Evoking Emotion

Years ago, while I was living in the Islands, my husband, Jim, made the careless comment that it shouldn’t take more than six weeks for someone to write a novel. (For the sake of background, let me confess that it took me no less than eleven-and-a-half years to complete the first draft of my first novel.) Feeling feisty, I suggested he do so. “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re the writer.” And so I took him up on the challenge.

Thus began my regimen of writing every single day (except one day when I was too sick to get out of bed), mostly in the evenings after I had worked at our business most of the day, picked up our daughter from school, prepared dinner, and cleaned up the kitchen afterwards.

At the end of five-and-a-half weeks, I handed Jim the polished first draft of a novel, the original version of Sailing Away from the Moon. Okay, it was not a long novel, but it was long enough to fill the bill, and after all, this time around I had wanted to write something “simple and elegant” (my words), not overly long and complex or requiring tons of research. I felt I had succeeded.

And so, when I saw an opportunity to send my new manuscript off to a reputable New York literary agency where one of its book editors would review it and send me feedback—with the possibility of representation, of course—I jumped at the chance. And then I got the results and burst into tears.

“What?” Jim asked, as I sank into his arms and sobbed.

I was too distraught to speak. I just handed him the letter, and that’s when he started laughing.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I wailed.

“Sweetheart,” he said, when he could stop laughing long enough to speak coherently, “this editor criticizes your book for not evoking emotion in the reader, and yet she obviously hates your male character. She rants and raves for two whole pages about whatever little thing she can find wrong with your book. I’d say you’ve received a most unprofessional response from this editor. And she says your book doesn’t evoke emotion?”

So I stopped crying and thought about it for a minute and realized that he was right. Needless to say, it was not the emotional response I’d been hoping for, but nonetheless, it was an extremely emotional response. To make matters worse, I really did take her specific criticisms to heart, and I was frustrated by her comment that my writing didn’t evoke an emotional response in the reader (never mind her own emotional response) since the only example she gave to support that criticism was this one sentence from my manuscript: “The following year she accepted a job at a much larger paper in Fort Lauderdale.”

I agree. One would not expect that particular sentence to evoke emotion in the reader. Nor was it intended to do so. It is obviously one of those necessary evils in the novelist’s world called a bridge sentence, which alerts the reader to the fact that time has passed and Maggie, our heroine, now finds herself in a new setting. So while my editor/critic was not helpful to me in this particular aspect of her criticism, some of my readers have been.

When my friend Sally read the portion of the story where Ashley, Maggie’s true love, is being released from a foreign prison on a stretcher and the small photo of Maggie that he had worn around his neck is returned to him, Sally said with great vehemence: “He would not ‘place it on his chest,’ he would clutch it to his heart!”

That is the kind of emotion I was hoping to evoke.

The New York editor’s criticisms were not all wrong, and I did pay attention and make corrections where I thought they were warranted. In so doing, I expanded and revised the plot, which resulted in a much better story. So I say “thank you” to said editor/critic. I’m sorry she took such a dislike to my male romantic interest, but at least you might say that makes him a memorable character, and most of my readers seem to manage to forgive him his misdeeds.

So do not judge your fiction solely based on what some literary editor/agent/critic has to say about it. Judge it more by your readers’ reactions. When my readers tell me with tears in their eyes that “this is one of the best books I’ve ever read” or “Maggie and Ashley are just like [my recently deceased fiancé] and me,” or say, “now I can’t help but compare all literary romantic relationships to that of Maggie and Ashley, but unfortunately, none of the others has measured up,” then I know that I have indeed succeeded in evoking an emotional response in my readers. And whom are you writing your book for if not your readers?

© 2016 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.

Photo: Happiness Is a Warm Bath © 2016 Ann Henry, all rights reserved.