Make Your Readers Cry

How can you cause your readers to cry? No, I don’t mean crying about having bought your book. That’s easy. I want to explore how you should write so as to cause readers to experience a powerful emotional reaction, one you actually intend to cause. It need not be sadness, but any powerful reaction.

I can’t find the precise quote, but Isaac Asimov once said the aim of writing good fiction is to maximize the emotional response of the reader. That makes it sound so mathematical; simply take the mu...