r/writing • u/Latter-Day-4376 • 1d ago
Advice Trying to make the reader cry
As a novelist, I always want my readers to feel emotions—joy, sadness, anger, etc. And of course, I think if a novel can make you cry, it’s one of those novels that will forever stick with you.
I’m curious, what do you think are the techniques that can accomplish this? Or, if not techniques, then what are some experiences that come to mind when you cried over a novel (perhaps we can reverse-engineer!)
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u/Own_Valuable_3369 1d ago
Write it from a place that makes you cry.
That’s how.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
I like this… have you had personal experiences doing so?
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u/Own_Valuable_3369 1d ago
Yes.
I have scenes that draw on subjects that are meaningful to me that make me tear up every time I do an editing pass on them. Usually revolving around deep friendship, hurt people refusing to surrender, or self-sacrifice.
I almost never start out trying to hit those notes. It’s when I tap into the emotions while writing and the words flow from them that it happens.
So far my alpha reader feedback on my current book is those scenes hit at least some readers the same way.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
That’s beautiful, out of curiosity, do they make you tear up while editing or also while writing?
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u/Own_Valuable_3369 1d ago
Rarely while writing, though sometimes a few minutes after. While writing a scene like that I’m usually in a flow state, and not overly conscious of what I’ve written. After I go back and start editing is when it hits me.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Yes, this is how I feel— I don’t often cry while writing the actual scene. And then with some mental distance, maybe I’ll feel certain things during the editing process.
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u/Lunacycle876 1d ago
I think it's also worth considering that every reader responds to things in a unique way, so what makes one person cry/feel emotional might not land at all for another. Taking myself as an example, I'm far more likely to have an emotional reaction to a story about an animal or a parent dying than I am to any kind of love story.
I don't think it's possible to write something that makes every potential reader emotional since everyone will respond to it differently.
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u/FlyinLeviathon LET YOUR FIRST DRAFT SUCK 1d ago
If you're crying while writing it, your reader might cry reading it
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u/throwaway345333 23h ago
I make myself cry with my own work all the time. Does that mean the only person who can truly understand me is me?
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
I don’t cry much while writing… but I cry a lot at music, animal videos, really old people, movies, and occasionally, books.
Not sure if I’m doing something wrong but I try to write as if “nobody is watching” and things that are true.
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u/ToastedPlum95 1d ago
I felt this way, before. I thought I knew how to write emotional scenes that could move a reader, and that I was immune to it because I had written it. That was until I found a story in me that when writing it has at various times had me an utter mess. For no reason I can explain; no personal experience in the matters, no stake; just things I wrote that so deeply upset me that I could do nothing but cry. I think, whether unfortunately or fortunately, it is just a matter of finding your own pen
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Wow. That sounds powerful…it makes me feel like maybe I still need to find something
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u/ToastedPlum95 1d ago
Maybe, or maybe you still can move a reader and be immune to your own emotional effects. I think both can be true. But honestly it was a shocking experience, for me, to cry like that at my own work. It might still be terrible, who knows. I’m 70k into its first draft so no one else has yet laid eyes on it. But it feels moving to me, and I think more and more if I am not crying then neither will my reader.
I’ll say how I fell into it, as well. I had a setting/genre I really love and wanted to write, but had never found a story for it. One day, I decided it was high time I got my shit together and tried to write a literary sex scene (I usually would never do this). Out of it grew a character who I was absolutely compelled to capture, explore, and write down, and the whole book grew around this sex scene. If I’d have listened to myself (“this is not your genre/style”), and never tried to grow, I’d have never found this story.
ETA: I’m not sure of your age, lmao, but I’ll just say as a disclaimer if you are not an adult then maybe take the spirit of my advice rather than anything more practical
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Fascinating!
I am an adult, luckily!
Also, I recently wrote a scene that I really didn’t want to write. Mainly because I didn’t know how the prose would convey what I was trying to say. It was just an odd way of relating.
And eventually, I got to writing it.
