How to Make Your Work Hormonal

And why.

Today I want to make a small point about making writing come alive, not for you but for a reader.

You want your writing to be a living and breathing thing, because that’s how you get a reaction from a reader. The first reaction you want is for the reader to keep going. If they read one word, you want them to read the next. If one sentence, then the second. Another paragraph. Another essay, another book.

The way to do this is to elicit a hormonal reaction. Hormones can be activated by the emotions.

• When you experience pain or stress, endorphins are released.

• When you experience pleasure, dopamine is released.

• When you experience love and trust, oxytocin increases.

• When you feel stressed, cortisol levels rise.

• When you feel successful, your body releases testosterone.

We experience life through our bodies, meaning our senses.

What, then, does a writer do to increase the emotional impact of writing?

We could talk about a number of ways, but I want to talk about one, and it is to SHOW DON’T TELL THE EMOTION.

Don’t say the person is angry. Show us the anger. Let us smell the anger. Let us hear the anger. Let us feel the anger.

Although, of course, saying “EXPERIENCE DON’T TELL” would be more apt since “showing” means “seeing.” And we need more than the visual sense.

This week I was writing and I caught myself doing exactly what I’m telling you not to do. I want to share the passage with you.

I was editing a draft of a novel, working on a scene about a bear hunt a young botanist observes. One of the hunting dogs has begun to bay and rage against his collar.

I wrote this:

This excited the men who were not restraining dogs and they began to gesture knowledgeably and expansively toward the hound, nudging each other and shifting their weight in the road.

Do you see what I have done? I have named the emotion right away as excitement. “This excited the men.” That is telling. What if I changed this to showing? Then I would simply describe what I am experiencing.

So I changed the line to:

The men began to gesture expansively toward the dog, nudging each other and shifting their weight in the road.

If I wanted to sink even deeper into showing, I would describe the actual gestures of the men. What does an “expansive gesture” actually look like? For one thing, I think an arm would be flung outwards.

Would this work?

The men began to fling their arms out, cocking fingers toward the dog, then nudging each other and shifting their weight in the road.

I don’t intend for us to rewrite this sentence in 1,001 ways to make it as good as possible. I am simply making a point, that emotions too should be revealed through showing (experiencing) not by telling.

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Get Your DNA Essays In This Friday

I have received 6 so far, and I’m going to need more to put an anthology together. I hope you have a DNA story and are able to submit it to me. Please send to my email, wildfire1491@yahoo.com.

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3 More Days to Register for the Metaphor Workshop

I love metaphor and I have been thinking deeply about this workshop because I intend to move the needle for all of us in this primal, ultra-imaginative, lit way of thinking. Get in the community of euphoric metaphorics.

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E-book of Craft & Current Now On Sale

If an e-book will be useful to you, this is a great time to get a copy. Fulfillment is through the impressive app BookFunnel, which I highly recommend for you writers wanting to offer your e-books to your audience of readers.

Coming Up

I recognize that I need to address how to keep the writing habit despite a major catastrophe. And you know what? I think there are plenty of times in our lives when we simply cannot keep up the daily practice. Sometimes we’re hospitalized, for example, in a flipping coma. I will report that my partner Raven Waters, painter, did actually paint every day all during the hurricane and its aftermath. And I will admit that I did not write every day. Now the hurricane is fading into memory, and I’m back in the saddle. Riding with you. Let’s go places.