Emotional Filters By: Nancy Conner

In Immediate Fiction, Jerry Cleaver identifies five essential components to fiction: conflict, action, resolution, emotion, and showing. About emotion, Cleaver writes, "Emotion is the trickiest part of life and the trickiest part of fiction. Emotion is the payoff, the ultimate connection, where identification occurs, where the reader becomes the character and feels what the character feels... If the emotion's not there, the character's not there. If the character's not there, the reader's not there--and neither is the author in any satisfying way." Clearly, good fiction requires strong emotion, but how do we deal with this tricky element?

Applying an emotional filter is a useful technique for getting the reader fully into the character's mind and world. Rather than writing neutral descriptions, for example, the author colors the description according to the character's state of mind. This helps to increase identification with the character and brings the reader more fully into what John Gardner calls the "fictional dream."

The emotional filter is a way of showing (as opposed to telling) how a character is feeling, thinking, judging, interpreting. For example, looking out my window I might observe, "Two feet of snow covered the ground." That doesn't say anything about my state of mind. If I write, "The pine trees bent under a heavy burden of snow" or "A pristine white blanket snuggled around the house," you start to get a sense of how I'm feeling as I look at the landscape, even though I didn't write a word about feelings. That's running the description through an emotional filter.

The following article (from The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, Writer's Digest Books, 2002) goes into more detail.

Fiction's Connecting Link: Emotion by Kathy Jacobson (excerpt)

Apply the Emotional Filter

Everything in your story will have greater impact if you have your character interpret it emotionally. Involve the five senses to give your writing sensory texture, then make sure you convey your character's emotional assessment of what she experiences. For example, on assignment for the Star System Regulatory Agency, Lily lands on a planet she's never visited before. She's going to notice the color of the sky, the bleakness of the landscape, the odor of the air, and the flavor of the water, but her impressions are going to be more important than the details in drawing your reader into the scene. Let's see a simple description first:

Lily stepped through the Theta Gate and took in the scene before her. Humanoids from a dozen planets mingled with multi-pods, avians, and the local Zerips. Pink clouds floated across the red sky. The air had a distinctly chlorine odor, and a few leafless trees lined the main route into the city.

Now let's run the scene through Lily's emotional filter and see how much richer it becomes:

Lily stepped through the Theta Gate and wrinkled her nose in distaste. Humanoids from a dozen planets mingled with multi-pods, avians, and the local Zerips, but only the Zerips looked at home under the hideous red sky. She tried to filter enough oxygen out of the chlorine-heavy air to satisfy her lungs, but gave up after a few breaths. The air mix wouldn't kill her, although it didn't seem to do much for the few leafless trees that lined the main route into the city.

As a rule of thumb, if your character doesn't care enough about what she sees, hears, tastes, touches, and smells to give some emotional assessment to it, the reader won't care either. And this applies to everything--action, dialogue, description, and other characters. Here's an example of an exchange between two characters:

Angie watched Hugh stride between the rows of computer terminals. He didn't glance at any of the data operators, but kept his eyes fixed on her. When he reached her desk, he smiled.

"We brought Williams in last night," he said.

She pressed her palms flat between her thighs. "Did he confess?"

"Not in so many words." Hugh lifted his hand and examined his nails. When he spoke again, his eyes were serious. "He said Charlotte Mason was having an affair with Johnny Keno."

Angie let the information sink in.

We have dialogue and action, but no emotion. We don't know Angie's opinion of Hugh, or his of her. We have no hint of whether she's glad or sorry to hear the news about Williams, or what effect the information about Charlotte has on her. To give your work more potency, run it through your focal character's emotional filter. Keep the reader constantly connected to the character by giving the character opinions and judgments. Let's look at the previous exchange again, this time with Angie's emotional filter in place:

With her heart beating double time, Angie watched Hugh stride between the rows of computer terminals. Until yesterday, just being in his presence had sent her heart racing. Today, she feared what he would tell her.

He didn't glance at any of the data operators, but kept his eyes fixed on her. When he reached her desk, he smiled. "We brought Williams in last night."

Max Williams knew everything, but how much would he tell? Angie cleared her throat, hoping no trace of fear would show in her voice. "Did he confess?"

"Not in so many words." Hugh lifted his hand to examine his nails and let the suspense build.

Suddenly she saw his hand in the whole sordid affair. He'd seduced her for what he could get from her, and now he toyed with her like a cat who'd cornered a mouse. She pressed her palms flat on her thighs to keep from wringing her hands together.

When Hugh spoke again, his eyes were hard. "He said Charlotte Mason was having an affair with Johnny Keno."