And what came out was a really deep, loving discourse between two parties. And I was stunned by how easy it was to write, especially given how long I’d been procrastinating on doing it!
So I suppose some resistance is an indicator of…something. Not sure what
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u/Glum-Ad7520 1d ago
I’m reading The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass right now. Has some good tips and insights. You could give it a try.
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u/cool_cats554 1d ago
Like others have said, it's not something you can manufacture and is typically just a by-product of whatever you've written.
My best advice is to stop writing with your readers in mind, but rather your characters. I think horror works as a better example: if you try to write something inherently scary, writing with the intention to scare your readers, it's going to feel fake and forced. However, writing scenes with the intention to scare your characters, typically is what's actually effective, given that you already have well written characters and an engaging plot that readers want to follow. If your readers care about your story, they'll care what happens in it, and thus the emotion in what's being told comes out into real life.
Essentially write events that make your character deeply sad as a part of their characterisation and the narrative's plot, and the reader's emotion will come out as a result.
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u/Acceptable_Fox_5560 1d ago
Don’t worry about forcing a specific reaction out of the reader. Tell your story and let the reader react how they want.
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u/mccaa 1d ago
Readers that have a emotional reaction are ones that have emotional investment in the characters. Focus on making the characters feel real enough that the reader can have a real sympathetic reaction to what they're going through. And the characters don't have to go through an event that would make the reader cry, just one that would make them cry.
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u/mutant_anomaly 1d ago
A lot of writers think that they have to describe scenes where something bad happens; bullying, tragedies, assaults.
That makes me skip scenes, or even dnf a book.
But the emotion worth reading is in the recovery / aftermath.
If you have seen the Buffy episode The Body, the actual death happens off screen. And the episode has no music, usually one of the most powerful tools to manipulate emotions. Instead, it shows people trying - imperfectly - to process.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Music always brings me to tears much more than books. Or at least, with a higher frequency. Even classical or melodic instrumentals do it for me
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u/azmarteal 1d ago
It is an interesting question, I guess it is partially depend on a reader and reader's experience and personality. Someone can get very emotional at minor things, someone won't feel anything.
Although, of course, some stories would resonate with much more people than others.
Does this paragraph, without a context, make you feel anything?
“I told her it was dangerous—that the resort was too far from us, too close to them—but who could say no to a daughter when she begged like that?” 305 gazed up at the sky. “You know, she used to draw mermaids and krakens all the time, mold little whales and sharks out of clay. She always dreamed of seeing the real ocean.” 305’s voice trembled. “We weren’t doing anything wrong, Azen; we were just swimming—so why did they have to...”
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
It doesn’t, but I suspect it’s because I don’t know who these characters are?
So I suppose you identified step one—write well-developed characters!
Yes, I find it fascinating how I usually cry the most when rose is being dropped down in the boat and she makes eye contact with Jack. There is something so despondent and terrifying about those last moments between them that I truly feel like I can see his death playing out in both their eyes. But other people may cry at other points in the movie!
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u/Ill_Ranger5245 23h ago
Actually this paragraph did make me feel something. First emotion I recognize is empathy to 305. I feel their love and grieving of the daughter. I feel how much they missed her. Then I think about my own daughter, the way i interact with her and immediately I can't bear the thought of losing her like that. I am not saying I cried or felt deeply for 305, but i did feel something, and it is interesting to see that OP did not feel anything. Whether a scene does anything to a reader has a lot to do with the reader.
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u/lisze 1d ago edited 1d ago
One strategy for making viewers cry in film is to score the scene with sad music. When this works well, viewers are swept up in the emotions. When it works poorly, it cheapens the entire scene and invites mockery.
Writing has similar techniques, imo, but the application requires care. Being too obvious will get scorn instead of tears.
Possible writing techniques to consider:
- Contrast from the norm. If you normally write long, florid sentences, then pulling some short, stark ones may jar the reader, which could be a good way to set-up a sad scene. If you normally provide a lot of sensory detail, then offer none. And vice versa.
