# Reader Emotion: Spectator vs. Participant



## Kyle R (Sep 18, 2015)

RITA Award-winning author, Alicia Rasley, discusses handling emotion in a scene—and the reader's role as spectator versus participant. What do you think of her advice? :encouragement:


Don't forget the first rule: When the character cries, the reader doesn't have to.

That is, if all the emotion is spelled out in the scene, then there's nothing for the reader to DO, no interaction, no addition. The reader becomes a spectator, not a participant. 

---

He sank into despair, knowing that he would never find her now. Grief overwhelmed him. He was helpless against its brutal onslaught, against the agonizing pain of her loss.

---

That is going to distance the reader for 2 reasons. 

1) When it's all spelled out, the reader doesn't have anything to contribute, anything to do. The emotion is already all there, all spelled out, and the reader in an essential sense isn't needed to interpret, understand, experience. 

2) There's an instinctive rejection of "purple prose," of excessive emotion. It feels claustrophobic, kinda like being trapped in an elevator with someone who wants to tell you all about her terrible break-up. 

But if you leave a bit of room, if you sketch rather than broad-brush, the reader is drawn in rather than being pushed away. And the reader gets to participate in the experience by imagining—interpolating—the emotion rather than being told it. For example:

---

She was gone. 

Tom pressed his back hard against the rock and stared out at the moonlit sea. Maybe she was out there—no. It was time to give up. The tide was ebbing, leaving behind arcs of foam in the sand. Glistening there, just at the water edge, was a single shell perfect, unbroken, pristine. Tom walked over, bent down to pick it up. Then he straightened, leaving it there in the sand. Slowly he brought his boot down on the shell and crushed it.

---

The reader is trained to interpret action. So Tom's destruction of the shell what's that mean? Well, the reader can interpret it different ways. That is, she can think that Tom's destruction of the shell shows his anger at fate. Or she can see the shell as a symbol of his hopes and dreams, now crushed.

At any rate, she'll have to work a bit to experience the emotional context of that action, and that's good. When a reader interacts with the scene, fills in the gaps, figures it out, she has a greater investment in the experience. And she will identify more with the character, as she has literally "felt" with him. She hasn't been told how he feels. Rather, she's felt his feelings.
​
​— Alicia Rasley (_You can read the rest of her article here: http://www.aliciarasley.com/artemo.htm_)​


----------



## shadowwalker (Sep 18, 2015)

Might want to add back in the first couple paragraphs of your quote - I couldn't figure out what she was actually trying to say until I read those. But yeah, now I agree with her (I think ). If you spell it all out through the character's reactions, rather than "setting the mood" throughout the scene, the reader is just watching, not _there_. Sort of a macro telling not showing that robs the reader.


----------



## ppsage (Sep 18, 2015)

One thing she doesn't seem to recognize is that putting the character always in the subject distances the reader automatically. Put grief in the subject instead, with the character in the object. Then a sentence or fragment without mention of the character. Then back down. Use the grammar to make a natural rising and falling modulation of the reader's involvement, if it's been determined that's what's wanted.


----------



## EmmaSohan (Sep 18, 2015)

Her example shows that if an emotion is important, we should not endlessly tell. Once is pretty much enough for a tell, and shows are usually needed.

So I agree. Was I supposed to get something else? I can't imagine writing the second scene if I wanted to communicate what my MC was feeling. If I didn't care (which pretty much never happens to me), then yes crushing the perfect unbroken pristine shell was a wonderful image.


----------



## EmmaSohan (Sep 19, 2015)

Thanks Kyle, this was interesting to think about.

It's like she wants to tell a story that evokes an emotion. So it shouldn't really matter what emotion it is, as long as there is one.

For me, the feelings and emotions of the main character are an important part of the story, so I need the reader to empathize with (or at least understand) the right emotion or feeling. I love the power of a good show, but I have to like the speed and precision of a good tell.


----------



## Phil Istine (Sep 19, 2015)

Yes, I have a feeling that she nailed it, and that was important for me to read and digest.
Something popped into my head while I was reading, so presumably it's valid.  I was reminded of a situation where someone would be trying to tell their friend about some feelings and problems that they are having.  The friend responds with something like, "Yes, I know exactly what you mean.  That happened to me too.  I felt blah blah blah ..."  Apart from being bad manners, they've also stolen the feelings.  I guess that an author can do something similar.
Thanks for that Kyle.


----------



## handsomegenius (Oct 24, 2015)

Sensory language can be a useful tool to help bring the reader into feeling what a character feels. If someone is panicking then you might talk about the thud-thud-thud of a racing heart or if they're furious you might describe how they're breathing.


----------



## JustRob (Oct 24, 2015)

I see the merit in the advice but wonder whether it is universally applicable. Much of my writing involves the inner thoughts and feelings of my characters and it would be too much of an artifice to demonstrate these with displacement activities or ambiguities such as the long meaningful gazes which seem to occupy so much of an actor's time in modern visual entertainments. The problem with those is that they can be quite meaningless, usually just meaning that the episode wouldn't quite run the full length without them.

