# For you, what evokes an emotional response?



## HabeasCorpus (May 4, 2013)

My first thread!

So, the role of an individual's emotions is going to be fairly significant to the magical system in the world I'm creating.  In light of that, I'm curious as to what sort of situations, generally speaking, bring out various emotional responses _in you_.  

Some of the general ideas I've come across:

Life/Death Events
Music
Sporting Events
Perceived Instances of Injustice

What else would you add?  Do you see one above that especially hits close to home and would be willing to add further?  I greatly appreciate the responses from those taking the time to do so and the rest for just reading.  Cheers!


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## druidofwinter (May 4, 2013)

Music. For me it brings out a strong emotional response. (Death is a given) Great music can make me cry, or feel as though i could rip down a mountain, and it has inspired many scenes in my book. When i read, perceived instances of injustice can really get to me. When, for example, characters are accused of doing something they did not do, it can really make me hate the accuser. I would add Humor. Good humor can make me love a book, and it's characters. Hope this helps.


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## AnnaBlixt (May 4, 2013)

Fear
Sex 
Abuse
Sacrifice


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## Alexandra (May 4, 2013)

Under the right circumstances, anything.


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## HabeasCorpus (May 4, 2013)

Thanks for the responses.  I'm hoping to understand a little better about those situations that evoke emotion in the real world, not because I want to include them in my plot to evoke an emotional response in my reader per se, but because I am trying to figure out how a world that has an incentive to be highly emotional might encourage/incentivize emotional experiences.


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## Devora (May 4, 2013)

The best way to have people get an emotional response to an event is to have themselves connect to the event, whether it's through the characters or through the event itself.


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## Jess A (May 4, 2013)

Pretty much all of the above (music, death, seeing my team win...etc).

Here's a few things that make my hackles rise - more basic, day-today things, which may also be helpful to you:

Deliberate stupidity and selfishness. Being accused of something I didn't do. Disgusting customer service - at the shops or being told pure lies and given fake promises during a 24-hour airport delay. Dangerous, inconsiderate, bullying drivers. An inability to consider two or more facets of an issue - people who take one side without knowledge of the other and slam down people who take the opposing view. In addition, people who deliberately put others down in public. 

Things that upset me (and probably a lot of other people) as well - feeling like I've failed. Not managing my time properly and nearly failing to meet deadlines. Feeling unappreciated or useless. 

Things that evoke very powerful feelings of happiness, curiosity, and feeling at peace - I get this most when I travel, whether it's local or overseas. Seeing a tornado forming, seeing a wild bear in Canada, hearing a wolf howl, taking off/landing on a plane or flying over amazing scenery, seeing a bird of prey dive, or immense waterfalls, stunning natural beauty, hearing certain things or seeing ancient artifacts/buildings. The list is endless. I must also add just realising how lucky I am to live where I do, or to be seeing or doing what I do, to have people around me whom I love. Putting my world into perspective.


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## Nobby (May 4, 2013)

Well, the current Western world doesn't encourage emotional outburst, in my opinion, yet it does seem to gloat over them...if you see what I mean...


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## The Unseemly (May 5, 2013)

As far as writing goes: I find that I get emotional response through the author delving me into the text, making me care for the characters, seeing and smelling the world as they see and smell the world. If a character dies/has some other unpleasant event happen to them, and the author has built layers upon layers of emotion that I feel towards that character, I care. I feel upset, even though I can't exactly understand why. Likewise goes to amusing situations/characters. I would never laugh at Merry and Pippin's machinations if I didn't have that connection, that understaing of their whole-hearted stupidity, to them. 

But if it's done poorly/not done at all? I don't care. A good example of this was when Carn (the background magician guy from the Inheritance cycle who hangs around Roran) died. He simply wasn't developed enough, didn't have those important layers of emotion interwoven within him, to make me care.

The above is like with real life. If you see dead Muslims lined up in the street after a bombing, do you care to the point where you truly feel upset? I find the answer is no: you never quite have that emotional connection with those people for you to truly _care._ But when your grandmother whom was your effective foster mother for the early times of your life and supporter of your goals later in life dies of a sudden heart attack? You care. You had those interwoven emotions with your grandmother to the point were you care.

My view on how emotions work, anyhow.


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## Ernie B. (May 5, 2013)

In psychology, emotions are something our body used to motivate us to act. In a words, anything that is relevant to an individual's goal and survival would be evoking emotions.

- Life, young children and goals being reached tends to evoke happiness.
- Death, alienation, starvation, or goals being hampered, etc. tend to evoke fear if they are actually present, anxiety when they are expected to happen. They may evoke anger when it is an individual is trying to create them. After they happens, sorrow tend to be the one that props up.

