Emotions, Sweet & Otherwise: ways to put feelings on the page

Photo: Guy Kawasaki

by Ellen Santasiero | April 2026

I’m watching this cop show.

Senior Detective Linden barely speaks, respects protocol, and shows little interest in food, while the new guy, the junior Holder, rattles on in ghetto-speak, cuts corners, and practices a form of vegetarianism that includes pork rinds.

By the time we learn most of this, though, we’ve already fallen for these characters. Why? Because the series’ writers make us feel emotionally connected to the characters from the get go.

In The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass counsels writers to craft openings so they include an emotional hook (and at least a hint of an intriguing plot). Without an emotional hook, implies Maass, you’ve got nothing—or not as much as you could have. Some qualities or traits that make us initially like characters, writes Maass, are compassion, a commitment to justice, humanity, loyalty to family, and sacrifice. I would add fallibility, humor, an underdog status, and a struggle with inner conflict.

In the opening episode of Season One, here’s what hooked me on the character of Linden: Wearing ordinary jogging clothes and a messy ponytail, Linden comes upon a large dead animal on the beach, and stops and regards it with a soft expression. We then see her investigate a dark warehouse where her flashlight fails and she has to shake it to make it turn on again. Then we see her colleagues shower her with affection at a going-away party. What’s not to like?

In the next five minutes we see Holder schlepping a boom box, a mini basketball hoop, and other essential office supplies into Linden’s office. He accidentally knocks one of Linden’s file boxes off her desk. The lieutenant then enters and tells Linden to show Holder “how to work a scene.” Holder frowns at Linden, throws his arms out to his sides, and says, sotto voce, “I know how to work a scene.” He’s the underdog, and he’s funny. It’s hard not to root for him.

This is a great opening, but there are four seasons, each with thirteen episodes. What’s going to keep me watching this show from season to season besides a search for a killer? It’s the same thing that keeps readers interested over the course of a 350-page novel: the internal emotional journeys our characters take.

At the Forge, we call this “story,” as opposed to plot.

Linden’s series-long story revolves around her quest to find justice for neglected and lost kids, a vocation that might be noble in another character, but instead, in Linden, it is tragic: Linden’s obsession with such cases makes her, a single parent, neglect her own teenaged son at home. Indeed, one of the other characters shouts at her, “You care more about a dead girl than you do your own son!”

Though not as Shakespearean, Holder’s series-long struggle is compelling, too. He’s a recovering addict who, when he’s feeling low, seems just one in-breath away from “cristy” as he calls it, the drug he let stall his law enforcement career for a time. In other moments, he desperately wants to be what he calls “a good man” and do right by the family he’s betrayed in the past.

The detectives are broken inside, and we keep watching not only to find out whodunit, but to see whether these cops will prevail over their inner demons. We believe their struggles and we feel for them.

So how do we create this type of character in our fiction?

Maass counsels writers to figure out what matters urgently to their protagonist, and why. “Your protagonist doesn’t just care about this person, situation, or thing; he worries about it.”

If we show readers what our characters worry about, what matters to them internally, how they feel when they strive, struggle, fall, or succeed, readers will stick with our stories and novels.

Sure, the badly broken detective is a trope of the police procedural, but it’s one that non-genre (literary) writers can study and emulate if they want their readers to be hooked both from a plot perspective and an emotional one.

There is a lot more to say about creating emotion in fiction (and in nonfiction and poetry), and not enough space here to say it, but in the Forge, we have time to look closely at our students’ writing and help them create memorable characters and stories that readers can give a damn about.

Our Fall 2026 program begins in September! Apply at theforgewriting.com