Thursday, January 3, 2013

The 3 most emotional scenes in fiction ever


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I was asked to write a guest post for Sooz Says Stuff, a great blog by an Australian writer, and I got all emotional. Or rather I started thinking about how writers can get readers all emotional. I've given some tips in my post here on how to make readers FEEL and I also thought about which scenes in fiction make me feel emotional, and why they work.

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These are three of my top scenes in fiction for making me really FEEL - which scenes would you pick? How much of the choice is because the situation strikes a personal chord, and how much of it is because it's so well written?

1) Baloo and Bagheera vouching for Mowgli in ‘The Jungle Book’ by Rudyard Kipling. I suppose I’d like a bear and a black panther, outsiders like me, to stand up for me in public, in front of the whole wolf pack.

2) Bathsheba fighting to protect the hay in the storm, with Gabriel Oak, in ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ by Thomas Hardy. I think there’s something very sexy about a couple working in a physical activity together, particularly when fighting the elements. To me, this is one of the most romantic scenes ever written because the reader knows that Gabriel loves Bathsheba, and the fact her useless husband is in a drunken stupor adds to the undercurrents.

3) The ending of 'Brighton Rock' by Graham Greene. This is the most terrible, heartbreaking, pessimistic scene I’ve ever read and yet it is all in the reader’s imagination. You know that what is about to happen will destroy all Rose’s naïve illusions about Pinkie.

Read the rest of my blog post here.

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