Emotional Logic, Or How to Keep Readers From Throwing Your Book Against the Wall

The basis of every good story is conflict. As writing teacher extraordinaire James Scott Bell often says, “Happy people in happy land” is boring. Conflict is needed and conflict comes from people doing things that don’t come naturally, that forces them out of their comfort zone.

My first writing teacher and mentor liked to talk about something she called Emotional Logic. This is being sure your characters stay in character.

For instance, consider a character—I’ll call her Maisie—who is spontaneous and bubbly. If she suddenly begins scheduling her life to the minute and dressing in all black for no reason, I’ve lost her emotional logic.

So how do we, as writers, get our characters into conflict without sacrificing emotional logic?

With foreshadowing. Drop hints along the way to some of the turmoil your character will experience and changes they’ll have to make.

Let’s return to Maisie. If Maisie wakes up one day, shoves her flouncy pink skirt and heels into the back of her closet, pulls on black leggings and a sweatshirt, and orders a new planner, but I haven’t done any set-up for that change, readers may very well put the book down and not pick it up again. Or at least wonder at what in the world is going on with her.

But if Maisie tells someone in Chapter One that the job she wants will soon be vacant and it involves the ability to multi-task and schedule a group of co-workers, she might realize in Chapter Three that she needs to get serious about organizing her life. And if in Chapter Two, Maisie overhears two co-workers saying her frivolous outfits make her seem unprofessional, she might decide in Chapter Five to stop wearing color altogether.

Titles can be used as foreshadowing devices. Kristan Higgins’ book The Best Man is about a woman who ends up with the guy who was going to be the best man in her wedding that didn’t happen. So he was a literal “best man,” and is the best man for her.

In How to Walk Away by Katherine Center, the foreshadowing is both the title and the first line: “The biggest irony about that night is that I was always scared to fly.” I won’t give away what exactly is being foreshadowed, but I highly recommend that book.

Effective foreshadowing leaves some room between the hint and the event. Scatter the hints throughout the story. The character changes will feel organic and a natural result of the conflict and your reader will close the book, satisfied with the happily ever after you gave them.

Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever afters. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. She recently signed a contract with Sunrise Publishing to co-write a romance novel with New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hauck that will be published in 2022. Carrie and her husband live in the country with their high-maintenance cat and laid-back dog, within driving distance of their six grandchildren.

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