Book Review: Creating Character Emotions

Does your character's heart pound when she's nervous? Does your villain turn beet-red as his anger rises? Do their knees knock together in fear? If so, they've fallen into tired, cliched methods of showing emotion. Enter Ann Hood's book Creating Character Emotions: Writing compelling, fresh approaches that express your characters' true feelings.

Most writing books require reading them from cover to cover, in order to glean the points the author is trying to make. But in Creating Character Emotions, after Hood's introductory pages on writing emotion, the reader can pick and choose the sections that apply to the current manuscript.

The remainder of the book is divided into 36 sections, each devoted to a specific emotion. The emotions are easy to find in alphabetical order, or the reader can glance at the table of contents.

Within each section, Hood describes the intricacies of the emotion, then gives both good and bad examples of writers describing that emotion. The chapters end with practical exercises that enable the reader to apply what was learned to the emotion being studied.

With short chapters of three to four pages, a reader might choose to spend ten minutes per day on this book, and finish it in five weeks. Alternatively, the reader may flip to the emotion they are trying to describe on their current page.

Why are emotions so difficult to describe without resorting to cliches? As Hood says in her opening chapter, "It always strikes me as funny that in our daily lives we pass through a whole spectrum of emotions and show them in many ways, some obvious and some subtle, yet in our fiction we often have trouble moving our characters through emotions effectively. I think of this as the curse of writing like a writer. Sometimes we get a tone or a voice in our head and we decide that is how good writers sound."

For more information about the author, a well-known novelist, check out Ann Hood's website.
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11 comments:

  1. WOW - what great timing for me! I am trying to figure this out right now! Thanks for the recommendation -
    Swati

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  2. You're welcome, Swati! This book is laid out in nice small chunks for busy mamas. I'll probably keep mine in the powder room. : )

    -Debbie

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  3. Thanks for the review. Just your post is a good reminder on avoiding character cliches. :)

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  4. I know what you mean, Hannah. I need something different than characters whose hearts pound all the time!

    -Debbie

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  5. Oh, wow, another book I've never heard of--but need to read. Thanks, Debbie. Comes in at a perfect time for the revisions I'm working on. Putting it at the top of the reading list!

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  6. I feel for you in revisions, Kenda! It's tough. Let me know what you write. I see you're also an SCBWI member.

    -Debbie

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  7. Thanks for this. It's on my wish list.

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  8. Debbie--thanks for asking :-) I write MG historical fiction, and picture books. The hf is taking top billing right now. And I have a chance to pitch my book at a one-day regional SCBWI workshop next month. Wish me luck!

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  9. Anna: I hope you get your wish!

    Kenda: Keep me posted on what happens next month. Pitching is nerve-wracking, but such a great learning experience. Have you done it before? I hope to write an MG historical someday about one of my ancestors. Hoping for the best for you!

    -Debbie

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  10. Thanks for the encouragement, Debbie! I pitched once before, but a totally different project. So it's the first time for my historical. But I'm actually excited. It's making me dig deeper, that's for sure :-)

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  11. So if you're like me, Kenda, you're practicing your pitch in the shower, in the car, lying in bed, etc. It does make you dig deeper. Both Rachelle Gardner and Randy Ingermanson have some great posts on one-sentence summaries (you can do a search for them in the box at the top of the blog). Can't wait to hear how it goes.

    -Debbie

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