Writing With An Emotional Element
What’s a novel without emotion? A bad one, to put it bluntly.
While many regular forms of writing, such as email correspondences, product reviews and news, can do well without the emotional component, fiction work is usually crippled without it. That doesn’t mean, however, that emotional elements need to be found only in “creative, imaginative pieces.” In fact, appealing to this emotional element is the single fastest way to foster closer ties between your story and your readers.
Joy, anger, fear and grief are the most common human emotions. Every time you come across a good piece of writing that sticks in your mind, it’s usually laced with one of these. In the same way, if you want your own work to be memorable, you’ll have to tug at those very same feelings in your readers.
Failing to do isn’t bad. In fact, most types of writing that aim to inform and educate choose to dispense of these elements. However, if you want your readers to stick with the piece, take it to heart and remember it, nothing beats hooking their emotions along for the ride.
Should you work towards adding emotional elements in your own work? It depends on your actual goals. If you’re a technical writer, you may want to focus on other things – such as providing clear information and impeccable details (with the help of an English writing tool, of course). However, if you’re writing for an audience that’s as hungry for entertainment as they are for information (when you write product reviews for a national magazine, for instance), it wouldn’t hurt.