How to Give Your Readers "Feels"
We all want our readers-especially our YA readers-to finish our books feeling like they were there, experiencing everything with the characters we worked so hard to make real within the world we've created. But how does an author make sure their readers are feeling all these emotions alongside our characters?
Well friends, first of all, when readers feel for or with our story, this is called feels. As in, "Ohh, the feels are too much! I can't go on!... But seriously, where's the next book?" And it is hugely important to writing YA fiction.
However, giving your reader feels can be particularly difficult for a variety of reasons. One might be that you struggle with descriptions. A lot of my readers ask me about describing and I see the struggles writers have with descriptions in my students and often in my own writing. Another reason might be that you are disconnected from the particular situation. Maybe, like in I am Deathless, your character is fighting off giant, robotic collector droids. If you live in this world, you likely haven't experienced that, so how can you effectively describe it?
Below I'll list six strategies I've used to get past these hurdles, and hopefully you can go on giving your readers all the feels.
#1. Use physical descriptions.
Focus on the body's reaction to a character's emotions. What does your heart rate do when you are scared? Do your palms start sweating? Does your skin go cold? Do you start to have trouble breathing and swallowing? I bet even just from reading those questions a few of you started feeling some of those symptoms of fear: Because reading is a form of experiencing. If you want them to experience these emotions, make their body go through it too.
For example, in October of 2014, I had a really huge panic attack. As in call off work, stay at home unable to move kind of panic attack. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what sparked it, but around that time I was having a lot of panic attacks. This one was the worst. I knew that if I wrote about it, I would probably feel better, since writing has always been a way for me to calm down; however, I couldn't bring myself to write fully. All I could do was write a list, so I made a list in my phone about everything my body was experiencing. I knew that in the third book of my trilogy, Isla would experience a panic attack at some point, so I wanted to have a detailed list of what that felt like for when I would write that section. I still have the list too.
Panic attack:
-tight chest
-heart throbbing
-feel the blood pumping from your chest, because it's suddenly thick and cold
-trouble breathing, forget to, take deep breaths
-just want everything out of your body so you can no longer be part of it
-want to cry or shut down or both
-nauseous
-whole body is cold
Even reading over that list now makes my heart start to pound, especially since I wrote it in the middle of a panic attack, so I even sort of captured the quick, staccato phrasing one might have if they were having trouble breathing.
So the point is, when you're feeling anything-even the bad feelings you want to push away, like panic or depression (I've written lists for that too)-use it to your advantage. There is always a silver lining, and that is that you will be able to write about it better in the future. Even if you're mostly content and happy, write about it! Writing about happiness and love often sound so oversimplified. Show your readers how to feel happiness too.
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