Celia Bryce Virtual Writing Workshop Blog Tour: Emotion

Today it's my huge pleasure to have debut author Celia Bryce with us for an amazing guest post!  Her book Anthem For Jackson Dawes is, I will warn you, a real heartbreaker.  Think Before I Die and The Fault In Our Stars for younger readers. It's also freaking amazing.  So it's with loads of excitement that I hand over to Celia, who's giving us writing tips on getting emotion into a story...  Enjoy!
Oh, and if you want to know more about Celia, check out Her Website!  :)

EMOTION

Emotion. Love, hate, joy, sadness, pride, agitation… I could go on and on. Any dictionary will tell you what emotion means. But how to make the reader feel an emotion is tricky and another area where there’s a fine balance to be aimed for. As with any aspect of writing, what is great for one reader will be hopeless for another but that’s fine. I don’t worry too much. I can’t please everyone. A whole cinema full of people won’t have the same feelings about the same film. I’ve heard people sniffing in some parts of a movie while others are obviously bored out of their minds. It’s the same with books and plays.

In a book about young people with cancer there are going to be sad places, angry places, and there are going to happy, joyous and laugh filled places. All emotions felt by the characters and hopefully the readers. Balance. That’s what’s required. There is often sadness in life, just as there is often happiness. There are degrees of both and sometimes they’re mixed up together and it’s difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. Too much of any one  might be a bit weird. In a story which is about real life, it wouldn’t feel real without sadness as well as happiness, anger as well as contentment and even though Anthem for Jackson Dawes is not a real story about real people I wanted to make it as real as possible. To feel real. Otherwise it would be like a fairy tale with no dragon or giants or monsters and everything in the garden rosy and with not too much rain hurt the flowers and not too much sun and definitely no horrible winds or storms. Life isn’t like that. Nor is it all doom and gloom. There is joy and happiness in life, even if at times it can be hard to find.

I wish that cancer didn’t exist but it does and it affects not just the person who has it but all those people around, family and friends, nurses and doctors. To make my story feel real I had to include these people and show some of their emotions as well as those felt by Megan and Jackson. 

Now then, I don’t like sentimental writing and if I show signs of it then sorry again and let me know and I’ll try to do better. But how do we show emotion when we’re writing, how do we make the reader feel something without using too many adverbs and adjectives, too many describing words and too much sentimentality?

It’s easy to write that a character says something angrily or sadly, dejectedly or happily. It’s easy to say that a character feels anger or sadness, feels dejected or happy. You can use those words and lots more besides and really there’s nothing wrong in that. But there are other ways. I like to show how a character thinks, acts and speaks. Towards the end of Anthem for Jackson Dawes for example, I’ve tried to show how dejected and angry Megan feels without using those words. When she asks where Jackson is and Sister Brewster tells her that he’s not coming back to the ward, Megan looks down at the slippers she’s still wearing. They look stupid on her feet. She never wanted them, but Mum insisted on bringing them in. She’d never thought about it until that moment when she didn’t want to hear what she was being told about the boy she’d come love. I used her thoughts about the awful, babyish slippers to represent what she was really feeling. Later in the book, Megan’s having a bath and watching all the bubbles popping, dying, from the big ones to the little ones so tiny they’re hardly bubbles at all. She’s not really imagining them as people she knew on the cancer ward, she’s not actively thinking of Kipper or perhaps tiny babies, but because she’s feeling sad and lonely those bubbles could easily represent them. Alternatively they could represent the life she once had and will never have again, because her experience has changed her. I’m not sure what I intended, but I do like bubbles, I like watching them float and the way they reflect the world around them and when they pop I feel a tiny sense of loss. I wanted Megan and the reader to feel a sense of loss. Bubbles seemed perfect for the job.


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Thank you so much for this, Celia!  I do love listening to the professionals giving us writing tips!  
And all you guys - you must read this book!  It's sad, beautiful, heartbreaking, full of hope...  Just amazing.  And if you don't believe me, well, just check out my review!
Oh, and don't forget to keep on following the tour!  It stopped yesterday at The Pewter Wolf and it's gonna be stopping off tomorrow at Readaraptor!  So keep on following and check it out!! :D

Anthem For Jackson Dawes by Celia Bryce

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Format: ARC

Published: 3^rd January 2013

Number of Pages: 240

Book: For Review*

Genre: Contemporary, Coming-Of-Age, Realistic-Fiction, Romance, YA, YA-Child Crossover

Recommended Age: 12+

Contains: Death

No Alcohol, Drug References

Author's Site: Celia Bryce

When Megan Bright arrives on the hospital ward for her first cancer treatment, there is only one other teenager there: Jackson Dawes.  He is cute, rebellious… and Megan finds herself falling for him.

Megan is scared and worried about her illness but Jackson seems to be an old hand, having been on the ward for ages.  Everybody loves Jackson!  He is a whirlwind of life and energy, warmth and sparkle.  Megan will need to borrow some of Jackson’s extraordinary optimism to face her and Jackson’s future.

