A big THANK YOU to Stacy Green for inviting me to be her guest today!

Visceral Rules!

By Margie Lawson

Let’s talk visceral!

First, I’ll SHOW, then I’ll TELL, then I’ll SHOW and TELL.

SHOWING:

Romily Bernard, 2012 Golden Heart Winner, and multi-Margie-grad

Find Me,  Romily’s debut Young Adult novel will be published Sept. 2013

1. Then I hear the car door slam and my heart rides up my throat with spurs.
2. “We have a visitor.” Weird how my voice sounds flat and confident when my insides are churning and liquid.
3. I rub my thumb over the frayed binding, irritation pinching all my insides like I’ve got mosquitoes eating their way out.
4. There’s a flickering under my scalp, a tingling across the back of my neck. My annoying mosquitoes have grown into spiders. They’re crawling all over my skin.

TELLING:

A visceral response is a physical manifestation of emotion.

If you’ve taken some of my online courses, or heard me present a full day master class, you know a key to writing a page-turner is visceral emotion.

You know a scene carries psychological power when you use several scene components, including visceral responses.

You know when emotions in a scene are high, POV characters need to get out of their heads to get in to reader’s hearts.

Visceral responses include, but are not limited to:

• stomach clenching
• heart pounding
• rapid and shallow breathing
• pulse racing
• adrenaline surging
• legs weakening
• throat tightening
• mouth drying
• face flushing
• nausea imminent
• chest tightening
• equilibrium failing
• hear blood rushing
• vision narrowing

Visceral responses are involuntary.

You can’t keep your face from flushing. You can’t keep your mouth from going dry. You can’t keep your chest from tightening, your heart from pounding, your vision from narrowing.

If visceral responses are clichéd, the scene loses power.

If there are too many visceral responses, the scene loses power.

If variations on the same visceral response are overused, the scene loses power.

Time Out for a Teaching Point on Rhetorical Devices!

The paragraph starting with—You can’t keep—Is an example of anaphora.

The next three lines below that paragraph, the ones ending with—the scene loses power—that’s an example of epistrophe.

Now – back to visceral responses. 

When a POV character experiences a strong emotional stimulus, they will have a visceral response. And that visceral response presents immediately.

Visceral responses are experienced first. Always.

When there’s a strong emotional stimulus, people don’t act first.

People don’t think first.

People don’t speak first.

People experience a visceral response first. It’s immediate.

If your characters experience a visceral response first, your scene will be more credible.

We want readers hooked, glued, secured, emotionally immersed in our stories. We want readers viscerally engaged.

SHOWING AND TELLING:

Melanie Milburne, USA Today Bestselling Author, and multi-Margie-grad

Deserving of His Diamonds? 

1. Gisele’s heart tripped in her chest like a pony’s hoof in a pothole.

Analysis: Fresh writing, Simile, Alliteration, Compelling cadence

1. Gisele felt a butterfly wing-like flutter pass over the floor of her belly.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Specificity. A subtle play on the cliché, butterflies in stomach, but it’s fresh and light and connotes something positive. Compelling cadence.

1. Her legs felt like dampened paper, barely strong enough to hold her upright. Her spine was loosening, vertebra by vertebra, until she felt sure she would melt into a pool at his feet. Where was her resolve? Where was her anger? They were like cowardly soldiers retreating from the frontline of battle.

Analysis: Fresh writing, twice! Simile. Specificity. Several points amplified multiple times. Two rhetorical questions. Amplified simile backloaded with power word: battle. Compelling cadence.

Barbara O’Neal, Seven-time RITA Winner, Inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame

The Garden of Happy Endings

1. Elsa paused on the threshold, feeling a dense, dark energy swelling from somewhere, through her. Dizzy, she closed her eyes and put a hand on the door to steady herself.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Amplified feeling. Alliteration, twice. Body language. Recovery. Compelling cadence.

1. Tamsin sat through the sermon with a brick in her belly.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Fun metaphor. Alliteration, twice. Compelling cadence.

1. Her lungs pinched hard enough that she had to cough, like an old lady, to get air.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Visceral response used as a stimulus. Amplified with simile. Backloaded with power words: to get air. Compelling cadence.

1. A sense of anticipation skittered over the top of her skin, brushing the back of her neck, her elbows, her belly.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Alliteration. Specificity. Anaphora. Asyndeton. Compelling cadence.

Darynda Jones, 2012 RITA Winner, and multi-Margie-grad

Third Grave on the Left

1. A rush of delight rippled down my spine and pooled in my abdomen. My pulse accelerated by a hairsbreadth, just enough to cause a tingling flutter in my stomach

Analysis: Fresh writing. Visceral responses, amplified multiple times. Specificity. Visceral response used as a stimulus for another visceral response (pulse accelerating triggered tingling flutter in stomach). Compelling cadence.

