Where's the Love? Huh? Where's the Love?

Whenever I circle back around to emotions, which is often, I’m still struck by the numbers of emotions and how many Positive ones seem to be lacking. If the list has 10, you can bet that seven of those are going to be negative experiences.

Here are some reasons this shows up so often — and might give you some ideas on how to change or switch up some expressions.

The imbalance between positive and negative emotions in these lists can be attributed to various psychological, evolutionary, and cultural factors. Here's a detailed exploration of why this is the case:

Sympathy Emotion Encyclopedia for Writers

Emotion Encyclopedia for Writers

EMOTIVE: SYMPATHY

TYPE: COMPLEX

DEFINITION: 'sym·pa·thy || 'sɪmpəθɪaffinity, understanding; compassion, pity, concern, commiseration, empathy; approval

DESCRIPTION

Sympathy (from the Greek words syn "together" and pathos "feeling" which means "fellow-feeling") is the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another human being.

This emphatic-type concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint, from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need. Empathy and sympathy are often used interchangeably, but are two distinct emotions with several important differences.

Emotional Motivator Maslow wasn't Correct

What is an Emotional Motivator ? What good is it? 

Symbolism is a effective
method of  demonstrating
emotional turmoil by
implying rather than describing

On the Emotion Description pages for the Encyclopedia Project there is a section titled Motivator. This post is to give you an idea of what that section supplies and some possible uses for the information.

There are several studies which have suggested over the century that emotions, and not logic drive our actions. Those who develop and utilized Marketing and Sales techniques accepted this as far back as -- well let's just say that Aristotle talks at length about it in his book Rhetoric (both 1 & 2).

Maslow created a rational, brilliantly thought out hierarchy of needs...

Writer Tips: Pain

Q: How would you describe in dialogue, someone talking while they'er in pain. Like, "My phone... arg... It's.. uh.. In my back.. pocket..." Or would you do it in dialogue tags. "My phone--" He gritted his teeth, his voice breaking as he groaned in pain. "It's.. uh.. in my back... pocket..."

Pain happens in novels. People get shot. People break things like bones, people get cut. There is also emotional pain. Pain of loss, pain of betrayal. Lots of pain.  So you might be surprised when you go looking for tips on conveying pain and find very little out there, or in books about fiction writing. There is a good reason for this.