Where Emotions Interact With Events
Below story arcs, below scenes, there is a tiny mechanism present that makes all stories breathe and become alive in the reader's mind...
Excerpt from WriterpreneurOS Book Six - now released (see below…)
By Dwight V. Swain (from a 1990 lecture)
MOTIVATION-REACTION UNITS
This happens and that happened. And the other thing happened, and I'm talking now about the details.
He drew a deep breath. Not “He drew a deep breath and this and this and this.” But: “He drew a deep breath. He suffused his face.”
And then – this is especially important, but I don't think you're going to find it difficult: Write in motivation-reaction units. Write in motivation-reaction units.
That's simply saying that where your character is concerned, if you stick a pin in him, he yells, “Ouch!” He doesn't yell “Ouch,” and then you stick the pin in him. But you would be amazed how often people make that mistake.
You won't have any great difficulty doing this because you already know how to do it.
You know how, because you have written dialogue – and dialogue to a degree goes in a straight line.
You have stimulus. One person speaks response, the other answers this. This first person responds to that – back and forth, back and forth. It's like a tennis game.
You do the same thing only you don't do it just in dialogue. You do it all through the blooming book. Wherever you're in a scene: one character acts, something comes in from outside... I got it down at this down last night, for fear I had was not making it clear:
The wind had an icy edge to it. That's a motivation. Eddie shivered and dug his hands deeper into his pockets. Response: motivation. The wind kept right on chilling – response: still shivering. Eddie turned his back to it and headed for the house – stimulus: even as he did. So the lights went out: response: Eddie stopped short – and we go on. But do you see what I'm getting at?
This is how you write a copy that moves along and people don't get confused, but they understand. You only learn by experience. To the degree that you build these things. But the general principle is right there and it's real simple.
It's just a matter of practice. You sit down and you write bad copy for a while and correct it and then you find out how to write good copy. Just as simple as that. And you think, I'm kidding, but I'm not. It's that matter of practice.
Hard work is the big issue always.
Now it will help you if you help your readers to feel. Here's the way you will help them to feel: In the first place, you use action verbs. That is to say he turned, he sat down, he jumped, he whirled. Things that show something happening. Maybe it's only a small thing.
Then you use pictorial nouns. The more specific you get, get the better off you are. When you talk about a female, you haven't said much. When you say a woman, you have said more. When you say an elderly woman with ines on her face, you've said a great deal more each time. The more pictorial it is, the more it paints a picture in your reader's mind and therefore your reader knows what's going on.
You also use sensory language as much as you can. That is, you write in terms of things you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch. You'd be amazed how many people don't do that. This one also is important.
See, I've been saying, well now these are minor things. You already know this. You may or may not know. What you need to do is to write to an emotional clock.
What do I mean by an emotional clock? I mean that you measure the amount of copy that you put down according to the tension and excitement of the time, of what's happening.
If you are writing about having lunch in a greasy spoon restaurant or a McDonald's or whatever, probably it isn't worth devoting a lot for attention too.
If you are writing about the villain holding a gun on you, and his finger ia tightening to the the point of going white on the trigger – and knowing that you are going to be blown away the next minute – you stretch that out. You make the character suffer and you make him suffer by going into all these businesses in terms of motivation and reaction, every little fragment of thing is pregnant with meaning. Not only pregnant, but bursting with rich meaning.
What you judge by is subjective time rather than objective time. Objective time is the thing that's on my watch here. Every moment and every second is the same. Every minute is the same.
What you live by is subjective time. You live by the excitement content of the moment.
I think Albert Einstein was the one that said something to the effect that time passes quickly when you're kissing a pretty girl. It passes slowly when you sit on a hot stove.
You build according to the subjective emotional importance of the event.
Now released in ebook format - paperback coming soon!
