What part does an author’s emotions play in her writing? I have heard well-published authors explain that if an author feels sad, the reader will feel it more, if the author is scared, so it is with the reader, and so on. If that is the case, then if an author wants to produce fiction that deeply resonates with her readership (and thus create a well-sold book), the author must tap her own emotional resources.

I think of a best-selling Christian author. She will often tell how a part in her story made her cry. When readers come across that part in the story, do they cry as well? Very likely. So what creates this level of emotion in an author? Especially a novelist, I mean they are just writing about made-up people.

When a novelist writes, she enters a new world, a different world. In crafting the book, she paints a picture of that world, populating it with characters, and telling their story, their heartache, their joys, their trials. When a reader picks up this book, they open the cover and step into a new, a different world, the world the author created. If the author did not picture that world with clarity, the reader will not either. If the author did not think her characters real, neither will the reader. Yet, it is the feeling that the characters in a story are real that a reader seeks, that is what makes a good story in the mind of many readers.

That tells an author that she must tap her own creativity, her own struggles, her own emotions in order to relate with the characters she’s writing about. Only in doing so can she create a story that will touch the deepest parts of a reader’s soul. And thus the reader is changed.