The words flowed through Angie's mind and pooled near her heart like congealing tar. So Charlotte had been in on it all along.

Notice in the second version that Angie interprets her own reactions for the reader and conveys hints about Hugh's agenda. Since you don't want to go into Hugh's mind while in Angie's point of view, she has to transmit his behavior. Since she can't know what's going on in his head, she has to interpret it based on her own assumptions, which means we see him through her emotional filter.

Opinions and Judgments

The emotional filter is always subjective. It presents your focal character's view of your story world, the situation, the other characters, and the conflicts. By attaching his opinions to his observations and having him make judgments on everyone else's behavior, he not only becomes a stronger character, but your reader will form a stronger emotional bond with him.

Every once in a while, you may find yourself writing a scene through the eyes of your villain or some other unsympathetic character. Be sure to make his filter true to him. Present his warped view in the living color of his hang-ups and destructive agenda. If you do this well, the reader will love reading about him because he will be so compellingly unlikeable.

If you find it difficult to include the subtleties of an emotional filter while writing your first draft, don't self-edit during the creative process. Write your dialogue or your action and add opinions and judgments on the second or third time through. Invest heavily where you have the most control (your own effort and emotion), and reap the benefits when the reader connects emotionally to your characters and loves your story.

[End of article excerpt]

Tips for applying an emotional filter:

1. Pay attention to verbs. For example, a verb like "walk" is pretty neutral. But the thesaurus reveals a host of synonyms which are not only more descriptive, but which carry different emotional weights: plod, march, sidle, amble, glide, saunter, trip, and so on. Think about the difference in the emotional states of a character who notes, "He walked away from me" versus "He strolled away from me" or "He trudged away from me" or "He skipped away from me."

2. Choose descriptive details carefully. If you're describing a person, for example, it suggests a different state of mind to notice full lips vs. ragged, bleeding fingernails.

3. Go beyond the obvious. A cemetery in the rain is going to suggest a pretty gloomy state of mind. How can you get across a similar state of mind if the funeral is being held on a sunny day? In the latter case, the contrast between the setting and the character's emotional state of mind can strengthen the emotion.

4. During dialogue, keep the reader in touch with the character's emotions by what the character says--but also by what he or she is thinking and doing.

5. When going over your scene, ask yourself after every sentence, "How does my character feel about that?" Make sure the answer is clear all the way through. (And remember--a character's emotions are likely to change as the scene progresses and the situation changes.) Jerry Cleaver recommends focusing on a character's worries, hopes, and fears as a way of getting at the character's emotions.

P&P Exercises:

Please adapt these exercises to your own purposes. You can choose one or several, or you can think of something entirely different. The point is to practice conscious application of the emotional filter to your writing. Word count can be as little as 200 or as many as 1500 words.

These exercises are just suggestions. You can't do them wrong--just focus on showing us how a character interprets or feels about what's going on around him or her. Saturate every sentence with the character's state of mind.

1. Find a passage in your own writing that feels flat or distant from the POV character. Rewrite the passage through the character's emotional filter. For each sentence, ask yourself, "What does my character feel about this?" (focus on worries, fears, and hopes), then write it in a way that shows those emotions. The idea is to do something like Jacobson does in her examples. Post both passages (up to 1500 total), so we can see the difference.

2. Write a new scene for your novel, up to 1500 words, with attention to the effect of the focal character's emotions on each sentence and the scene as a whole. Apply a strong emotional filter all the way through.

3. Find a dialogue in your writing where the characters' emotions aren't being expressed as fully as you'd like, as in Jacobson's second example. Apply the emotional filter to punch up the emotional impact of the dialogue. Post the before and after versions, up to 1500 words total.

The next three exercises are taken from The Art of Fiction by John Gardner.

4. Describe a landscape as seen by an old woman whose disgusting and detestable old husband has just died. Do not mention the husband or death. (See how long you can keep this going--aim for a minimum of 200 words.)

5. Describe a lake as seen by a young man who has just committed murder. Do not mention the murder. (Aim for a minimum of 200 words.)

6. Describe a building as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, war, death, or the old man doing the seeing; then describe the same building, in the same weather and at the same time of day, as seen by a happy lover. Do not mention love or the loved one. (Aim for a minimum of 200 words for each description.)

7. Make up your own Gardner-style exercise, one that will fit into your novel. Describe an everyday object or scene through the filter of some strong emotion a character is experiencing. Keep it going for as long as you can, and don't take the easy way out by telling us what the emotion is. If you get ideas for putting the character into action as you write, keep going, up to 1500 words.