Brene Brown’s Guide To Creating An Emotional Arc Using Shame

Shame is one of the most powerful and underused emotions in a fiction-writer’s toolbox. Shame is pervasive and common, it’s ugly and hard to capture well, but deep point of view is the perfect technique to use with this complex emotion. Readers cheer for characters who are relate-able, who stand up to bullies, who stay and fight when they don’t have to. They relate to characters who have flaws!

And shame is one emotion everyone studiously avoids, denies, and conceals and because of that can...