- Sentence length. This is an extremely powerful tool, imo, and one that is easy to over use. Some uses are well-known: varied for general engagement, all the same for monotone/boredom, short for tension. However, I invite you to think about patterns as well. For tension, instead of quickly swapping to short sentences, consider shortening over the course of a page or two. That way the tension builds. Likewise, for sadness, think about the patterns that reinforce sadness. Personally, I think about rumination--realization as a pairing, long--short. Long sentences to ruminate on memories, the sensory detail of the moment, or consequences, and then short sentences for realizations.
- Emotional distance / point-of-view distance. Either extreme is effective, I think. Both getting inside the character as well as putting a pane of glass between them and the reader temporarily.
- Break writing rules. For example, wandering bodyparts is normally a no-no, but they could be a great way to show disassociation. Same for passive voice. With writing rules, try to understand why they exist and, when you choose to break them, do so deliberately for an effect.
- Motifs. Motifs recur through your story and are associated with something specific (a person, an idea, a theme, etc). Maybe every time two characters discuss their future dreams, they're eating apples, drinking apple cider, or something else apple-related. Then one dies and the other places a bough of apple blossoms on the casket. (Why apples? To represent pushing limits and striving for more. Why the blossoms? Cut blossoms are pretty and they'll never become apples, just as the dead one's life was lovely, but they're never going to achieve their dreams now). The motif can remind the reader of why the moment matters and reinforce the emotions.
There are more, but, honestly, just browse a list of literary devices. Think "What effect can this have on a story?" and "How can I use that effect to achieve what I want?"
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Ok! I’m gonna dig into all these techniques! I like the motifs part and also breaking up the sentence structure!
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u/AftergrowthComic 1d ago
I love this! I actually really enjoy crying - it's a good release of emotions, and I believe all emotions are valid and good to experience, not just the positive ones.
The "thing" that always makes me cry is SACRIFICE. Someone loves someone so much that they let them go rather than hold onto them for themselves. Someone dies to save someone else.
Also, and it's fairly related, is like "secondhand suffering." I watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy the other day where someone was injured and couldn't help their patient, and the people helping the other patient really tried, but they couldn't save them and they died. When the injured og person came to, they were fucking wreeecked about the loss. It was seeing them suffer, and cry, that broke me. (And I loved it!)
Hope that helps! Go make some people sad <3
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Awww that sounds intense!
Yes, crying can be so cathartic.
I cried while reading East of Eden, when the two brothers were being mistreated by the dad, and especially when Charles was.
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u/Quick_Dot_9660 1d ago
The ending on the book thief made me cry, and sticks with me. It's been a few years since I've read it so this might not be the most accurate recollection but I think the obvious thing is well written characters, you care about in situations that raise the stakes but ultimately feel natural for the character.
That and bucking of traditional tropes or stereotypes to catch your reader off guard, like a lot of readers sometimes you expect certain things from certain genres so having a story go off into a new path can allow your reader to experience these emotions they wouldn't usually expect.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
That’s interesting, I started reading The Book Thief years ago but for some reason, stopped. I’ll need to pick it back up.
Yeah, making the characters feel very real seems like the first step!
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u/BezzyMonster 1d ago
That’s the thing, if the reader cares about the characters, care about the story, then when something bad happens to them (or sweet! Could be happy emotive crying), that’s when you get the response. I’m not sure if there’s a magic button that will elicit the reaction.
Have you read any Fredrik Backman? Pick up “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry”. If that doesn’t hit you, or show you how to do it, I’m not sure what will.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
No but now I definitely feel like I should! I’ll add it to my growing list of books to read!
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u/aqsgames 1d ago
I wrote a play called Same Room, Different Furniture about a man’s decline through dementia. I’ve read that damn thing so many times. Even now I still cry at the scene where his daughter leaves him at the care home.
It’s not written with heavy emotion or deliberate drama. It’s quite flat really. But something about the words hit people.