                                                                   Review:

The other day, I went on a roller coaster.  It was a vertical drop one and I was feeling slightly queasy.  I looked at my dad and asked "Why do we do this?"  It was then the ride started.  The feeling of exhilaration was intense.  As we were getting off I said, "Yeah.  I remember now."

That's what these heart-breaking books are like for me.  They break my heart every time, sometimes so hard I'm in shock for ages.  But these books are so string and powerful and emotional - so real and overwhelming.  So, yes.  They're heart-breaking.  But they also make you feel so much more.  They fill your heart to bursting.  They fill you up with so many emotions ‘til you explode in a fit of feeling.  

Anthem For Jackson Dawes?  It should be these books' poster child. 

“He had a huge laugh, which he must have kept for the ward, or maybe just the little ones.  You could always hear him.  Like everything was a joke.  Like this wasn't a ward full of cancer patients trying to dodge the bigger thing....”

It’s bad enough that Megan Bright has cancer.  So why does she have to be treated on a ward full of babies?  She isn’t a baby – she’s a teenager!

And then Jackson Dawes runs right into her – actually, literally runs into her.  He’s the only other teen on the ward and everyone loves him.  Even Megan’s own mother!

But as life on the ward and chemo take its toll, Megan finds herself drawn towards the bright light that is Jackson Dawes.  Especially as he’s the only one who understands what’s happening to her.

As the two grow closer, both will need every ounce – and more – of Jackson’s light to face their oh-so uncertain future…

Ever since reading Before I Die, I’ve kind of steered clear of cancer books, thinking none of them could possibly live up to one of my all-time favourites.  But after reading Anthem For Jackson Dawes, I’ve been made to rethink that.  Anthem For Jackson Dawes blew me away.  It was emotional and addictive and beautiful.  So, so beautiful.  I couldn’t stop reading, even when I was such an emotional mess I could barely see the pages.

Bryce’s characters were just out of this world.  Completely.  Megan Bright – may I quickly say: yes a fictional Megan!  She’s only the second Megan I’ve come across, and the only one whose name is spelt the same as mine!  Apparently, Megan isn’t a popular name…  But back to Megan Bright.  Well.  She was an amazing, amazing character.  Her reaction to the diagnosis was so genuine and believable.  I loved her snark and spirit, her fight and bravery.  She was such a strong and real character, someone you could love and hope for.  As for Jackson Dawes – oh how I saw why everyone loved him!  He had this charm – I actually felt myself melt around him!  It’s almost impossible not to smile when he’s in a scene!  God, he killed me.  Like actually killed me.  He was the sweetest thing, the cutest thing, the hottest thing.  I absolutely and totally adored him.  Then there was little Kipper, who was such an amazing character: she was so, so young but way older than her years, with so many troubles and “worries”.  I could just see her in my head, the delicate little pixie-like girl who was so completely breakable.

And I adored the relationship between Megan and Jackson – it was so real, so warm, so touching.  I just wanted more and more of it, of them.

The writing was beautiful.  It was like I could see everything in my head so, so clearly.  Bryce perfectly captured the pains, the highs and lows, the bitter sweetness of the first love, in her writing.  It was heart-breaking.  Completely heart-breaking.  And so, so beautiful – the kind of writing that gets under your skin, hovers in your head.  The kind of writing that just stays.  Now, I don’t know what to say about the storyline that won’t give everything away.  Needless to say, the majority of the book had me fearful of everyone’s fate – so fearful I had to stop reading for a little whole to pull myself together.  And by the end?  I was a totally mess with mascara streaks.

But my God, these damn books that keep making me cry!  Ok, so the huge mess of emotions is the sign of an amazing book.  But why do I keep reading them?!  Because it’s so amazing, reading these books that tell me of things I couldn’t possibly imagine myself and making me feel these things as if they were happening to me.  And man did this book make me feel: just feel, feel, feel, feel until I thought my heart would explode – especially right at the end…

A beautiful, bittersweet story of love, loss and the hardest fight there could ever be.  It had me laughing and smiling and loving.  And at the end, it had me bawling my eyes out.  The only thing I’m glad of is that I waited to read it until I came home from an outing – I looked a total mess!  This story is special and beautiful and dreadful.  It's a Before I Die for younger readers.  And these readers must read this book.  It is the perfect book to read, a book to make you think and feel.  A book to get you love and mourn.  A book to make you feel.  These emotions are so real and so perfect, even if they do leave you raw and sad and strangely happy too.  A life affirming book. A book that will make you love til it hurts, break your heart and then help you pick up the pieces.  Perfection.   And all of you, no matter your age, have to read it.

Star Rating:
4½ Out of 5

Read this book if you liked:

Before I Die by Jenny Downham

The Fault In The Stars by John Green

Eleven Eleven by Paul Dowsell

My Sister Lives On The Mantlepiece by Annabel Pitcher

Challenges It's Taking Part In:

100 Books in a Year Reading Challenge 2012 (Hosted by Book Chick City)

2012 Debut Author Challenge (Hosted by The Story Siren)

YA Contemporary Challenge 2012 (Hosted by Reading Angel & Katie's Book Blog)

British Books Challenge 2012 (Hosted by The Overflowing Library)

Happy Reading

Megan

* This book was received from Bloomsbury in exchange for an honest review