Feelings – how one feels during those moments.
There are few techniques in the author’s toolbox as engaging readers/listeners/viewers at a gut level, meaning an emotional level.
Make your audience feel – good or bad – and you have them. The secret to making your audience feel is creating believable characters, specifically relatable characters, and the easiest way to do that is by placing characters where they’re experiencing things the audience has experienced and reacting the way the audience reacts.
Your audience hasn’t been solo piloting an asteroid mining ship? Okay, but has your audience ever been alone in an unfamiliar place? Add in they notice something going on they’re unfamiliar with, have no experience of, don’t know how to react to.
Boom. Relatable.
How do you write relatable characters? As described above, through moments and feelings. The audience and character can be (other) worlds apart, and if they’re having the same feelings about what’s happening at that moment, you’ve got them.
Think I’m onto something? Take a class with me, schedule a critique of your work, or buy me a coffee.
Think I’m an idiot? Let me know in a comment.
Either way, we’ll both learn something.
Get copies of my books because it’s a nice thing to do, you care, you can follow along, and I need the money.
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