Emotional Mastery for Fiction Writers

Mastering the emotional craft of fiction is perhaps the most difficult challenge facing a writer. And the most important and yet overlooked.

Readers read to care. They read to feel.

Readers of fiction aren’t reading to acquire facts, such as they might do when studying a nonfiction book. They read to be entertained, affected. They read to be tense, laugh, worry, get excited. In other words, they read to feel something.

If we writers don’t succeed in making our readers feel something, we fail. If they don’t feel what we want them to feel, we fail.

To be effective writers, we must master the emotional challenge of our stories. It won’t do to hope we will move our readers in some way. It won’t do to hope we get across our characters’ emotions.

If we want to be masterful writers, we have to become a master of emotion.

This is what this course is going to examine. There is no magic formula to mastering this skill. Being intuitive and sensitive can help. Being in touch with your own feelings can help. Studying great novels to see how other writers pull emotions out of hats can help.

But it takes even more than all that.

In this course, you’ll be given tools to show emotions in your characters. You’ll be given techniques to help spark emotional response in your readers. What is going to bring it all together for you is practice. Study and practice. And you’ll have exercises in this course to help you put into practice what you learn.

There are two facets of emotion in fiction: conveying what your character is feeling and evoking emotion in your reader. We’ll look at these two facets separately and in depth. Yet, they are intrinsically connected.

Emotional mastery requires writers to set up the dynamics of a scene in such a visual, textural way that readers can’t help but feel what they are meant to feel. Understanding that emotional mastery requires a twofold approach—the emotional landscape of both the character and the reader—is the first step.

This course will challenge you to become an “emotion master.” Are you ready and willing to go on this journey deep into emotional territory? If you want your characters to move your readers, take the plunge!

Here are some of the essential things you will learn in this course:

• The 3 key ways to show emotion in your characters and which one is the most powerful
• What the action-reaction cycle is all about, and why you must understand it to be an emotional master
• Why you need to manipulate your readers’ emotions, and why that’s a good thing
• How to recognize complex emotion and transfer that onto the page
• What microtension is and why it’s essential for emotional mastery
• Ways to craft mood that will evoke emotion in readers
• How to work at the word, phrase, and sentence level to masterfully convey emotion
• How to find the perfect balance of showing and telling emotion in your characters
• How to deconstruct masterful writing that evokes and shows emotion and emulate the effect in your own scenes

This course is jam-packed with excerpts from novels, movie clips, handouts, and exercises—all designed to help you become an emotional master!

This essential instruction is not available anywhere else. There are no books, podcasts, blog posts, or courses that tackle this topic and to this depth. Few writing instructors teach anything pertaining to the emotional craft of fiction. Yet, it is just as important—if not more so—than a great plot or compelling characters.

What writers say about this unique course:

“I had been struggling with a part of my story and couldn’t figure out how to improve it although I knew something was off. I applied this to the questionable scene and all became clear. This is one of the most helpful strategies I’ve ever heard and I’m grateful.” — Victoria Ryan

“This is just what I am looking for because I know it’s important to make your reader relate to the characters emotionally. I know it is important to create characters with depth and for the readers to go on the emotional journey with them. I know I need help and tools on how to learn emotional mastery. Thank you for this opportunity.” — Chania Adam

“After completing the exercises, I went to my WIP and added some of the action-reaction details to the scene. My new scene was much improved. These activities are growing more and more useful for my writing. My critique group noticed the difference in the scene I submitted last week. I recommended this course to them. Thank you.” — Susan Wilson

“Lightbulbs flashing in my head right now. This course is wonderful! I know that several of my scenes are falling flat at the moment, and I wasn’t sure how to fix them. I feel I’ve got a great starting point now from which to approach my rewrite.” — Elizabeth Braten

“I want readers to care about my characters as if they are family or friends. C. S. Lakin’s, Emotional Mastery for Fiction Writers course, is the tough-love teaching that’s helping me accomplish this goal. Her audio and visual examples show how to evoke emotional responses in readers, not just give them riveting stories with worthy characters. I’ve learned to slow down the action in key scenes and allow my characters to emote and process as real people. This has made a huge difference in my WIP. I even made myself laugh and cry.” — Phyllis A Still, author of the Dangerous Loyalties series

“I love this course, and I’m determined to spend the time and effort drilling its lessons into my head.” — James Wiggins

“I’m loving this course. I’m working on a novel, and a scene I’ve written comes to mind. Then I see how the course material applies, and can hardly wait to revisit the scene.” — Margaret Hamilton

“I’m hesitant to go on to the next module: this one has given me so much, I want to go back through my entire manuscript and look for ways to incorporate these truths about the action/reaction/etc., cycle. Thanks, Susanne. The cost of the course has already been earned in this first section.” — Maco Stewart

“I came to this class because a frequent criticism of my work has been that it doesn’t reveal enough inner thoughts and feelings. You have supplied me with the tools to fix that problem, and also showed me that a writer should never assume the reader will know what a character is feeling in a given set of circumstances. These tools/ideas will be useful for my nonfiction writing, as well. Thank you!” —Roberta Gibson

“Although I love all your courses, you hit the mark with this one. You have provided a superior analytical assessment of emotion in fiction, and I am already benefiting from your well-organized presentation. I cannot wait to use these steps with my finished works, as well as the WIPs. And I plan to come back and listen to your modules repeatedly to refresh my mind and to gather points I may have missed the first time around. Thank you for the course!” — Linda Kasten