Making Emotion Work for You

Do words create emotion?  You bet they do.  A piece of writing which radiates emotion produces a great deal more reaction than similar material which expresses the same thing in dry, unemotional terms.  You always have a hard time convincing people to do anything on the basis of logic, but put the same thing in emotional terms and they are ready to act.

How to put emotion in writing.  Almost every sentence automatically carries a certain amount of emotion.  Some sentences and paragraphs, however, contain a great deal more than others.  How much emotion and what kind depends on your purpose, your audience, and the material you are handling.

Just how do you create emotion on paper?  It's easy.  First, just think of words phrases and sentences that produce a strong reaction.  Here are a few:

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He was ashamed of what happened.

There's a pretty cheap group of people in that town.

I was hurt by what he said.

No imagination?  How sad.

Terrified he turned and ran.

With blood dripping from her wound, she screamed at the top of her lungs

These, of course, are not phrases that you use every day in a work situation, but they make the point effectively.

As you can see, every sentence has an emotion that not only keeps reader interest It makes the reader want to read on.  If you want to insert emotion, look at each sentence and ask yourself what can you insert that will create a strong response.  Then simply insert that word or phrase.  For instance, you have a sentence that says: Tom got bad grades last semester.  Now that sentence produces some emotion but not strong ones. To increase it, add Tom's feelings.  He could feel sad, unhappy, angry or more. If you want a strong emotion simply say: Tom was horrified at the grade he got in math last semester.

Let's look at another sentence.  Your performance is quite satisfactory.  This sentence is pretty standoffish, but there are ways to fix it.  The boss can be delighted with the performance, unhappy with it, or ecstatic.  If you want to create greater impact than that you must add emphasis like this.  We were delighted by your performance.  Of course you always need to keep in mind what kind of writing you are doing. Some things work in an inner office memo that aren't appropriate for a business letter.

Not try some of these sentences below.

Unemotional sentences.

It was brought to our attention that one of our trucks was involved in an accident.

Emotional sentence.

We were horrified to learn that one of our trucks was in an accident.

Unemotional sentence.

Times are changing and people are leaving as.

Emotional sentence.

Unhappily, times are changing and people are leaving us.

Unemotional sentence

Because those people tend to economize a little too much, they are difficult to deal with.

Emotional sentence.

Those people are difficult to deal with because they're basically cheap.

Unemotional sentence,

The telegram you send created a adverse reaction

Emotional sentence.

The telegram you sent to the office made some people pretty angry.

Unemotional sentence.

Your sale was noted.

Emotional sentence.

As to your sale... great!

Unemotional sentence.

The employees got the old boss back

Emotional sentence

The employees rushed outside to greet their former boss

Unemotional sentence

He turned and talked to the workers.

Emotional sentence.

He turned and talked to the angry workers.

As you can see you can create an emotional reaction by saying something like we were delighted, we were horrified and so forth.  You can do it by describing somebody or something.  It was a cheap group of people.  He was a ruthless man.  She was a terrible person.  He looked shaken when he saw the auditor's report.  He fell back in fear, all of these work effectively in creating an emotional response.  You should feel free to use them or something similar whenever you need this kind of impact in your writing.