Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings - Part II

Unbosoming

I journal. Or if you prefer, I keep a journal.

I’ve kept journals on an ongoing basis for a good part of my adult life. (Boxes of notebooks are packed away waiting for my kids to read after my demise. Pity them.)

I’ve often said that as an author/writer I feel it’s crucial that I journal. But then I always add that I would journal even if I were not an author.

I don’t believe there is anything in my life that is more cathartic than writing out my feelings. Or you could say, spilling my guts. Getting things off my chest. Ann Frank, when she first started writing in her journal (Diary of Anne Frank), called it “unbosoming.” One must appreciate a young teenage girl who could express journaling so succinctly.

I not only journal, but I’ve even taught community education classes on the subject of journaling. I feel it's that important to emotional well-being.

Feelings in the Novel

In my previous blog post, Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings - Part I, I touched on the necessity of weaving feelings into your character with the purpose of causing the reader to care about that character.

In that post I stated:

Events cannot stand alone no matter how exciting you believe those events to be. The events must be lived through a character who reacts to them.

I further stated:

I’ve seen way too many dead stories where feelings (emotions) are either thin or non-existent.

Out of Touch with Feelings

Lack of feelings in a novel, could possibly be a by-product of a novelist out of touch with his or her own feelings. After all, one cannot give what one does not have.

What might be a root cause of a person being out of touch with deep inner feelings? Any number of things. We are wounded by people, events, and circumstances. It hurts. We don’t like the pain. So we stuff down feelings to numb the pain.

Now, if you are the aspiring novelist who has spent a lifetime tamping down your own personal feelings, how will you ever create realistic feelings in your characters?

Two things may transpire.

1. You could struggle for years producing weak plots and never know why.
   OR
2. You could actually meet yourself in the emotions of your character and begin your own journey of coming face-to-face with those submerged emotions in a healthy way.

(I guess I could add a third here—you might start keeping a personal journal and begin your own self-analysis process.)

Find Out Who You Are

Author, David Morrell (of Rambo fame) was mentored in his younger years by another author, Philip Klass. Morrell remembers Klass telling him:

Look inside yourself. Find out who you are. In your case, I suspect that means find out what you’re most afraid of, and that will be your subject for your life or until your fear changes.

Find out who you are. Whoa! That, my friends, is a powerful statement. It is classic advice for every novelist.

Avoid Dumping Feelings on the Reader

But then we must quickly add: If the sole purpose of the novel is so the novelist can dump feelings, the work will suffer.

Author and writing teacher, Leonard Bishop, puts it this way:

The reader is not interested in the writer’s subjective vomitive revelations when they offer no contribution to the story or novel.

This is why I am sold on the journaling process. It ensures (as much as is humanly possible) that my subjective vomitive revelations are in my journals and not in my novels.

Now I’m back to my main theme: Feelings, Nothing more than feelings. That’s pretty much what novels are all about—from conception, through the development, to the eye, heart, and mind of the reader: the character's feelings--which then touch the reader's feelings.

Did you really think it was anything else?

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