Weeks 10-11: Emotion

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The Skinny

 

I cut down the number of characters. I deepened the characters I have. This week I ensure that all characters follow a reasonable emotional arc from beginning to end of the story.

 

The News

  • I moved all posts from my blog unofficialhamlet.com to spmurphyauthor.com. The site will launch next week.

  • I read Writing for Emotional Impact. It is a glossary of techniques for eliciting sentiment from an audience, with particular attention to screenwriting but plenty for a novelist to chew on. 4.5/5

  • I am reading The Emotional Craft of Fiction which has been fantastic. It is a series of essays with examples from literature and exercises for the reader's own fiction that draws from the author's many years of experience as an agent and book-lover. 5/5

Russian Curses

Three fascinating phrases have popped up in my reading. In Gorky Park, I was shocked to find characters using a creative phrase about each other's mothers (in the interest of my younger readers - looking at you, little brothers - I will leave the exact phrase out), especially because the characters would say it to their close friends. Fortunately, the narrator explains that the phrase, while extremely offensive in English, is just the "national curse" in Russia.The other two are fascinating for their subtlety rather than their shock value. Both are from the interviews in Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. One character references "that old Odessa curse: May you live on your income."My personal favorite, though it may have originated in China, comes from a later interview with an old Russian: "May you live in interesting times."

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