Led By Emotions

When I wrote Sonsaengnim: A Korea Diary, there were certain sections that I knew would be successful with the readers. One, in particular.

And please note that there are some spoiler alerts in this post. If you haven't read Songsaengnim but are planning to, you might want to skip this post.

Image: ChatGPT^*

For myself, I find that if the author can evoke emotions, he or she has won me over for the book. When I read, I want to laugh, I want to cry, and I want to think. I don't have to necessarily do all three while reading a passage but I have to do at least one.

If I'm reading a light-hearted or comical book, I expect to feel joy. If it's really good, I'll laugh. And similarly, if I'm reading a touching story, I expect to feel moved. If the writer can create a moment that puts a lump in my throat, she or he is a masterful storyteller.

So, back to when I wrote my novel. And again, spoiler alert.

There are chapters that, when I wrote them, I knew were going to evoke sad emotions. For example, because the novel is set in 1997, there's a time where the world learns about the car crash that kills Diana, Princess of Wales. I, myself, was living in South Korea at the time, and was visiting friends who lived in Seoul. One of them worked at the Canadian embassy.

Shortly after news of the crash broke, we were watching it unfold, live, on CNN. At the time that we tuned in, Diana, Dodi Al-Fayed, Henri Paul, and Trevor Rees-Jones were still in the vehicle. For hours, we watched the sad drama unfold and turned the TV off shortly after Britons awoke to the BBC announcement of their princess' demise.

I captured that day in my novel, mixing it with Roland's memory of his own family tragedy. When I wrote it, I couldn't help but get choked up. I had to take a break, at one point, because I was overwhelmed with grief.

But when I finished that chapter, I knew I had something special.

When friends and family read the published novel, they commented on how heartbreaking that chapter was. One friend, who met me in a pub, one night, sat next to me, punched me in the arm, and said, "You bastard. You made me cry."

A personal triumph.

Yesterday, while working on my current novel, Dark Water, I wrote a passage that also tugged at my heartstrings. And once more, here's a bit of a spoiler (but not much, and the passage may end up edited out of the final version—though, unlikely).

Dark Water is a murder mystery that is set in Ottawa. In the first chapter, a couple of seniors are paddling on the Rideau River, in kayaks, when they encounter a body floating in the dark water (wondering where I got the working title??).

When I created the kayaking couple, it should be no surprise that I based them on DW and myself. If you should eventually read the published book, you'll see DW and me clearly. The husband even has a 360-degree video camera mounted to the deck of his boat.

Later in the book, when the detectives play back the video that was captured of the discovery, I share aspects that weren't described in the first chapter. In writing this section, I placed myself directly in the role of the character.

What would I do if I ever found a dead body while kayaking? As I wrote, so much of me came out in the character and I could actually feel as though I was recounting what would happen.

And, I got emotional. I had a lump in my throat and my eyes started watering.

I got to the end of that section and had to take a break. Get my mind off of the book. Possibly, call it a day.

Later, I decided to write this post. And even in a couple of paragraphs ago, I felt a touch of the emotion that I felt when I was writing the actual passage.

Let me just take a moment to pat myself on the back.

I'm excited to continue writing Dark Water and I hope that when it's published, you'll be pleased with the work.

The story continues.

^* Once again, I used ChatGPT to create the image for today's post. I attached a photo of my head and shoulders, and asked the tool to create a 3-D cartoon image of a middle-aged man who is reading a book in an armchair, and to base the man on the provided photo. When I saw the result, I laughed so much that I was brought to tears for the second time that day.