I'm also unsure how one can depict inner conflicts without telling of them if they involve pure unspoken conjecture on the part of a character. I've recently posted an updated opening chapter to my novel  here and it focusses almost entirely on the thoughts and feelings of one character while very little action takes place. It has been suggested that it may be too wordy and may be telling too much, leaving the reader with little to imagine, as has been suggested here, but it has no excuse for displacement actions or symbolic behaviour, no shells to crush or distant horizons to gaze at. In fact the whole point about it is that the character has nothing to do but contemplate her own thoughts, feelings and sensations and she doesn't even have anything in her possession or around her to toy with to express them visually. 

The answer from some might be on a par with that old joke about the traveller asking a local how to get somewhere and the local saying, "If I were you I wouldn't start from here," but that happens to be where I've chosen to start, in a chapter aptly entitled "Nowhere to begin".

Personally I am loathe to clutter my story with tables which mysteriously materialise when people need to bang on them to show their emotions or any of the other devices that get suggested for use in such situations. I might actually write "He banged his fist on the table which had mysteriously materialised at that very moment to enable him to make his point," but only in a suitable context, which is quite possible in my stories. Apart from that if a pan-faced character is hiding his emotions completely, then I guess I'll just have to mention it, not show it.

If anyone cares to read and comment on that chapter of mine I'd appreciate it, by the way, given that it may well be illustrative of the very issues mentioned here. Any suggestions for another approach are welcome.


----------



## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord (Oct 27, 2015)

JustRob said:


> Much of my writing involves the inner thoughts and feelings of my characters and it would be too much of an artifice to demonstrate these with displacement activities or ambiguities...
> 
> I'm also unsure how one can depict inner conflicts without telling of them if they involve pure unspoken conjecture on the part of a character



I agree that sometimes there is no other way to reveal the inner thoughts of a character except by directly revealing it, but I think that it is also helpful to have a physical or visual complement. For example, in Sophia House, a lot of the book happens in Pawel's mind as he is writing letters to someone, but before starting the letter he always watches the ink drip from the tip of the pen. This becomes symbolically important as the book progresses but also provides something for the readers to visualize as they are hearing the thoughts of the character. I think it is good for readers to have an image to cling to even when they are reading a section that is predominantly a character's thoughts.


----------



## Aquilo (Nov 2, 2015)

Agreed. Reader interaction is part of the process. And you can dissect the sentence further and pinpoint what makes it hard for the reader to interact. How it deals with abstract language that the reader can't easily visualize:



> He sank into despair, knowing that he would never find her now. Grief overwhelmed him. He was helpless against its brutal onslaught, against the agonizing pain of her loss.



By exchanging abstract for concrete, it can help bring in interact: mention 'despair' and the reader can't visualize it too easily. Exchange it to 'knees', something a reader can picture easily and also brings up something familiar to them that they can empathize with: he sank [to his knees], it grounds the reader a little more in the scene. Although 'sank to his knees' becomes cliche, so the writer looks at more original expressions of grief.

But it's also balance. Sometimes a simple "She's pissed" is needed. Pace etc needs to vary etc.


----------



## JustRob (Nov 2, 2015)

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> I think it is good for readers to have an image to cling to even when they are reading a section that is predominantly a character's thoughts.



Yes, this is what I aimed at in my opening chapter with a girl talking to her own image in a mirror. Not only does it give the reader something to focus on but it also graphically depicts her being in two minds about having broken up with her boyfriend. When she finally suggests that her reflection stay with him while she herself won't it seems clear that she still has doubts that she is fighting. It would have been difficult to describe this inner conflict without the external device. That sort of opportunity doesn't always present itself though.


----------



## Cirrus (Nov 18, 2015)

Although the relative success of the given examples fit the assertion I  don't think this is because of the reasons claimed.   If empathy had already been established then the reader _would_ be affected by  the character's emotions, even if only as a spectator.


----------



## Gamer_2k4 (Dec 3, 2015)

Surely there's some middle ground between overly poetic emotion and overly poetic symbolism? And why is it okay to "work" to interpret a broken shell, but not "work" to interpret purple prose?

Furthermore, if we're trained to interpret action, why not show a relevant action? For an example of what I mean, here's one of my favorite paragraphs from my own story:



> Markus’s cheeks were cold and damp from the constant snowfall, but now narrow bands of warmth cut through the numbness.  The tears continued unbidden but unchecked as he turned his face to the night sky.  The snowflakes kept falling, melting on his face, stinging his eyes, and collecting on his hair.  He didn’t look away.



There's no ridiculous symbolism to wade through; we simply have a character reacting.  We see he's crying, yes, but that hardly means the reader doesn't have to.  Rather, it gives us something to relate to.  It gives us an opportunity to empathize.  And isn't that what writing is all about?


----------