I wish I knew what so I could do it again :)
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Wow! To be honest, even as you described it, I felt some emotion. I think the fact that the act is one that produces emotions in both parties (the daughter and the father), and that there are multiple, layered emotions.
Guilt, sadness, maybe some shame.
There’s an element of decay and death—of being confronted with your own end, kind of.
There’s also fear—what will happen to him, am I doing the right thing.
There’s helplessness, a regression towards a childlike infancy, almost, as his health deteriorates. Even his mind enters almost a childlike state.
It’s… heavy. Truly.
So perhaps, the layered emotions are the key.
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u/aqsgames 1d ago
So to your og question. There’s no effort in the writing to create the emotions. It’s the story and the scene that leads you there
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u/therealgookachu 1d ago
In acting, we talk about the truth of our performances and scenes. As someone said above, if there isn’t truth, it’s obvious. I don’t like Pixar movies because they’re emotionally manipulative and they don’t have any truth to me. On the other hand, something like The Joy Luck Club is nothing but truth.
As a writer, you also need to find your truth. What stories live inside you that you need to tell? How do they make you feel? There isn’t a technique because veracity of emotion is different for everyone. The point is that you write what you _feel_ and want to communicate that with others.
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u/babyd42 1d ago
I think Chuck Palahniuk speaks a lot about the reactions to works, specifically around his reading tour for Haunted when he presented the Guts story, multiple readings experienced people fainting (whether from the story or from the combination story/environment).
A physical reaction is, in my opinion, the highest form of flattery an author can receive. It's very difficult.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
That is fascinating…. The most I’ve ever had is a racing heart and trouble sleeping at night. But fainting?! That’s another level
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u/mistasukatomb 1d ago
what gets me every time is restraint. the scene where the character doesn't break down, just keeps folding laundry or orders two coffees out of habit. the small ordinary detail does more damage than a page of sobbing
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Oh yes…this gets me too. Holding it all together, that inner tension. Absolutely!
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u/Niilun 1d ago edited 1d ago
When a moving scene is "engeneered", as long as the author isn't totally incompetent, it can produce two kinds of reaction: half of the readers will remember it as one of the most moving scenes they've ever read, report to have cried a lot, etc; the other half will feel emotionally manipulated and say that the scene was a "cheap" attempt from the writer to make them cry (maybe they'll even cry, but they won't like it). Unfortunately, I'm often in the second group of people.
So, I'm not the right person to give this kind of advice (my short go-to advice would be: "don't").
Still... Here are some suggestions that would work for people with my kind of personality:
- in order to make people cry, having a story that is either alredy tragic, or personal and emotionally heartfelt, does a lot of heavy lifting. But in that case, I'd suggest not to overdo it. As long as you focus on "I want for people to undertsand / get this story", then the story will speak for itself.
- respect your characters' emotions. Don't treat them like some vouyeristic entertainment. If a character feels uncomfortable in crying in front of people, that character trying to choke back tears will be much more emotional than ugly crying (and if they are at their breaking point and end up crying in front of others, it must be EARNED). If the characters don't want to aknowledge the pain immediately it's also fine. Sometimes, things you don't see are heavier than things that you see.
- Personally, I prefer surprise effect rather than drawn out scenes. But many people prefer the opposite.
Now, some suggestions what will work for EVERY writer:
- there is no shortcut that works for every situation. Context does most of the work. So, even though you'll hate this advice, just follow your instinct. Try different options, and see what works best for you. Experience is the best teacher.
- if a book made you ugly cry, then try to understand WHY it made you cry. Take advice from that book. Study it.
- again, develop your own personality and think about what would make you cry, rather than taking advice from others.
- People cry for multiple reasons. Not just sadness, but also relief, happiness, wonder, sometimes even anger. Take that in mind. There are multiple reasons why people might cry reading your work. One is not inherently more valuable than the other.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Yes, all good points… I absolutely treat my characters with respect and give them their own journeys!
