Merry Go Round

Emotion creates conflict. Conflict creates emotion. Round and round and round I go[image error] (get it? Couldn't help the play on my name — when you're name is Merry, you have to have fun with it!) Anyway, these are the two big take-aways I got from the Michael Hauge seminar I attended all day on Saturday.

The very first thing Hauge said, the very first thing in my notes, is "Successful stories, stories that sell, create a positive emotional response in the person who reads it." And then, "You must elicit emotion to be a successful writer."

Yeah, I get that. I read novels to escape from the world. I read to live someone else's life for a little while. I want to get emotionally involved in a story. If I don't, it wasn't worth my time. I also want the thrills and action, and the shiver of delight that comes with reading about serial killers or shape-shifters, but deep down, below the fun stuff, it is the emotion I read for. So, how do I get that emotional response in the readers of my work?

Hauge tells us. "Emotion grows out of conflict, not desire. It is the obstacles the hero must overcome that makes it emotionally involving. This is the hero's outer journey." So, it's not enough that my hero (or heroine, as the case may be) wants something. Not even that he needs something and will do whatever it takes to get it. That goal, while important, is not the be-all and end-all. It is the conflict that stops my hero from getting what he wants that creates that emotional response in my reader that I'm going for. So, there we are, conflict creates emotion. The conflict faced, endured and successfully dealt with by my hero creates in the reader a satisfying emotional experience.

But what about the opposite statement, where does that fit in? Emotion creates conflict. That's that inner journey that Hauge talks about. That's the inner longing or need that my hero has to deal with or realize that they have. This longing, according the Hauge, is created by a wound from the hero's life (usually childhood). This wound creates in the hero a belief about how the world works that, while logical, is completely wrong — that Shrek is completely unlovable because he's an ogre, that because of his stammer, Bertie (King George VI by the end of the movie) is not capable of being a strong king when his country needs him to be so. This emotion, this wound, creates conflict for the hero, a conflict that must be overcome by the end of the story.

So here I am, not feeling quite so dizzy as I did at the beginning. In my story, I need to find out what my hero's emotional wound is in order to create conflict in order to create emotion in the reader. Ha! Straight forward and in one sentence. Now I've got to get to work!

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