Craft a more effective story by using your characters' emotional beats in your plot - in this video I'll show you how using examples from Harry Potter and Stranger Things. Previous videos in this series:  1 Story structure overview   2 Catalyst examples   Make planning (and writing) your novel easy. Grab The Novel Approach Planning Worksheet for just $9 (AU).   Jump on the waiting list for The Novel Approach Ultimate Accountability membership .    ===== Music: https://www.purple-planet.com ===== ===== Fair Use: Stills and clips of copyrighted material is used for commentary and educational purposes. ===== Emotional arc timeline examples This video goes through:  - Recap and explanation of the three-act structure re-drawn as an emotional timeline: 00:50.0 - SPOILER ALERT: Examples of emotional timelines from:  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Starts at: 01:35.0 -- Ends at: 03:35.0  Stranger Things Season 1 (Mike) Starts at: 03...

This post originally appeared October 15, 2009. “Feelings…Nothing more than…feelings…” The words of that old song haunt me as I struggle to polish my manuscript. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned through study, reading, and feedback from critique groups is that emotions are critical in creating three-dimensional characters. Have you heard the description, “The characters are flat?” That’s because the author is telling the reader what the character is doing and feeling, but the reader is not identifying with that character. Reading a novel is like donning the skin of the main character, jumping into his head, and living the adventures vicariously right along with him. As a reader, I want to see, smell, hear, touch and taste exactly what the character is smelling, hearing, touching an tasting. For just a short time, I want to “be” that character. Easier said than done. Suppose Gertrude is mad at her boyfriend. “I hate you!” she cried angrily. Doesn’t this let us know he...

It’s pretty impossible to be an effective creative writer if you don’t feel. Our ability to emote, to go from joy to despair, to have experienced first-hand situations that move us across the spectrum of emotions, or to have experienced those emotions via second-hand situations through loved ones and those we just meet as we pass by through life enables us to explore those feelings and emotions in our writing. Readers often come to our stories in the hopes of connecting with the stories—seeing themselves in the characters we develop, seeing their current situation played out in our words. If our readers laugh and cry, experience joy and pain, shouldn’t our characters? And for our characters to realistically convey those emotions to the reader, shouldn’t we as writers be just as in tune with our emotions and feelings? Robert Plutchik’s wheel of emotion, created in 1980 List of Emotions – via Wikipedia [ LINK ] ----- Writing in 140 is my attempt to say something somewhat relevan...