The Softer Side of the Tolkien Purist Community
Emotions are powerful things. Part of your job as a writer is to invoke pathos � to make us care about the characters you are writing about and their experiences. What I call �cheap pathos� � using rape or abuse to make us feel sorry for a character � just doesn�t cut it.
Build up your characters not just as individual people, but as people with connections to each other. Much of what makes us individuals can be shown in the way we interact with, and the way we care for, other people. We have to like the character first; otherwise, why would we feel sorrow or fear for their plight?
Show us why they are the way they are. Show us emotions held back out of fear or a sense of duty � or fits of anger, lost tempers. Tenderness towards a child, humouring an old friend, gently teasing a brother. Use weather that echoes the mood of the characters, show emotion in movements � the slow drag of unwilling feet across the floor, a fist clenched in anger, knuckles whitening, the rush and leap of a child greeting an old friend with an overly-enthusiastic hug.
In other words � make us care. If you can do that, then the battle�s half won already.
CHOOSING NAMES
CLICHES: WHAT NOT TO DO
PROOFREADING
ON WRITING STYLES
(AND THE USE OF �ELVISH�)
ON �FLAMES� AND CRITICISM
ON PATHOS AND EMOTION
PLOTLINES AND PLOT DEVICES
BETA READERS LIST
CHALLENGES
SIGN GUESTBOOK
VIEW GUESTBOOK
ENCYLOPEDIA OF ARDA