Make Stories With Emotional Impact!

I remember the first art show that I went to in high school. Some of my work was hanging there for display, and from a distance--like a stalker--I would watch people look at it. I was watching for their reaction--their emotional response. And then I realized that I like making people react from my work. I love observing how what I do affects them and seeing that my work has an impact. As artists and writers, our work tends to affect emotion.

In Mascara Volume 2 (Which is finally available in print, yay!), when Ian sees the effects of his work on others--when he sees how girls react when he transforms them with makeup--it totally changes his life. He sees his job as more than just applying foundation and eyeliner, but giving others wings and confidence by making them proud of the way they look. He realizes that the life of an academic genius is not for him. Transferring confidence to people who need it is much more important to him because he knows what it’s like to be without. He has very little confidence in himself, but he has the power to give it to others.

It’s important to think about what type of emotional impact we want our work to give to others

. How do the stories we create fit into the lives of our readers? When people crave adventure or escape, they may pick a science fiction, fantasy, or action thriller story. If they want some romance in life, they’ll look for a romantic story. And after going through a bad day, there’s nothing like escaping with a light comedy.

Under what situations will readers pick up our stories? Every story that we label as our “absolute favorite story of all time!” has some sort of a function in our lives. The trick is figuring out what that function is and then drawing from that when we create stories of our own.