You get the idea. If you want to know how a character should respond to an event, ask yourself: what is this character's goal?

Hope this help.


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## skip.knox (May 7, 2013)

Think in terms of a scale of both emotions and causes of same. Some emotions come out only in the course of a story -- you have to get invested in characters, in their challenges and sacrifices, so that at the end you weep or cheer. That's a very different emotion than seeing a puppy being kicked, or hearing a favorite song.

Context is everything.

So if your culture is going to encourage emotionalism, it would do so all across that spectrum. At the least, you could invent festivals in which emotions were encouraged. In fact, it'd be cool to have Festival A be for joy while Festival B is for anger, or whatever. There could be a whole round of them.

Emotions could be encouraged in the context of family events, forms of mourning or celebration. They could be encouraged at Big Events such as a declaration of war. There would certainly be gods for each emotion, complete with their own chapels and rituals.

I think the idea has legs.


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## Lancelot (May 14, 2013)

Other people's emotional responses can evoke one in you. Think about how fear spreads to those who don't know any threat. The same with crying. Often, the sight of someone crying (and _you _having some idea about why _they _are crying) will make you cry. That is the basis of empathy. It is a person applying their own emotion to another person's emotional situation. That can be easily written in since a situation that requires magic use is probably one that has someone experiencing some sort of emotion.


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## Lancelot (May 14, 2013)

Also, children can magnify emotional response. To many adults, the site of a child will strengthen a response. So, injustice being done makes you emotional, but injustice being done to a child makes you even more emotional. Mistreated prisoner = emotional. Mistreated child prisoner = much more emotional. IF you are unsure about this, ask anyone who is a parent to read Ursula Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and see how they react.


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## Jess A (May 15, 2013)

Building on what Lancelot and slip-knox said:

I like the idea of festivals that bring out emotion. There must be plenty of examples in our own history. Those festivals might use music and dance and lighting/setting (etc) to evoke emotion in those participating. And as Lancelot mentioned, collective empathy would be a factor of those festivals.

There are so many options for festivals or religious gatherings. Emotion could be important when praying, when greeting one's leader, even when going to the marketplace. It could be embedded right into the culture, in each and every aspect. Those who don't show the right emotion could be punished somehow, or sent to some religious institution to be 'taught' (imprisoned and brainwashed...hehe).

The opposite would be that movie, _Equilibrium_, where emotions are banned (medication is used to suppress it) because they cause war and dissent. That's an interesting study on emotion and they ban all sorts of things which evoke emotion - art, music, books/literature, pets. There's a scene where a puppy evokes a strong emotion in the MC.

I'd like to see what you end up with.


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## A. E. Lowan (May 15, 2013)

Actually a great example of religious festivals in our own history designed to indulge in strong emotions would involve the worship of Dionysus by the Maenads.

Maenad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

These women were famous for engaging in emotional excess during religious practice, to the point of violence and madness.  Interesting stuff.


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## HabeasCorpus (May 16, 2013)

I'm really enjoying the responses so far!  The festival or other national/regional events created to evoke, encourage, develop emotive capacity and expression are something I hadn't considered.  The question I have to deal with then is the why of it, which is always fun to do.  I am going to be a little wary about using the emotional fervor/fanaticism with religion... too often it gets confused with manipulative tactics employed by con-artists.  Not saying it hasn't happened in the past, but I think that, over time, the emotion fades and some sort of normalcy sets back in - unless circumstances are specifically crafted to reinforce the emotional experience over and over and over....

which actually leads to another interesting concept - the impact of time on emotions - generally, they're short lived experiences, but can cause longer lasting persistent states of feeling and mood... going to have to explore that as well I think.  (and yes, I remember the maenads from high school humanities - interesting link there).

Thank you all for the great responses!


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## wordwalker (May 16, 2013)

My "favorite" is betrayal. Either by a person, or by fate-- that is, when someone's worked hard and really earned his victory, and something else ruins it. (Picture Indy pushing working his "why'd it have to be snakes" to get the Ark out... and there's Belloq and friends laughing at the top ready to seal him in.)


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## Wanara009 (May 17, 2013)

For me, the strongest emotional reaction comes whenever I see the completion of a monumentally difficult task done by people I come to get attached to. To date, the only work that managed to get me to openly shed tears is Seven Wonders of the Industrial World. I personally recommend watching the first ("The Great Ship"), the second ("The Brooklyn Bridge"), and the sixth ("The Line").

Perhaps because I believe in what I have come to call "The Human Paradox" (We get stronger when we got together, but we also get stupider the more individuals is incorporated into the group). So when I see something like the aforementioned work, I feel that humanity is special and I should be proud that I was a part of it.


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