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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30212
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30212
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

To elicit emotions, you have to have emotions. That is actually a problem for some people; they (by nature or upbringing or both) remain analytical or cynical about most things. They don't get very emotional about topics that are not extreme in nature, or to them seem to be par for the course (like political corruption, getting overcharged for car repairs, finding out their CEO has just been arrested for having a secret stash of child porn.)

So if you do have an emotions about what you are writing about, you need to analyze them. What makes you happy or sad or angry or disgusted by the story, or what somebody did, or what somebody failed to do?

Pick your emotion and the instance and in your writing, you want to highlight the emotional ramifications so you can elicit the same emotion in people like yourself. (I don't advise trying to know your audience except in the most general terms. Meaning there is a way to appeal to children, or young adults, or young adult women, or other relatively large demographics, but when it comes to emotion you don't know them that well. Presume your emotional reaction is within the typical boundaries and write to appeal to yourself.)

The goal is that if you put your writing aside, and read it tomorrow, you will retrigger the same emotions in yourself. If you don't, you aren't going to trigger them in anybody else. Find the adjectives and poetry such that, if you are appalled, the audience will be too. You still need to describe the facts, but add enough adjectives and description so you don't just guide the reader through what happened, but what you felt **_while_** it was happening. (Or if you weren't there, how you felt imagining it happening.)

Original score: 1