We go to the movies to feel deeply. We go because we want all manner of emotion to wash over us. That’s what successful motion pictures do. Dramas or comedies, they lead us to touch our inner humanity and experience a catharsis of feeling.
Eric Edson, The Story Solution (2011, p. 5)
No emotion ever made, or ever will make, a good play if we do not know what kind of forces set emotion going. Emotion, to be sure, is as necessary to a play as barking to a dog.
Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives (1942, p. 7)
Emotion is a short-term experience that peaks and burns rapidly. Feeling is a long-term, pervasive, sentient background that colors whole days, weeks, even years of our lives. Indeed, a specific feeling often dominates a personality.
Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (2010, p. 245)
[On being imprisoned in a concentration camp during the Holocaust]Apathy, the blunting of emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (2006 [1959], p. 23)
The emotions we experience, when under the power of story, don’t happen by accident. Humans have evolved to respond in certain ways to tales of heroism and villainy because doing so has been critical for our survival.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling (2020, p. 136)
In fact, in life, moments that blaze with a fusion of idea and emotion are so rare, when they happen you think you’re having a religious experience. But whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion.
Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (2010, p. 110–111)
In life such [goal-directed] emotions tell us what’s of value. They guide us, letting us know who we ought to be and what we should go after. When we’re behaving heroically, we feel we’re doing so because our actions are being soundtracked by positive emotions.
Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling (2020, p. 186)
You need to lure, tempt, trick or cajole every reader into an emotional relationship with your hero as soon as possible. Your reader needs to care deeply before she can be brought to feel deeply. How is that done? By appealing to the universal goodness in human nature. Successful writers build stories that engage our better instincts and tap into a natural human predisposition to feel concern when we see another person in trouble.
Eric Edson, The Story Solution (2011, p. 11)
If we redeem bad or possibly evil characters through emotional connection, readers who prefer this journey will forgive a villain for his honest motivation.
Gail Carriger, The Heroine’s Journey (2020, p. 245)
The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, and television in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspiration, as it seeks to order chaos and gain insight into life. Our appetite for story is a reflection of the profound human need to grasp the patterns of living, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience.
Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (2010, p. 12)
Good stories make you feel you’ve been through a satisfying, complete experience. You’ve cried or laughed or both. You finish the story feeling you’ve learned something about life or about yourself.
Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (2020, p. xv)