Emotion, "inpletion," and devotion: part 1
What evokes calm, deep feeling rather than agitated emotions?
Three recent posts—Inner experience: a unique value of written stories and “The privilege of writing inner experiences” part 1 and part 2—looked at different aspects of expressing a character’s inner experience in written fiction, including a comparison with acting, the other form that asks artists to get into the hearts and minds of fictional characters. Those posts also suggested that holding oneself in an emotional space for extended periods of time places unique demands upon writers themselves.
From what I’ve observed from other authors’ accounts of their process (often shared in “Author’s Notes”), it seems that those demands can and do take their toll on authors’ well-being and even mental health. Put another way, although their craft sometimes serves writers as therapy,1 it also sometimes seems to put them into therapy.
It seems, too, that this is just an accepted price to pay for the creation of impactful stories, because fiction, so the dogma goes, is all about emotion. But I want to challenge that dogma because there are also calm, deep feelings that just don’t seem to fall on the same emotional spectrum as anger, depression, excitement, disgust, and so forth.2
What is the nature of those deeper feelings? Do they have a place in the craft of fiction? And how do they help writers and artists in general avoid the emotional exhaustion (even trauma) that is so often assumed to be an integral and unavoidable part of the creative process? Those are the questions I’ll explore in this and the post that follows, because the answers offer a different approach to writing fiction that I think is more appropriate, too, for the expression of spiritual, devotional, and mystical realism.
Is the purpose of story merely to create emotion?
Every book and course I’ve looked at about the craft of fiction stresses emotion. The drum beats again and again: emotion, emotion, emotion. I can understand why: people do read fiction (and watch movies) to feel something and to share in the innermost experiences of the characters. For consumers, sharing that intimate inner experience is the special purview of written stories. And emotion is a pretty sure-fire way to keeps readers engaged and invested in a story.
But consider two other factors.
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