2026 conference intensives

HOW TO GET EMOTION ONTO THE PAGE

It is a truth universally acknowledged: you have to hook the reader right out of the starting gate. From the very first sentence, your story must incite that delicious sense of urgency that makes readers have to know what happens next. In other words, they have to feel something. Which makes sense, since all story is emotion based. If we aren’t feeling, we aren’t reading. And what we’re feeling is what the protagonist feels, in in the moment, on the page, as she struggles with the tough decision that every scene forces her to make. But when we talk about emotion, it’s maddeningly easy to misunderstand what it really is, and thus how to get it onto the page. Emotion doesn’t come from general external “dramatic” situations, nor is it expressed by body language, nor is it about whether a character is happy, sad, angry or really, really cranky. Instead emotion springs from the internal struggle each unavoidable decision forces the protagonist to make. You won’t need to tell us how the protagonist feels, you’ll make us feel it right along with them.

SETTING: YOUR MOST UNDERUSED TOOL

It’s not just time and place. It’s not just worldbuilding. It is the single-most underused tool for characterization, establishing mood and tone, building suspense, foreshadowing, developing themes, and at least a half-dozen other vital story functions. Whether your setting is contemporary small town or futuristic sci-fi, it can strengthen every element of your story beyond serving “where and when.” We will examine strategies to leverage setting: Why do you always need to know where the light is coming from in a scene? Why is what your characters don’t notice often more important than what they do? How can setting lead to the greatest emotional impact on the reader? Why is it the perfect soil for organic metaphors? As we go through these answers, each will become a new precision tool in your expanding toolbox, ready for immediate application.