1. A vise locked around my chest and was inching closed. My periphery darkened. I could barely breathe, and I needed out of there.

Analysis: Three basic visceral responses. First visceral response intensified. Two others in separate sentences. Shared need to leave, implying things would get worse if she didn’t leave. Compelling cadence.

The last examples I’ll analyze are the four by Romily Bernard that you read in the opening of the blog.

Romily Bernard, 2012 Golden Heart Winner, and multi-Margie-grad

Find Me,   Romily’s debut Young Adult novel will be published Sept. 2013

1. Then I hear the car door slam and my heart rides up my throat with spurs.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Shared stimulus and response. Amplified visceral response twice. Backloaded with power word: spurs. Compelling cadence.

1. “We have a visitor.” Weird how my voice sounds flat and confident when my insides are churning and liquid.

Analysis: Fresh writing.  Complex dialogue cue.  Complex visceral response. Parallelism.  Compelling cadence.

1. I rub my thumb over the frayed binding, irritation pinching all my insides like I’ve got mosquitoes eating their way out.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Shares stimulus (the book) and amplified visceral response.  Implies creepy/scary feelings, without saying she was creeped out or scared. Backloaded with power. Compelling cadence.

1. There’s a flickering under my scalp, a tingling across the back of my neck. My annoying mosquitoes have grown into spiders. They’re crawling all over my skin.

Analysis: Fresh writing. Picks up visceral thread from half-page above. Visceral amplified multiple times. Mosquitoes to spiders, implies danger intensified. Compelling cadence.

Excellent examples from all the authors!

This blog shared some ideas for using visceral responses. You got to taste a few dishes from my visceral response smorgasbord.

Lots more to learn about writing visceral responses.  I dig deep into visceral responses in these two online courses:

1. Empowering Characters’ Emotions
2. The EDITS System: Turning Troubled Scenes in to Winners!

The next time I teach Empowering Characters’ Emotions is February.  But the Lecture Packet can be ordered any time through my web site.

I teach The EDITS System course Sept. 24 – Oct. 19.

Please check out my online courses and presentation schedule. I’m presenting in Denver, Houston, Seattle, and Washington D.C. this fall. I hope to meet some of you in one of those cities this fall – or somewhere next year. Atlanta?

BLOG GUESTS:  NOW IT’S YOUR TURN! 

POST A COMMENT AND YOU MAY WIN a Lecture Packet  or one of my online courses from Lawson Writer’s Academy!

I’ll post the name of the LUCKY WINNER  tonight – at 9PM Mountain Time.

Post a comment – or just say “Hi Margie!” – and you could be a WINNER!

 —Make sure you leave a comment for a chance at winning an awesome gift from Margie. Don’t forget to enter the THRILLER EXTRAVAGANZA GRAND PRIZE giveaway of either a silver spot in Kristen Lamb’s WANA International Blogging or an Amazon Gift Card and a bag of healthy goodies. 

***IF YOU ARE A NEW COMMENTER, YOUR COMMENT WILL NEED TO BE APPROVED. DON’T WORRY IF IT DOESN’T SHOW UP RIGHT AWAY – I’LL GET IT:)

Lawson Writer’s Academy now has 37 courses and 12 instructors. LWA courses are taught in a cyber classroom from Margie’s website, www.MargieLawson.com.

Upcoming Courses from Lawson Writer’s Academy:

1.  Aug. 20 – Sept. 28:  Fab 30 in 40 Days: Advanced Deep Editing, A Master Class

     Instructor: Margie Lawson

2.  Sept. 1 – 30: Story Structure Safari

     Instructor: Lisa Miller

3.  Sept. 3 – 28:  Writing Compelling Scenes

     Instructor: Shirley Jump

4.  Sept. 3 – 28:  Steampunk A-Z

      Instructor: Suzi Lazear

5.  Sept. 24 – Oct. 19:  The EDITS System:  Turning Troubled Scenes in to Winners

      Instructor: Margie Lawson

Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, editor, and international presenter—developed innovative editing systems and deep editing techniques used by writers, from newbies to NYT Bestsellers. She teaches writers how to edit for psychological power, how to hook the reader viscerally, how to create a page-turner.

Thousands of writers have learned Margie’s psychologically-based deep editing material. In the last seven years, she presented over seventy full day Master Classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Please contact Margie if you think your group might be interested in having her present a master class for them.

For more information on Lawson Writer’s Academy, lecture packets, full day master classes, and the 4-day Immersion Master Class sessions offered in Margie’s Colorado mountain-top home, visit:  www.MargieLawson.com.