One needs to be able to express emotion through their writing, not just explain what something looks like.

I have tried, without too much success, to explain this to writing partners over the years because I believe, in order to be successful as a fictional writer, one must be able to connect with their own emotions. If you can’t, then what, exactly, is the point of writing a fictional piece?

For many, this is too much. They may get lost in their own words, or their own thoughts, their own beliefs, or their own lack of foresight. One might get so lost in their writing they don’t have time for the people around them. When they still do not learn anything about other people’s emotions, then the fault lies with them, not the people around them.

This doesn’t need to be simply about writing. It’s a truth in all societies. If you aren’t listening, you aren’t learning. If you haven’t got the guts to let yourself be mentally attacked, or be able to mentally defend yourself, then how are you going to learn to be able to express your own emotions?

Some people seem to think when one does not display emotion on their faces, they are not feeling anything. This is not true. For the most part, when someone isn’t displaying an emotion someone else can read, it’s because the person who is expecting this “display” has no understanding of what, or who, the person they are interacting with is.

So, they try to put their own emotions onto someone else. Do me a favour, don’t do that. If you don’t understand that person or who they are, even after years (or months) of them telling you exactly who they are, then walk away. You haven’t learnt anything.

Of course, if the person you are interacting with does not tell you anything about themselves, or simply repeats the same few words over and over again, with no substance to it, then they do not want you to know them, or anything about them. One begins to question, and very quickly I might add, whether anything that person has said is true. When things don’t add up, the questions may become more and more insistent.

That’s one scenario, anyway. There are several other things you can walk away with from this interaction. This person does not wish to know anyone else. This person does not, or cannot, interact freely. This person does not understand social interactions at all. This person has underdeveloped emotions and thinks everything they read or see is either completely untrue, or completely true. This person has been raised as a single entity without having to care for, nor understand, other people.

It still ends up being the same thing, though. If one is unwilling to even write about one’s emotions, then the interaction with others is unsatisfactory to those others. So, choose your words carefully when you write. Understand the context of a situation when you write. Don’t jumble up words with no meaning, don’t go into extremely long definitions of the shape of a clock, or the shape of a keyboard, or the colour of a cup. Don’t tell me in long, flowing descriptive sentences of what the cup feels like either. Show me why it’s picked up in the first place. Show me the exact moment the person picking up that cup is feeling an emotion. Give me visual cues in your words of where that person is at emotionally, mentally, or physically.

Here is one perfect example; it’s sitting on my desk, staring at me, the bright yellow paper curled up on one corner. The words are scraped onto the page with a very clear hand and the letters of the name have been corrected once or twice to make it obvious whose name it is.

The name itself is not important because it doesn’t pertain to this exercise, but the rest of the words exert such a pain in me for the feelings of the person who wrote it I find it difficult to stop myself from bursting into tears. The reason being is because I know that person so well, I feel a small piece of my heart break off at those three simple words.

“Cheapskate has cancelled.”

Now it’s your turn.