Do I care?

 Last night I went to a concert by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.  It was billed as the definitive Stat Wars concert, playing music from across all the movies,

The conductor gave an interesting commentary on the way composer John Williams worked.  He talked about Williams creating recognisable themes for  his music.  So a character can be identified across decades as a young woman and an older one simply by the repeated use of the same theme.

The other thing which was very obvious sitting listening to the pure music was how it is written to manipulate the listener's emotions.  Yes, that's  obvious, but when you're actually watching a movie the music is blended with the action and you don't separate out its contribution.  But listening to some of the themes last night, I was reminded of how the different themes can reinforce the idea of a character's goodness or badness.

The main theme of Star Wars is big and open and expansive.  It perfectly reflects the theme of the universe being a huge playground to have adventures in.  The Imperial March, with its loud, strident brass and martial rhythms, perfectly accompanies images of a vast army of stormtroopers waiting for Darth Vader to arrive. The music holds a sense of power and menace, and perfectly heralds the darkness and danger of that character.

But we, as writers, don't have the help of music to get across our characters' emotions.  We only have words.  And not only must we get across our characters' emotions using them, we must also evoke an emotional response in the reader too.  

Coincidentally (and I'm beginning to thing that things aren't so coincidental, the way they mesh together), I'd been reading a lot of posts on social media about indie publishing a great book.  But what makes a great book?

Ultimately a great book is one which the reader gets emotionally invested in.  I've come to realise that, for me as a reader, if I can't emotionally identify with the characters and what they stand for, the book is instantly forgettable.   This does explain why the galaxy-spanning space operas and fantasies with a totally ruthless emperor killing everyone around them leave me cold.  There is no heart to those characters, and I can't take them to my heart.

In the novella series I'm writing now I have two characters who bicker a lot.  It's the good-natured kind of bicker, and what it really means is that the characters care deeply about each other.  This is their way of showing it.

I've also written a meeting scene this week which used several emotions.  One character has saved another's life, and she is receiving thanks for doing that.  But, it turns out, she was the person who put the second character in danger in the first place.  Revealing that evokes very different feelings in the audience.

So this week I've tried to ensure reader engagement by showing characters who care for each other, and who are brave enough to risk their lives to save the people they love.  I'm certainly engaged with my story.  I really hope my readers will be too.