With my nightstand off balance from the amount of books unevenly distributed on its warping surface, I normally wind up taking some notes on what I’m reading, just in case everything topples over and throws off my reading. Sometimes with those notes, I decide to post them online–specifically at the Bible Archive and on Amazon.com. Some books, though, don’t fit well in my Bible Blog, so I’ll post the reviews over here. Today, I’ll be putting some notes on Creating Character Emotions in a format that highlights the Point of the Book, what’s Good, what’s Bad and what’s (usually aesthetically) Ugly. Afterward, in my conclusion, I give it a rating plus a recommendation on how to handle the book.
The Point of the Book. Ann Hood in Creating Character Emotions, noticing a gap in her fiction writing teaching syllabus, decided that a book on writing convincing character emotions was in order. The goal of the book is tied up in that very subhead: wanting to get writers to understand their character’s true feelings and express those feelings in a compelling manner.
The Good. The book is divided by alphabetical emotional groupings which makes the book an excellent resource. You want to write about fear? Turn to page 54 under FEAR. Extremely clear in that respect. She also makes sure to divide each section into four helpful categories. First she defines the emotion, usually using an author’s definition and her own personal retelling of a life-event; secondly she gives three bad examples of the emotion; thirdly she offers three good examples (chosen from various authors); fourthly she closes with a brief work exercise to provoke personal exploration of the emotion.
The Bad. There’s really nothing bad about the book. A couple of sections came close to being repetitive but Ann Hood was extremely smart in cross referencing sections when she had to to round off the picture. I would also say that sometimes some of the GOOD examples she chose to portray a character emotion didn’t quite achieve the goal they were going for without the context of the larger story. True, she tries to encapsulate as much of that broader context as she can in the small space, but it really doesn’t fully pan out the way she would want in some of those sections.
The Ugly. Nothing. The book binding is good, the size is great, the typeface is easy to read and the writing is clear.
Conclusion. The book won’t make you an Emotion Writing Jedi: that’s outside of its scope. What it will do is provoke you to think about the character emotions (a task that can be further accomplished by tons of reading (a task the author recommends). The book is worth a library read but if you’re a serious writer it should have a spot on your shelf as a reference tool and thought-provoker whenever your writing is stumbling. 3 Star with a must-buy for a writer and a should-read for aspiring writers (by the way, this links to my Amazon store).