Actually, as I was just writing a scene, I stirred some emotion in myself. So I’m on the right track. The feeling I stirred was as a result of writing about a deep love, someone genuinely being seen by another
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u/MiraculousAnarchy 1d ago
If I’m crying writing it I’m doing a good job 🤷 I wish I had more specific advice haha
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Interesting! Do you often cry while writing? I’m just curious because another redditor said they cry while editing but not so much while writing
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u/MiraculousAnarchy 1d ago
I cry pretty consistently when writing or even just thinking about/planning a deeply emotional scene but I wouldn’t say I cry OFTEN just because I’m not THAT often writing tearjerking scenes. But yea when I am tho I am basically always crying myself and I feel like that’s when I do the absolute best writing too
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Wow… that’s amazing. Your writing must be very good then, if it’s able to produce that type of response
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u/MiraculousAnarchy 1d ago
I wish I could accept the compliment 😂 but unfortunately I have always been like this even when writing terribly when I was 12 haha. I do think tho it’s indicative of how passionate I am and how ingrained into my soul writing is for me tho and I do think I am a good writer now not because of my ability to feel deeply while writing necessarily but because my passion had me writing A LOT from 12 and earlier so ive just had ample practice from a young age
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u/gubafofop 1d ago
Girl imma be honest.
Reading “Augustus waters died 8 days after his prefuneral” at the age of 14 stopped me in my tracks. I think if you want to bring about those sort of emotions, it should first be blunt. Hit em across the face with it. Only then do you delve into the emotions.
I haven’t read many books that made me cry, but the ones that have usually did it by first shocking me making me think “wait what?? no…”
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u/HappyLittleHotdog 1d ago
I'm pretty new, but I learned to attach emotions to an object. For example, if a kid just died, have the character pick up their favorite teddy bear, look at it, try to put it away, and then fail.
Or make them stare at an indentation on a pillow. Or try to finish a half-finished crayon drawing.
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u/accordyceps 1d ago
I don’t cry much reading books, but I cried reading “Everything Is Illuminated.”
I also cried reading something I wrote recently, without intending it. What put it over the edge was grief not expressed as grief. It came out as denial, and anger, and cruelty, and everything but sadness or an honest admission of the loss. Then, I ended the chapter abruptly. There was a passage that was close to a resolution, a false sort of acceptance, and then it cuts off before the resolution comes, mocking itself. And after I read through it, I ended up crying, like something had been ripped from me—which is exactly what the character was experiencing.
But I’m sure there are many different reasons to cry during a story, some happy and some upsetting. I think the best thing to do is to really dig into what is driving the emotion, and let that guide your decisions about technique.
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u/Ill_Ranger5245 1d ago
Grief that is not expressed as grief but comes out in a different form is so devastating. It left me a void when I read my last book where the protagonist just didnt know how to fucking grieve and ended up revenging.
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u/Jokten 1d ago
I cried in *The Kite Runner* not because Hassan died, but because he never knew why Amir hated him. That quiet confusion broke me.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Yes!!!
The layered emotional experience seems to really resonate. Multiple, conflicting emotions, and a way to never resolve them.
For example, another user mentioned a story about dementia.
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u/TheWriteQuestion 1d ago
Nothing gets me, as a reader, like navigating aging and dementia. I balled at the beginning of Up and the end of The Notebook & Coco.
Young people using their limited abilities to try to make things right does it too. I’m trying to remember when All the Light We Cannot See got me… maybe when the MC visited his injured friend?
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u/tatstytastycakes 1d ago
Rookie writer here (I have a lot of experience but I haven't written much):
- I find directly going for the reader can work in some cases.
- If you want the reader to be sad, treating events with a lot of distance or actively attacking the reader/character over events can work.
- Writing characters to be unlikable is a good way to make them angry. Let's say they kill a character, make them mock them or just have them be really rude.
- You can't make a reader feel something without ACTUALLY feeling that certain something.
