This can not be achieved by blatantly stating: “He is sad”. Of course, you can blatantly state the emotions of your character, but how convincing is this? You want your readers to get drawn into your story, to understand what your character feels, to be invested in what is going on. Instead of a pure list, the wheel gives a practical, color-coded overview that is easier to remember and helps to quickly distinguish the emotion you are looking for. On the other hand, it helps to contrast characters with different characterizing emotions as well as setting up scenes and roles by choosing contrasting feelings for protagonist and antagonist, hero and villain. On one hand, it gives a neat, short overview of the eight “basic” and eight “derivative” emotions of the human being. Looking at the Wheel of emotions from a writer’s perspective can help to fine-grain emotions you want to portray in your writing. If you are interested in the psychology and theory behind this, we encourage you to read Plutchik’s paper The Nature of Emotions. While the contrast between joy and sadness seems obvious, would you have thought that the opposite of fear would be anger? By Machine Elf 1735 (Own work), via Wikimedia CommonsĪs we can see, this wheel contrasts the most well-known emotions in a sometimes comprehensible, but sometimes also surprising way. Without going deeper into the psychology of this, let’s have a look at the “Wheel of Emotions” established by Robert Plutchik, a psychologist, and researcher in the field of emotion. Every emotion has a counterpart it contrasts with. ![]() ![]() To assist you in finding the perfect word or phrase for the feeling you want to portray, or even to help you flesh out the emotional range of your characters, we have gathered some information about basic emotions as well as feelings you may have but do not know how to express properly.Įmotions can be not only categorized, but also contrasted. It’s a challenge to not only properly express what your character (or yourself) are feeling when writing, even more so when you really want to get your readers invested in your character’s emotions. ![]() We can bond over feelings and understand the basics of anger, disgust or sadness, and yet every person experiences emotions and feelings differently. One of the hardest things to do in writing is to describe something that can not be properly described: emotions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |