: Re: Dealing with quick shifts in emotion I have a character that, by design, quickly jumps between emotions. To put it into human terms, I have pictured scenes where he will, literally, within the

This is tricky, and it depends on your genre as well as how you want this character to be perceived by the reader. You could, for example, just describe the emotion: C1 was happy, a bird flew across the sky and C1 became indescribably sad. Weeping he spotted his shoelace and his tears became those of rage. Etc. This would work if you were in the comedy genre or trying to be funny. I think a character like this would be quite good for a farcical piece of writing.

The answer given by Neil Fein is inescapable, in the sense that you will have to take up more time describing things that aren't adequately described yet. It is true that the reader will know that the emotion changed quickly, but if you take a long time describing this, you will lose some of the psychological effect in the reader. The less time it takes to get an idea of the rapid shift, the more rapid it will seem.

Perhaps a quick and easy answer, which is relatively genre-neutral, is to explicitly negate the previous emotion and replace it. So:

C1 doubled over cackling maniacally at the scene in front of him. The fires of hell had nothing on the carnage unfolding around him. "I thought you said you were going to bail them out," C2 muttered in exasperation. C1's cackling suddenly died. He straightened up. His brows lowered in grim determination and he nodded. "I get it. Business before pleasure." As he marched into the fray a bird flew across the sky and his determination melted into indescribable sorrow. He began crying.

So the word 'cackling' is repeated, as is the word 'determination'.

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: Re: Dealing with quick shifts in emotion I have a character that, by design, quickly jumps between emotions. To put it into human terms, I have pictured scenes where he will, literally, within the

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: Originality refers to created or invented works that can be characterized as being new or novel, and thus can be distinguished from existing works. An original work is one created with a unique

: Overabundance of punctuation, too many pauses, like this title I have a writing style which relies heavily on pauses, specifically commas and periods. I like to put them everywhere but I am

: What should a literary writer read? Everyone knows that a writer should read, but the question is what? The question I would like to ask here is: what books should a literary writer have read?

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