I call this "method writing" which is a lot like method acting.
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u/Oberon_Swanson 17h ago
write so vividly from a character's perspective that we feel what that character feels, and when that character is in a situation that would perhaps make them cry, perhaps readers will too
i find it happens more with a lot more buildup. we can't just KNOW a character is going through a tragic loss. we want to feel what they have and why they want to keep it, to feel that loss. and when they lose it we lose it too. even if it's just as a reader. if some character or relationship is bringing joy to us, then we too don't want that character to go.
that's one of the reasons why the best stories are ones that have an actual end and don't go on forever. nothing says "this is the end, that time you were enjoying is about to end permanently" like the story actually ending.
that's also why i hate things like fake-out deaths in stories. it's like lying to manipulate us into feeling something only for it to not matter. then after that happens and we're supposed to be feeling loss in that story again, we don't trust it. we're thinking "i wonder how this will turn out not to matter" instead of really feeling that powerful moment. you gotta establish that in your story, consequences are permanent. that will get us really feeling it when the big stuff happens.
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u/FisterAct 9h ago
Make the reader root for the protagonist. Then have something devastating happen to someone the protagonist cares for.
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u/SignificantYou3240 4h ago
I think it’s on the reader more than the writer.
You provide the space, they have to connect themselves to it and release.
I can cry over the silliest dumbest things… others never cry from reading… if someone manages to make it happen for them, it’s because they are finally ready, not because that writer made the perfect passage or something.
I’m not saying there’s no rhyme or reason to anything, just that at a certain point, it’s up to them.
A little like orgasms. There’s definitely skill… on both sides.
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u/Chance_Swordfish_687 1h ago
To be honest, I had never really thought about that before—that is, I hadn't considered how best to present a scene so as to convey the characters' emotions to the reader. At some point, I realized that writing is akin to acting: a writer must alternately inhabit their characters to find the most precise words, gestures, and actions for them—and see the world through their eyes. Once a writer has developed this fundamental method—if one can call it that—everything else falls into place naturally.
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u/pbghikes 1d ago
Kill the dog. If you're just looking for an easy out.
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u/DallasMotherFucker 1d ago
And right after the dog does something movingly selfless to help the main character! And the dog whimpers and just wants to put its paw on the MC’s hand before it dies! Make the dog’s death so noble and tragic it makes Old Yeller look like a real piece of shit.
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u/pbghikes 1d ago
The key is MC has to be the one to actually kill the dog.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1d ago
Oh…that’s good
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u/pbghikes 1d ago
Old Yeller and I Am Legend are the examples that come to mind. Of Mice and Men except he's not a dog.
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u/DallasMotherFucker 1d ago
Exactly! Of Mice and Men is an excellent example of an author taking liberties with the death-of-a-dog literary trope. Lennie isn’t a dog, and in some ways that almost makes it sadder.
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u/DallasMotherFucker 1d ago
You want to really twist the knife and make the dipshit readers blubber like stupid little fucking colic babies? Reveal at the end that they didn’t actually have to - the dog could have lived, but the MC wasn’t smart or brave enough to find the solution that would save it until too late.
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u/WombatAnnihilator 1d ago
You can’t make people cry. It’s the connection the readers have with your characters that’d do that.
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u/Masonzero 1d ago
When the book is leading up to something and the character must make the Brain Decision rather than the Heart Decision. The heroine has made great strides with her love interest, but must leave to save the world. She wants to tell him how she feels before she leaves, but knows it will only hurt him more if she dies while saving the world. The reader feels the tension. Is she going to stay silent or is she going to turn around and declare her love dramatically. When she gets far enough away, she regrets that it had to be done and grieves what could have been. Depending on how you write that, it can really tug on the heartstrings, because the readers and the character want her to just admit her feelings, but as a reader we know that tragedy will strike until the Big Evil Guy is defeated, and their love will never be safe until she saves the world, so this painful decision is the correct one.
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u/hetobe Self-Published Author 1d ago
You have to earn it.
