February is all about emotions, specifically love because of Valentine’s Day. Emotions are one of the keys to a great novel. Without them, there is no connection between reader and story or reader and author. Emotions are also a core component of the conflict that drives a novel forward.
Think about your own experience. When is the last time you kept reading a book you didn’t feel strongly about? Probably not recently. But sometimes we “hate-read” books we don’t like just like we “hate-watch” TV shows we don’t like — either waiting for them to get better or continuing on because we just can’t believe how truly bad they are. In the same vein but on the opposite end, we read books we love because we can’t wait to see what happens next.
Then there are the characters. Obviously there are those we love and care about but some of the best are the ones we love to hate. Any character that strikes us with strong emotion (positive or negative) is a testament to the skill of the author (or actor, if it is on TV). I still remember the first time I encountered a character like that. I was probably 18 or so and watching the show Roswell (the original, not the remake. Yes, I am that old). The character of Tess made me so mad, I was in awe of how much I hated her. (Oddly enough, the actress who played her, a very young Emily DeRaven, has become one of my all-time favorite actors.)
As an author, I still keep Tess in mind when writing my villains. They are ton of fun to write and if I can make my readers feel an ounce of the loathing I felt for Tess, I have truly accomplished something. It’s hard to explain how to do that. You have to create a character who is abhorrent, but give them qualities that still make them attractive at the same time. So they can’t be cardboard evil; you have to feel sympathy for them as well. For example, in my only contemporary novel, Been Searching for You, there are two villains, Nick and Mia. Nick is a total jerk, but he has a history of being kind to the main character, Annabeth, so while you don’t want to see the two of them together, you can’t totally hate him, either. Mia is Annabeth’s best frenemy. She’s complete witch but you also see her taking care of Annabeth as well, so while you want to shake or slap her, you can also see why Annabeth keeps her around.
But emotion isn’t just for the page and the reader. It’s for the author, too. There is a saying “no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” meaning if we don’t feel emotions (yes, I have actually cried while writing certain scenes) they won’t translate to our readers and make them feel what we want them to. That is why as an author, it is so important to get inside the heads of your characters and really feel what they are feeling. It shows when you do.
And honestly emotion is why I am here as well. Part of the reason why I write historical fiction is to educate. While my stories contain elements of fiction, because I write biographical historical fiction, they are also highly factual, where I can be. I want people to read my books and come away wanting to do their own research to find out more about the people and events in my books.
That same impulse, to teach and share, is why I agreed to be NAIWE’s Novel Writing Expert. I love to pass on what I have learned (often the hard way) to other writers.
Nicole Evelina is a USA Today bestselling author and biographer who writes historical fiction, nonfiction, and women’s fiction. Her six books have won more than 40 awards, including four Book of the Year designations. Nicole was named Missouri’s Top Independent Author by Library Journal and Biblioboard as the winner of the Missouri Indie Author Project in 2018 and has been awarded the North Street Book Prize and the Sarton Women’s Book Award. One of her novels, Madame Presidentess, was previously optioned for film.
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