I dare not even try to write them formally, even in my journal, lest they become something quite different than they are.
Even this post seems ridiculous and abstract and not exactly what one might call Coherent. I guess there are some things that must be felt, not understood. This might be one of them. Just don't try too hard to ferret out the whys and wherefores thereof. As Matthew Cuthbert said, "Keep a little room for romance, Anne." There's no fun in knowing everything, nor in being so all-powerful with your pen that there are no secrets too grand for your comprehension. Where would be the joy in that? We'd all be stuffy know-it-alls with nothing to think or say that hadn't been thought or said yesterday. And there I go with a Mr. John Knightley quote. I'd better end here before I get any more rambly. Happy Daydreaming! :)

:D :P :] They're so very juvenile! ;) > B)

Good morning lassies! :) I am rather full of new knowledge this morning:

• I *am* killing off the character, and my sisters are revolting against it
• My hour-a-day writing pledge is serving me well and I'm getting about ten first-draft pages an hour with it. I think that's pretty good for starters, don't you?
• Dreams where you are stuck in the shower all night because your little brother won't bring you a bar of soap are not conducive to waking up early to write... ;)
  

But I must come to confess. I have committed the cardinal sin of writing...this...this is hard for me to say aloud...let me take a deep breath...*lets it out*...okay. Ready?

I am guilty of Once-upon-a-time accidently
using emoticons in my STORY!

There. It's out. I quickly erased them, but they were there, horribly leering in black and white over my novel. I don't know what came over my fingertips. I guess they are just so accustomed to typing in emoticons in blog posts, emails, chats, and all that that they forgot to leave it at the door when in the presence of The Authoress. The whole emoticon business bothers me. I mean, it's like you have to have a whole party of smiley faces dancing around your words as if you no longer trust the understanding of your fellow man and think he must have huge red arrows pointing to the meaning behind everything...

I am a big believer in words so carefully crafted and spun that they need no explanation. Words so finely woven that even if our heads can't understand them, our hearts can. Writing that doesn't need emoticons punctuating it because the emotion is already pulsing through the scene. Girls, let's all try to be that sort of writer. Not the sort that needs extra help from the semi-colons and parentheses.

(Now, despite my great temptation to do so, I discover I had better not end with a smiley face. Just know I'm smiling, okay?)