Secondhand Emotions
Years ago, Goldie Hawn and Burt Reynolds made a movie called Best Friends. There was a very funny scene in it in which he walks into their kitchen and finds her sobbing. When he asks her why, she essentially tells him she loves her parents so much that she "practices" their deaths by thinking about it until she cries, so that when the real thing happens--or so she thinks--it won't be as devastating. It's practice grief. Of course, he tells her that sort of thing just doesn't work. Because it doesn't. We can't practice grief any more than we can practice how we're going to feel the moment we hear our baby's first cry, or the moment we learn we have some incurable disease. Any seminal moment is so unique and primal that we can't practice it.
I think about emotions and their range a lot as a fiction writer. Some emotions are brilliant hued, and some are pale. In the last few months, I have witnessed some bad behavior on the part of a handful of people I am acquainted with peripherally. And the funny thing is in every case, I consider the source. If someone who behaves like gutter trash does something that's basically unkind or dishonest or trashy . . . it can hardly be a searing pain, because it's almost like you expect it. On an emotional scale . . . it's rather pale. If someone you LOVE and adore and trust betrays you . . . THAT is the brilliant-hued, searing, agonizing emotion. It's gonna feel like you're being stabbed in the heart. If you've ever experienced that kind of betrayal, or had it happen to a friend, you know what I mean. There is NO comparison. Like grief, there's no way to practice it.
In writing, I feel like it's my job to somehow make the emotions I want conveyed on paper be as brilliant-hued and true and searing as possible. It's not an easy task. Like Goldie Hawn in the movie, it's like trying to invoke a strong emotion in a fictional or fake scenario. I want the reader to FEEL what my characters feel, but it's secondhand. Only by pulling them into the story as fully and richly as possible can I hope to achieve what I want.
In my wip, one of the main characters is going to suffer greatly and die. I am HOPING by the time the reader gets to page 350, they're going to cry and grieve. How strongly will depend on the writing--and of course on the reader, too.
To me, this is one of the central challenges of writing. To make it so real it's the visceral emotions, and not the secondhand, detached kind.
Thoughts?
10 comments:
I like the way you disassembled emotions. It pushed me to reflect on personal situations. I sometimes forget the real reactions associated with certain types of behavior. For instance, you compared trashy behavior from a trashy person as not really shocking - it doesn't have the same impact as when someone does something beyond their behavior.
This past year there have been a few people in my life who acted outside of my perception, their behavior revealing a side that I just could not comprehend. It made me lose faith in relationships, which felt like being stabbed with a dull knife. But, damn, those experiences have some worth - I can interpret them in my writing (hopefully).
When George Washington was betrayed by Benedict Arnold it was out of character for Arnold, really. He had been first to leap into war against the British, he had gone into battle when it was a forgone conclusion he would lose and he won.
Washington's behavior reflected the betrayal. He walked among the men shirtless, dazed. This was also opposite his norm. The key to writing effective betrayal is hinting without revealing the betrayer's true state of mind. Arnold often complained of being passed up for promotions he thought he should have had.
When George Washington was betrayed by Benedict Arnold it was out of character for Arnold, really. He had been first to leap into war against the British, he had gone into battle when it was a forgone conclusion he would lose and he won.
Washington's behavior reflected the betrayal. He walked among the men shirtless, dazed. This was also opposite his norm. The key to writing effective betrayal is hinting without revealing the betrayer's true state of mind. Arnold often complained of being passed up for promotions he thought he should have had.
I can remember being very upset when Catherine died at the end of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I was a junior in high school the first time I read it. It would have been very easy for him to have changed those last few pages and let Catherine and the baby live, but he knew exactly what he was doing. Someday I'm going to write the happily-ever-after version for my own amusement.
Kath:
I think even in fiction, those "twists"--when someone who seemed like a good character is revealed to be the bad guy--can seem so shocking! It's that word you use, you cannot "comprehend."
Or ever see a woman (or man) go back time and time and time again to the lover who is bad news. Then they act shocked when they are hurt. Why? How can you be so shocked? It reveals more about the person who goes back than the person who treats them poorly. But then compare that to the person truly blindsided by an affair. Where even the neighbors say, "I can't believe it happened to x couple because they seemed to happy."
Richmond:
WOW! What a great story. I didn't know that!!!!
Jude:
That was the first book I got a little weepy over.
I figure the fiction writer has essentially two key jobs. One is to transfer actions/information to the page so the reader can envision/understand it. The second is to transfer emotions so the reader can feel them. The first one is fairly easy, compared to the second one. The emotional thing is a flat-out bitch.
Mark:
Absolutely. I'm working my way into the devastating last third of the arc of my novel . . . and it's making it really be rich with emotion.
Even in Freudian Slip--a comedy--if you didn't buy her grief over her father dying on 9/11 . . . then certain elements weren't going to work.
Tell me what book it is when your main character dies so that I won't mistakenly buy it. I don't mind secondary characters dying, but I draw the line at main characters. I watched "Hair" for the first time in high school and I screamed at my girlfriend because she didn't warn me that Berger died.
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