Using Memory to Heighten Emotion with Liz Fielding

Author Liz Fieding talks about Using Memory to Heighten Emotion. Her new book out this month is with Joffe Publishing, Murder Among the Roses. 

 

Liz Fielding met her husband when they were both working in Zambia and were keen members of the Lusaka Theatre Club. He was playing John de Stogumber in St Joan, and she was the pageboy to the Earl of Warwick. He swore it was the purple tights that got him.

 

Years spent in Africa and the Middle East provided the background to many of Liz's romances. Her first, An Image of You, was set in Kenya, in a place where they had spent many happy weekends on safari. It was plucked from the slush pile because the feisty feminist heroine made her editor laugh. Emotion touched with humour has been the hallmark of her work ever since.

 

After writing 70 books for Harlequin Mills and Boon, Liz has now turned to crime, signing with Joffe Books for three "Maybridge Mysteries", the first of which, Murder Among the Roses, is published on 18th April.

 

 Liz Fielding on the web:

Website             Facebook           Twitter

Using memory to heighten emotion

"A baby?

Her hands were shaking so badly that it took her a minute to remove her gloves before lifting it out of the cold earth, cradling it gently in the palm of her hand as she had once cradled the heads of each of her children in the heart-stopping moment of pure love when first Lucy, then Tom and finally Sophie had opened their eyes and looked at her."

Very early in Murder Among the Roses, my heroine, garden designer Abby Finch, is digging out an old and dying rose, when she uncovers small bones.

Believing it to be a pet burial and taking great care, she begins to  remove them, planning to rebury them. Then she finds the skull and realises that it's not an animal. What she's uncovered is the secret grave of a new born baby.

This is a truly shocking moment and, as she lifts it out of the ground, I heightened the moment by taking the reader deep into Abby's emotion memory as she cradles the skull in just the same way that she cradled the heads of her own new born babies in the palm of her hand in exactly that way.

Memory is the trigger to an emotional reaction that puts her directly into the shoes of the mother who gave birth to this infant. Who was she? Had the baby been still born? Was it something more sinister? What had happened to her?

And think about your character's experience. Childbirth in Abby's case. Your character's reaction to loss, joy, grief will be the result of everything that has happened to them. Their feelings at the death of a much loved pet will be very different at the age of seven to those when they're seventy-seven. No less acute, but coloured by experience, by the different place they are in their life. By the acceptance, perhaps, that there will be no more pets, a recognition of their mortality.

Emotion is what makes us human and as a writer, your history will give you the tools you need to write. Those moments that stay with you. Incidents – often small in themselves – that leave a lingering sense of outrage or pleasure. Of resentment, excitement, helplessness, warmth, betrayal, injustice, embarrassment that lodge in the mind and years later surface without warning, the feelings so vivid that you can still feel the hot blush.

The writer may not have been through the same experience as their characters, but they will all have felt those moments of joy, of tenderness.

We all know loss, heartbreak, the death of a loved one, the hollowness of disappointment. Search your memory. Relive a moment you’d rather forget. Bring your own experience to the table, use it to colour your writing, give power to your character’s feelings.

We’ve all read those skim over the surface sentences.

She hurt. Her heart was breaking. It was like nothing she’d felt before.

This is the classic show-don't-tell moment. The reader wants to feel her pain, her heartbreak and to share that unique experience. It's the moment to put your reader in the protagonist's shoes and live the experience.

You will find more useful writing help from Liz in her Little Book of Writing Romance and on her "On Writing" pages on her blog at https://lizfieldingblog.com

Liz Fielding has a new book out:

MEET ABBY FINCH. SHE’S THE BUSY MUM OF THREE, AN EXPERT GARDENER AND THE STAR OF YOUR NEW FAVOURITE COZY MURDER MYSTERY.

In the peaceful Cotswolds village of Maybridge, you wouldn’t expect to find a dead body in the rose garden. And certainly not two.

Abby is horrified to discover the bones of a baby buried under a rose bush. It’s in the garden of her soon-to-be ex-husband Howard’s family home.

She immediately calls the police. But she can’t get hold of Howard. He’s off on a jolly with the woman he’s got pregnant.

And then, just two days later, Abby finds Howard himself.
Lying dead in the very same rose garden.
Throat slashed with her own garden spade.

Now Abby is the prime suspect . . .

Fans of Faith Martin, Jane Adams, Frances Evesham, M.C. Beaton, Clare Chase or Jeanne M. Dams will love this addictive cozy mystery!

MEET THE DETECTIVE
Brilliant gardener and the busy mum of three, Abby Finch’s dreams of winning gold at Chelsea Flower Show were put on hold by an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. These days she’s kept on her toes looking by her beloved family, running her own business and dealing with her imminent divorce. In an effort to keep things cordial, she’s allowed her ex to bully her into restoring the garden of his family home. Thankfully she’s surrounded herself with a great group of friends to lean on.

THE SETTING
Pretty Maybridge is a charming village set in the sheep-dotted Cotswolds hills, with a long history stretching back to Tudor times. It’s the type of place where everyone knows each other, but there's a wonderful bookshop on the corner of the bridge, a popular riverside café and a bustling market at Christmastime. And with Bristol nearby and a big supermarket round the corner.

Buy on:

Amazon Kindle            Amazon UK           Amazon Aust