What do we want our readers to feel? In this session we'll explore the comic, horrific, or other emotional possibilities in what we're building, and we'll talk about how to tune a piece so that it's even funnier, or scarier, or sadder. Mostly, we'll re-engage with one of our earliest, most primal early reading experiences, when we sought stuff out because it made us feel a particular way (remember R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike? Bevery Cleary? Madeleine L'Engle? Garfield?). We'll talk about how to deliberately aim for a general effect, and how you can choose to revise to actually heighten that effect or altogether reverse it (turn something sad into something comic, for example, or mix the horrific with the humorous), and I'll share some tricks and theories to help you make your readers cry, shudder, and laugh.

Part of the StoryStudio StoryBoard Festival. Tickets and more information at https://www.storystudiochicago.org/writers-festival-2/