The Key To The Reader's Heart: Suffering

I just finished the three lessons on Suffering. It is by far the second most interesting topic. The entire thing is really splendid, I'm really enjoying it and I think that I'm getting a lot out of it. The only thing of it is that I am now trying to do the workbook-pages and having a horrible time with them. o.O

It struck me as very interesting what he was saying about suffering and how it's the key to the reader's heart. The point of writing a book he said was to cause the reader emotion. Without suffering there is no emotion. I was thinking about this and the most powerful scenes ever—they all somehow involve emotion. Interesting... They're the ones that make you want to laugh or cry...

Brilliant.

From there he went on to talk about how there are two sorts of suffering, physical and emotional. And what I found very interesting was that he said that emotional suffering is way stronger than physical. He said that emotional suffering is remembered, but physical can be easily forgotten... He was using the Moria scene in “Fellowship of the Ring” as an example. Frodo is speared by the troll, and it's a blow that probably broke some ribs and such... But we quickly forget about it. But the loss of Gandalf—you don't forget that through the whole rest of “Fellowship of the Ring” and right into “Two Towers”. The loss is so felt.

The emotional was remembered, but the physical quickly forgot.

I got to thinking about this and how it pertains to my story—and I realized that I'm very good at physical suffering. I like to use physical suffering. I'm comfortable with it, and it's—well, I feel the tangible a lot. And find it best when writing. But emotional suffering I'm not generally very comfortable with, and so I don't use it a lot. And I started wondering...is that why there is never really any 'motivation' for the hero winning? When I think I'm making them suffer, I'm not really? Not enough for it to be felt?

Interesting. And then I got to thinking about the end of “Waking Rose” and also “The Midnight Dancers”. Both of which were INCREDIBLY powerful, and incredibly—felt. Uhuhhh... Regina Doman did a tremendous job on them. When I first thought about it I thought—they're physical. And then I realized that the strength in them was that it was both physical and emotional. For both of them, they were very physical and pain played a huge part. But there was something else... Humiliation, I think, that made it absolutely bone-shaking. There was also the whole emotion with Rose in the end of “Waking Rose” that had you just ready to scream... And the very humiliation of the end of “Midnight Dancers” drove me nuts. Both of them had me ready to scream myself.

So maybe since Emotion is strongest and Physical is second—the strongest of all would be the two combined?! I started thinking about it and realized that Regina Doman is the only one I know of who combines subtle, but strong emotion with incredible physical suffering in her climax—and those are the most powerful climaxes.

So using that theory—maybe the strongest climax would be one where you used emotional and physical suffering...

The other weird, weird thing about this is that working through this I am thinking almost more about my NaNo novel instead of my OYAN novel... Which is really very, very bad of me. I'm glad that I'm working through this though, because I think that my NaNo novel shall be 100% better than last year because I think I've got tools to work with this year that I've never had before. Which is just such fun...

With every new technique he introduces I end up sitting here going “That is so brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?” ;) Haha. Bit of a funny situation. We have another novel writing course that we bought years ago that I was going to go through, but I just couldn't connect with it. (It's “Learning to Write the Novel Way”). And OYAN is so different. It is different in a very good way, and I feel like I'm learning a lot but I'm also enjoying it tremendously.

Mr. S is incredible at making learning fun and also turning English into something you can use, without focusing on the things that you don't need. It's also giving me a new look at all books, and what makes a great book. I still cannot understand the classics, but I'm able to see now why I like certain books. There are books that I haven't been able to put a finger on why I liked 'em...but now I'm starting to figure it out. I'm also starting to be able to know WHY a good book is a good book, and for writing I'm starting to understand what has to go into a book for the people reading to care... And it's not all about endings and beginnings and all that... It's all about having a character you can care about, a villain you can fear, a story goal that you can want (and proof from the character (suffering) that it's worth fighting for) and a lesson learned from it. It's not so much about having it stuffed with information and odd facts.

It's about having something that readers can relate to and understand.

Two thumbs up for OYAN.

Next project: Figuring out how to use suffering to enhance not only my OYAN novel but also the other novels I am working on... :p Also to try and attempt to get the worksheets done... :p multiplied by two...