Using Sensory Emotional Triggers to Enhance Your Writing

It all starts with the writer.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”- Robert Frost.

On a typical writing day, we have to quickly transition roles to wisely use our precious writing time.

That means moving from the agony of doing the monthly bills to the ecstasy of an emotionally intimate moment between your protagonists. Or perhaps you must transition from calming a crying two-year-old to an intense, high-stakes suspense scene in your work-in-progress. And have you ever had to move from an unfortunate disagreement with someone dear to you right smack into the light comedy of your current manuscript?

If you constantly put your writing on hold when life interrupts, there will be more interruptions than writing. Consider investing a little time to discover your sensory emotional triggers. These triggers will move you quickly into the needed emotional response that will translate onto the page to make your readers feel it as well.

We live in a scrolling world. You have very little time to grab that reader and make them feel.

What was the last book, movie, or TV show that moved you? The Bear? Wicked? Shogun? Take a moment to tap into WHY you were moved and which emotions they produced.

Once you understand the layers of emotions, you will be able to transition your writing from telling to showing and a deeper level of connection with your reader.

Basic Human Emotions

• Fear

• Joy

• Love

• Sadness

• Surprise

• Anger

The job of emotions is to communicate response and to organize our next action.

A signal marks when an emotion begins and ends. What are signals?

•  Facial expression

•   Musculoskeletal response (physical)

•   Autonomic Response (unconscious bodily functions)

•   The impulse to make a noise

What might the signals for these emotions be?

FEAR      

Wide eyes

Tense muscles

Trembling

Faster breathing

Paleness or flushing or alternating

Relaxation of bladder 

Dry mouth

Screaming

ANGER

Increased blood flow

Breathing quick and shallow

Muscles tense

Perspiring

Furrowed brows and narrowed eyes

Slight thrusting forward of the body

Rigid hands

Raised voice

Remember that signals don’t tell us the source of the emotion, but that can usually be figured out by the context. Can you see how using signals would enhance the visceral response and create emotion in your writing? Additionally, using more than one signal is a great way to strengthen your show-don’t-tell skills.

Triggers to the Basic Emotions

Emotions are all about Stimulus and Response. In order to be triggered, there must be an emotional identity or connection to the stimulus. You and your characters must CARE about the stimulus.

Trigger = Stimulus

Reaction = Response

Another way to explain triggers and their responses.

You taste pasta sauce, and your heart is warmed as loving memories of your grandmother emerge and you recall her unconditional love for you.

You smell patchouli and remember your first love with a sigh.

You hear Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” and your hands curl into fists because it was the song you first heard when you met the jerk who dumped you in college.

You see a reel on YouTube about an abandoned animal and cry.

The touch of your significant other’s hand on your face makes you shiver with pleasure.

Someone knocks at your door at midnight, and you swallow hard and tremble.

All About Sensory Emotional Triggers

To recap. Sensory emotional triggers are a stimulus that activates an emotional response. Using sensory emotional triggers is similar to method acting for writers.

“Method acting is a technique of acting in which an actor aspires to complete emotional identification with a part.”- Wikipedia.

You must decide which basic emotion you need to evoke and then connect yourself to that trigger. Get as close as you can. If you cannot feel the emotional response, neither will your reader.

Sensory emotional triggers are connected to one or more of the five senses: touch, smell, hearing, taste, and sight. Which of these senses connects the most quickly and powerfully for you?

What type of sensory writer are you?

Visual- You cry at sappy commercials.

Auditory- Music is your sensory trigger & you have a writing playlist. Music triggers emotional responses.

Tactile-Touch is what triggers your senses. The tactile items in your writing space are essential.

Scent- You set the scene. You’re a candle-burning writer. You are triggered by smells.

Taste- Food feeds your writing soul. Each flavor triggers a different emotional response and transports you to a particular emotional landing space.

How Do We Trigger Sensory Emotional Responses?

Sometimes, closing your eyes and allowing your mind to recapture an event in full sensory display will allow us to trigger the emotional response we need to channel. Other times, we must use props (music, videos, candles, perfume, herbs & seasonings) to trigger emotional responses.

Here are my methods to create sensory emotional triggers and their associated emotional responses.

These triggers are highly subjective, and while these examples work for me, they may not produce the same, if any, response from you.

•Fear:  I can recall an event in my childhood that takes me back to the devastating terror and chills that accompanied the feeling.

•Joy: I move to laughing in 0.5 seconds by watching the paintball scene in the movie Failure to Launch.

•Love: Is this one easy or what? Fast forward to the final kiss in the movie North & South.

•Sadness: The song My Heart Will Go On, from the movie Titanic, performed by Celine Dion,

•Surprise: This one is much harder but not impossible. The movie, The Forgotten, has many gasp moments. If I fast forward to the car crash, I am once again gasping with shock.

•Anger: Probably the most difficult for me of the 'why can't we all play nice' nature. A Few Good Men, the “You Can’t Handle the Truth” scene.

NOTE that triggers should be just that. Instant. Press that trigger, and BAM! Emotional response.

If you have to work to stir up that response, you haven't found your trigger.

Warning.

Don't trigger an emotional response that is so overwhelmingly powerful you are unable to write, perhaps due to a personal situation you have not resolved or worked through yet, such as extreme sadness, fear, shame, or anger.

Triggers can create a PTSD response that you don’t want.

Two writer’s words stick with me when I strive to deep dive emotion into my writing. Give them your consideration.

Shelly Thacker- “Emotion on every page.” Review each page of your manuscript with a red pen and underline the emotion. If there is no emotion, you must create it.

Michael Hauge- "The primary goal of storytelling is to elicit emotion. You must create an emotional experience for the audience." Ask yourself what experience you created.

When you sit down to write, take some time to consider how you will delve into the emotional layers of your story and grab your readers. Dig deep. ‘Mary was sad’ doesn’t make your reader feel. Try using sensory emotional triggers to get all the feels onto the page.

#sensoryemotionaltriggers

#emotion