The concept of allowing readers to achieve catharsis by sharing in the intense emotions of characters goes back at least to ancient Greece. If you’ve ever cried with a character in a work of fiction, you know how powerful and healing it can be. It’s one of the most effective ways to bond a reader to your work. They’ll remember your story for years afterward.
“This book made me cry. Read it now!”
Reading the title of this post, you may think I’m advocating for…well, NOT doing that. It sounds outrageous, and it should. That’s not what I’m saying.
What I am saying is: Choosing WHEN readers get that experience is just as powerful a tool as the experience itself.
A story can’t perpetually be a 10 emotionally. That becomes the norm, and it all starts to feel like a 5 (nevermind what this would do to the pacing of a story). Having a range of different emotions at different strengths is crucial to making the heavy moments land harder.
In addition, sharing a particular emotion with them is something that can’t be taken back, and is much less effective the more you repeat it. The longer you withhold catharsis from the reader, the more powerful it will be when they can finally experience it.
In the same vein, the more you deny the character the chance to face that powerful emotion, the higher the tension will rise. You could keep the character so busy making and acting on decisions that they have to repress what they’re feeling to survive. You could have the character not be ready to process the emotion; a character in denial, burying fear or sorrow with anger, until they’re forced to face what they’re truly feeling. Or you could have the character think they’re past whatever event is the root of the emotion, until something brings it back to the surface.
What’s important in all these instances is that you show why the character needs this moment of raw emotion, and lead them closer to it without ever giving it to them. Until you finally do.
No one does catharsis better than Sarah Chorn (found here: https://www.bookwormblues.net/ ). I’ve been lucky enough to edit several of her stories: Of Honey and Wildfires; Oh, That Shotgun Sky; and Glass Rhapsody. Ask anyone, myself included, and I’ll tell you: These books will break you. But you’ll love it.
I’ve given this advice almost word-for-word when editing Shotgun Sky. Saul is a man grieving the loss of his mooring line and someone he loved. He’s torn apart for most of the novel, and Sarah depicts that in such an honest, breathtaking way.
The advice I gave her was to reel in just a little bit of the emotion here and there, to sharpen those perfect moments, where it feels like the world is shattering, until they can make the reader bleed.
It’s only by allowing readers, finally, to share in the characters’ pain, that you allow them to experience the healing of catharsis. It forges a connection between the reader and the work like nothing else can. But first you have to make them work for it!
Nathan Hale is a writer and editor of Fantasy, Horror, and all the other fun stuff. He has a fantasy/horror novel out, An Alter on the Village Green. You may find him on Twitter.