Digital Am Radios

Great dramatic writing is full of emotions. Not just fear and anger, but the entire spectrum of emotion. Just as life is a vast variety of emotional responses, so should your dramatic writing. Your characters and plot both need emotion to make them more realistic for your readers.

Darkin

There are so many wonderful emotions to choose from when writing your dramatic tale. A lot of writers ignore the unique ones, leaning toward the mundane and overused emotions. While those are important emotions, using a wider spectrum of emotions will go further to make your dramatic tale sing with feeling.

A Partial List of Emotions

Anxiety - extreme uneasiness.

Apathy - lack of emotion or interest.

Confusion - mentally uncertain.

Curiosity - eager to learn.

Despair - lose of all hope.

Excitement - stir up emotions of joy.

Fondness - strongly attracted or affectionate.

Forgiveness - to pardon a wrong.

Guilt - feeling responsible for an action.

Hostility - openly unfriendly.

Irritation - excite to anger.

Longing - feel a strong desire.

Passion - strong feelings especially of anger, love, or desire.

Resignation - give up deliberately.

Revenge - inflict harm in return for a wrong.

Shame - distress over guilt.

Sympathy - expression of sorrow for another's misfortune.

Worry - feeling of concern or anxiety.

These are just a few of the emotions that I find are not used often enough by drama writers. There are many more, but this list should be enough to get you thinking.

When writing your tale, do not forget your own personal experiences. Think about the time you lost a love, got that promotion, or were almost in a car accident. The feelings and emotions of those events can be used to make your character and plot more real for your reader.

Emotions are one of the keys to keeping the character moving forward through the plot. If your character is unemotional he will not be motivated and your plot will fall flat. But emotion used correctly will make your readers become mentally vested in what your character is doing and why he is doing it.

Using emotion to convey your dramatic story is not a new idea. But it is one that will help bring your story to life and make your reader keep reading until he finds out how your tale ends.

Dawn Arkin is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/
which is a site for Poetry. Her portfolio can be found at http://darkin.Writing.Com/ so stop by and read for a while.