How to Make Your Readers Laugh, Cry, Rejoice, Despair, and Everything In Between

You've thought about it, and you now know exactly what you're aiming for. You're going to write about x, and it's going to make reader feel y.

How the hell do you make the reader feel y?

It's deceptively simple. This is where your experience in the world, and/or your consumption of other media, kicks in. What has made you feel y? Why did it make you feel y? If you can answer those questions, you're most of the way there already.

Take the classic example of Luke Skywalker discovering that Darth Vader, the enemy he'd been railing against for much of his life, was actually his father. There's a lot to unpack there. It was such a powerful emotional experience that even forty years after Return of the Jedi, even if you know nothing else about the franchise, you know that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.

When you boil it down, the thing that caused people to resonate so much with this was the character's realisation that their father was ultimately the cause of most of their hardships in life. Another layer of emotional significance in this is that, in his final moments, Darth Vader finally bears witness to his son's pain and validates his existence, giving his own life in an attempt to make up for what he's done.

Though I'm extremely grateful to not count myself among those for whom this is true, I've known many people who have had fairly destructive father figures, and can appreciate the gravity of the sentiment.

Now, what does any of this have to do with your writing? Everything! This was almost certainly the 'experience' that George Lucas was going for with that film (and look where that landed him!). By defining the 'experience' of your book early, you could build up to it over the course of three feature-length films, drop it like an atomic bomb, and change history.

While your story would benefit enormously from a defining experience such as this, it's important to note that there should be many micro-experiences within it, and they don't all necessarily have to lend themselves to the larger one. It could be in the way a mother looks at her child, a street rat steals a loaf of bread to survive, a misunderstanding shatters a relationship, or a dog comforts its grieving owner. If it evokes emotion, it's worth its weight in gold.