How Are We Wired?

This past weekend, my two-year-old and I were watching Toy Story 3. Spoiler alert: For those of you who haven’t seen this movie, there is a portion near the end where the toys are all put in danger and end up on their way to an incinerator in a city trash dump. I can honestly say I have never seen my toddler so distraught over a cartoon movie (he doesn’t watch that many) as he repeatedly voiced his concern that the little toys were going to burn. Fortunately, as I expected, the toys were saved and both my son and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Still, the incident got me thinking about how we are all wired and how sensitized or desensitized we become to certain situations. My toddler, not having seen much of this world, was definitely not desensitized to Toy Story 3 and the possible loss of toys he had come to care for in watching parts of this movie. I, however, while not worried about the mass threat to the toys, did cry at the end of the movie as Andy realizes just how much he is going to miss his toys and most especially Woody (my toddler was running around distracted by then).

While this experience wasn’t at all extraordinary, it certainly made me give thought to our audience as we write. I am by no means an expert in psychology, but as a writer, we aim to create emotions within our readers and the truth of the matter is that unless we make it big enough to communicate with our readers on a vaster scale, we never truly know how they are affected or whether we met our goal so to speak. This is one of many reasons why it is great to get beta readers or work with others who are willing to critique our work.

Now I’ll pose a few questions and would love some answers as this area remains very elusive to me and I know I probably don’t always elicit the emotions I aim to. First off, how do you other authors out there handle this? As for readers, do you all ever reach out to the authors to provide feedback or even reviews? If you don’t, I’d say we are probably more receptive to it than you’d think and would love to hear from you (at least I speak for myself).

Happy Writing this week and here is a homework task: write a scene (real or fake just for the exercise) and write down the emotions you want your reader to feel while reading it. Then test it out on one of your friends/family, etc. Success?

Filed under: Toni Kelly, Writer's Life