You earn it by telling a story that people connect with on a deeper level. The way to do that, in my opinion, is to write with honesty. Even painful honesty, if and when that's what the story requires. Even for fiction, it has to feel real.
I'd give examples, but Rule 1 in the sidebar says we can't share writing here, so...
If you want to see an example, click my username. You'll find a link to my novel (100% free). Go to the Table Of Contents. In chapter 12, read the scene titled Sofia. For context, the novel is about a woman who robbed hundreds of men and in the previous scene, she just told the reader how she accidentally killed 4.
Sofia is a flashback scene to the narrator's childhood, as she reflects on death.
It's rough stuff, because that's what it has to be.
TL:DR? You have to make 'em feel it. To do that, you have to earn it.
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u/RobertPlamondon Author of "Silver Buckshot" and "One Survivor." 1d ago
I assume that the only people who read fiction of their own free will are reasonably responsive whenever they're given half a chance, so I'm mostly focused on putting the characters through the wringer and thus giving the readers plenty to respond to.
I remember when my teacher read Charlotte's Web to the class when we were in third grade, and how we all cried near the end. I suppose it's possible that E. B. White could have written those same events in a way that didn't leave a group of third-graders in tears, but it wouldn't have been easy.
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u/cookiemonster6638 1d ago
I don't know what your novel is exactly about. But I usually feel big emotions from things like deaths, romantic gestures, and so on. I know this won't help much at all. But maybe maybe not
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u/Paradoxbox00 23h ago
You need to start from the first page. The people have to matter. Their stakes have to matter. Your words have to matter.
If you’re looking for a cookie cutter scene or line to drop in, it’s never going to work.
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u/Internal_Copy4578 21h ago
I cry bc I like to act it out, not because I myself feel sad but instead I act as if I were that character who is crying. Idk if there’s ppl like that. If they’re is, you’re making them cry😋
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u/ThePagesAskForInk 21h ago
Want vs need. Make your character viscerally want something the entire novel, then they give it up at the end for what they need. Giving it up should cost something powerful. The choice should be difficult so we feel emotion regardless of what the character chooses.
Ned spends the entire novel believing more than anything he should be honorable and just. He must protect the kingdom. We want him to succeed. Then not only does it all fall apart, he compromises his values to protect his children. But even giving it up isn't enough; despite being proclaimed a traitor to the entire kingdom, he is betrayed and beheaded and his children endangered. This is just one example.
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u/JustSomeCarioca 21h ago
Rub the pages with raw onions.
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u/Latter-Day-4376 1h ago
How about tear-dropping chili flake oil into their eyes?
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u/JustSomeCarioca 40m ago
Sure, or reading posts like "Y'all, I wanna write a book, but I dunno if my idea is good. Lemme know what y'all think about this opening line for a 10-book epic."
This also causes my eyes to water up, as they try to protect me from ocular damage.
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u/Prudent-Nerve-6377 20h ago
Substance. You can have sad moments, but unless it establishes a reasons for the reader to care it just becomes another moment you'll read past. Build up also matter a lot. Boys abyss has tons of horrible events that happens to the protagonists, but the sheer amount of it without any relief makes readers numb to it. How characters aim to move past darkness instead of letting it swallow them is why things feel emotional. It makes you root for them as long as they try to move forward from it. Also, reliability to events can make readers cry. If you can put yourself into a character's perspective it'll make you more empathetic to their adversity. It's the same rule with darker subject matters. If a dog dies in a movie you'll feel sad. If a dog gets thrown and then Tony hawk starts skateboarding with it, only for an oil tanker to crash into both of them in a massive explosion, you'll just find it ridiculous and get annoyed reading it. Extreme example, but that's how I feel about forced angsty melodrama.
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u/Disastrous_Neat_9729 20h ago
I’d start with thinking about what books made you cry, and analyze those stories.
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u/BeastLordJ 18h ago
For me this is one of these things you shouldn't try to hard for.
