How Creative Writers Can Use Sentiment

How Creative Writers Can Use SentimentHow Creative Writers Can Use SentimentSentimentality comes up as an issue for nearly every writer at some point. In attempting to convey strong emotions, its easy to go too far and make your reader feel manipulated instead of moved. Over-the-top emotion runs the risk of rolled eyes and the worst case of all of the reader putting your masterpiece aside, never to return to reading it. Sentiment is a good thing. We want our readers to experience emotions as they read our work. Sentimentality, on the other hand, refers to excessive or inappropriate emotion, and it should be avoided in fiction at all costs. Whats the Difference? Think of the last good book you read, the one you couldnt put down, the one that had you glancing at the bedside clock in the wee hours thinking, Ive got to get up and go to work soon. One more page and lights out, I swear. In all likelihood, you were inthat story right along with the hero or heroine. Youre experiencing w hat he or she experiences. Thats sentiment. Sentimentality is the writer telling you what he or she wants you to feel, often by informing you what the hero or heroine is feeling. The sight was terrifying is a bare-bones example of sentimentality. Blood dripped from the knife in slow, congealing globules is sentiment. It inspires a feeling. It also tells the reader that the blood is no longer warm. Youre setting a scene, bedrngnis just telling the reader whats happening. Achieving Sentiment One of the most productive ways of achieving sentiment over sentimentality is to quite literally put yourself in your heros or heroines shoes as youre writing. See what he or she is seeing. Tell your readers what it is. Dont try to tell your readers how your character feels about or reacts to what he or she is experiencing. Show them. Conveying a story in the first person is a good practice ground to hone skills you can carry forward into other works. Using dialog can also be very helpful in a chieving sentiment. Run, run, run she shouted gets the point across that the blood isnt a good thing at all, even if its been dripping from the knife long enough to cool off a bit. And throw clichsout the window. Her heart stopped is as condescending to a reader as The sight was terrifying. Do Some Research The best way to learn about sentimentality is to read widely, both literature and pulp. Pay attention to your own reactions to books as you read, and study why they succeed or fail in provoking emotions in you. Finally, its worth pointing out that its possible to overcorrect for sentimentality, as John Irving reminds us in his New York Times essay, In Defense of Sentimentality. But as a writer it is cowardly to so fear sentimentality that one avoids it altogether. It is typical- and forgivable- among student writers to avoid being mush-minded by simply refusing to write about people, or by refusing to subject characters to emotional extremes. A short story about a four-course meal from the point of view of a fork will never be sentimental it may never matter very much to us, either. A fear of contamination by soap opera haunts the educated writer- and reader- though we both forget that in the hands of a clod, Madame Bovary would have been perfect material for daytime television and a contemporary treatment of The Brothers Karamazov could be stuckwith a campus setting.