Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)

by Lisa Cron

When conveying how a character feels, the answer isn’t happy, sad, angry, jealous, or bereft, gut wrenching or otherwise. Why? Because those things are, you guessed it, general. They are the “What,” when, as always, what the reader wants to know is, Why? The secret is this: the emotion emanates from how the character makes sense of what’s happening, rather than mentioning the nearest big emotion that sums it up. Your goal isn’t to tell us how they feel, so we know it intellectually; it’s to put us in their skin as they struggle, which then evokes the same emotion in us. That feeling will be subtle, nuanced, and layered. And, most likely, ineffable, which is why you want to shun those massive generalizations.