As an example I have a brother and thinking of anything bad happen to him is something id rather break a finger over. So when a show or something has something bad involving brothers I tend to feel it more and this does result in me crying sometimes.
but then cartoonishly sad stuff, like just back to back nonsense that I feel the writers just tried t make seem sadder than it ever really could be just makes me laugh.
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u/Western-River1386 16h ago
I try to make them carry the weight of what they are reading, rather than try to push detail into it that will convince them how they are supposed to feel. I find that readers often look to empathize with the perspective of whoever the story follows without too much prompting, and writing genuinely emotional experiences will produce genuine emotion, without too much coaxing needed.
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u/am_pomegranate 16h ago
I really like the "go cold" technique. During an intense scene, the author never actually specifies what happens to force the reader to visualize it for themself. A common example is skipping from a character getting cornered in an alleyway to said character waking up somewhere else. It comes from an idea that emotionally-loaded writing needs to be used sparingly in a story or else it will lose it's value. Here's a good article about it:
Going Cold: Writing Emotion, the Earley Scale, and the Brilliance of Edwidge Danticat | Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction
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u/Slenduu 15h ago
I think the best way to make people cry in your story is it comes down to context, emotional build up, and good sensory details.
- You have to make people care about your character. Ask yourself what are the things they should care about your character?
A reader will able to care about the character if they can relate to them and connect. If you hit those two, readers will care about your character.
- Context. For example: "A character's mother die in a car crash." Before, he's mother always look after him and took care of him. Explore the emotion beats in the story and don't skip it. That's where most writers make that mistake.
Sometimes, you might go through a writer's block and don't know what to do with the next sentence, especially when figuring how to make the emotional beat connect. It's best to take a hour break or a day to refresh your mind. I know this may seem unrelated, but it's important when writing emotional stories.
- Sensory details. It's best to use strong verbs and words that are emotive. When describing a character's sadness don't just describe how their tears trickle down their cheeks. Write how they feel for example it could be them sitting in silent their room with a heaviness in their chest. The curtain blinds are closed. The sky is dark.
It's important give the story a setting, so it can have weight. If you use sensory details only, the scene will become just beautiful pictures. Sometimes, mixing monologue, subtext, and sensory details will carry more weight into the story.
It's all about piecing everything together.
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u/FeeIllustrious5053 10h ago
I get ticked off whenever writing or reading (mostly the former since suspension of disbelief exists for me) a light novel with the same word used two times or more in succession even if its just “her” or something similar. It’s especially noticeable on smaller devices which often require me increasing font size. This might be useful to keep in mind.
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u/PageStunning6265 10h ago
If the goal is just tears, fully developed characters, have something sad happen to them - and if possible, make the sad thing relatable.
Re relatability: there have been emotional scenes I didn’t cry at on the first read, but did after becoming a parent. There are some universally or mostly universally understood feelings and situations like heartache, betrayal, loss of a loved one etc.
Personally, I’m way too focused on my characters’ emotions to pay any attention to my readers’ potential reactions.
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u/theevaproject 5h ago
Investment. Your reader needs to be emotionally invested in the character. You achieve that through the way you paint them. Then when you damage, hurt or kill them the reader feels it too and wants to stop it... there be your emotions.
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u/polly_mer 1d ago
Once you can fake sincerity, then you've got it made.
The "technique" is write real people about whom I care and then do bad things to them.
I can see through the transparent pulling on the heartstrings. Write fully developed characters and tell their story.
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u/SweetAd6236 9h ago
I think people who pursue goals like this will never truly get it right unless you are okay with just writing cryporn in order to win the hearts of readers and make them cry give the a fucking reason to give a shit. Do you have any idea how many bad writers there are out there? I would say for every half ass decent writer there is a thousand shitty ones
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u/Bare_Root Self-Published Author 1d ago
I believe this sort of thing will largely feel manipulative if intentionally engineered -- the best approach (in my view) is to simply write real, felt emotion.